3 Big Issues +1

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WilliamsArenaGuy

WilliamsArenaGuy

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1. FT shooting. Obviously. Just atrocious and I’ve never seen anything like it.

2. Defense in second half was not good.

3. WTF has happened to Jordan Murphy? I feel like he hurts the team more than helps it lately. FT’s...stupid fouls...no offensive game.

+1 - From 13:48 to 1:16 in the second half, they called one foul on Maryland. One. It was unbelievable. I know they were in a zone, blah blah blah. But there were several drives with major contact uncalled. And this was at home. It was sickening. I know for sure Washington was hacked big time on the arm on the play that then led to a 3 for Maryland (this seemed to be the key moment in the game), and how McBrayer didn’t get a call on a late drive was equally crazy.

I realize we would have missed all the FT’s, but that was something else.


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You nailed the 3 big concerns from tonight and going forward. Though you could add shooting in general to #1, though yes, our FT was embarrassing tonight.

Big Ten teams know Murphy well, and they are shutting him down. We obviously need much more from him and the last few games we're not coming close to getting it.

Very disappointing second half for many reasons. The euphoria of the wisconsin win seems so long ago.

Go Gophers!!
 

-Shooting
-Point Guard play
-Defense
-Low basketball IQ

Are the biggest issues in my mind, other than that they're pretty good!
 

WilliamsArenaGuy said:
1. FT shooting. Obviously. Just atrocious and I’ve never seen anything like it.

2. Defense in second half was not good.

3. WTF has happened to Jordan Murphy? I feel like he hurts the team more than helps it lately. FT’s...stupid fouls...no offensive game.

+1 - From 13:48 to 1:16 in the second half, they called one foul on Maryland. One. It was unbelievable. I know they were in a zone, blah blah blah. But there were several drives with major contact uncalled. And this was at home. It was sickening. I know for sure Washington was hacked big time on the arm on the play that then led to a 3 for Maryland (this seemed to be the key moment in the game), and how McBrayer didn’t get a call on a late drive was equally crazy.

I realize we would have missed all the FT’s, but that was something else.


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As I recall, McBrayer's forward momentum towards the basket while shooting was completely stopped by mid air body contact and yet no call
 

The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there tho!

McBrayer really isn't a good three point shooter and misses far too many wide open ones. He brings other stuff to the team, but outside of his sophomore year his 3pt shooting numbers are horrid. Not sure why people think of him as a good shooter.
 


GameDay said:
The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there.
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Oturu had a double double. He had a pretty good game. No To’s and an assist. He’s at the bottom of my list of Gopher shortcomings.



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GameDay said:
The fact is, Oturu just isn't very skilled at this point in his playing career and needs to sharpen up his basketball IQ. Wasted an easy fast break opportunity by holding on the the ball. He may be good against lowly mid majors but he has a lot of work to do to remain competitive against B1G opponents. His rebounding is definitely there tho!

McBrayer really isn't a good three point shooter and misses far too many wide open ones. He brings other stuff to the team, but outside of his sophomore year his 3pt shooting numbers are horrid. Not sure why people think of him as a good shooter.
Click to expand...

Oruro is a freshman, they make mistakes. McBrayer shot 35% last year. I call that average to above average. Correct that he is struggling this year. He had a couple wide open ones against the zone he needs to hit. To his credit, he did miss some time this year....

This game was FTs and the scoring drought in the second half. Long shots led to to misses and some easy transition buckets for Maryland. Cowan went nuts too.
 

Main issue vs Maryland: Our relative lack of talent. We have a nice team, but the talent differential was fairly obvious. Maryland > Wisconsin by quite a bit based on my observations tonight. The rule of thumb seems to be that you need three studs that can take over a game. Maryland has that (Fernando, Smith, Cowan). MN has two (Coffey, Murphy), but Murphy is neutralized when he plays against skilled length as he is only about 6’6”.

Bottom line is we lost to a better team, but the difference is not as great as the final score. We are a bad FT-shooting team, but not 39% bad.


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manderson1984 said:
Oruro is a freshman, they make mistakes. McBrayer shot 35% last year. I call that average to above average. Correct that he is struggling this year. He had a couple wide open ones against the zone he needs to hit. To his credit, he did miss some time this year....

This game was FTs and the scoring drought in the second half. Long shots led to to misses and some easy transition buckets for Maryland. Cowan went nuts too.
Click to expand...

This game was the inability to stop anything in the second half. This team will always have scoring droughts but they can’t afford to give up nearly 50 in a half if they want to win games.
 



Inability to guard #1 on dribble drives was a recurring big problem.
 

Gold Vision said:
This game was the inability to stop anything in the second half. This team will always have scoring droughts but they can’t afford to give up nearly 50 in a half if they want to win games.
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100 % spot on but few fans want to acknowledge that and yet simple research shows a winning % of under 25 % over 6 years when giving up over 80 points in a game.
 

On Murphy, he's hurt by this team not having a point guard on the floor and even more by the lack of perimeter shooting. I thought there would be more room to operate for Murphy this year on the block now that he had an actual basketball player next to him in the front court in Oturu or Curry. Look at some of the possessions where Maryland's bigs scores and they either had a whole side of the floor to work their post up one on one or got a deep paint touch that just required them to go straight up and score. Murphy might still struggle some in the latter scenario over length, but should draw some fouls (and unfortunately miss some free throws). The former situation is more troubling though as there is consistently no space for Murphy (or anyone) to really operate on offense. The only times it does seem like the Gophers get some easy looks is when Washington is in the game and creating off the dribble. Unfortunately those good looks are negated by poor decision making from Isaiah. The other issue with Murphy is he's never developed his offensive game to include a perimeter jump shot. Remember the Providence game to start last year? Murphy was hitting from 15 with regularity and looked like a potential All American. It turned out to just be a fortunate shooting game and not a sign of development.
 

Gold Vision said:
This game was the inability to stop anything in the second half. This team will always have scoring droughts but they can’t afford to give up nearly 50 in a half if they want to win games.[/QUOTE

Yes, but offensive decisions make for some easier shots. It wasn't all just bad defense. It's not as black and white as just a number of points. A couple transition shots that turned back around and led to wide open threes and lay ups were killers. Washington was hacked terribly on one at Cowan hit the 3 on, but some other quick shots hurt us.
Click to expand...
 



EG#9 said:
On Murphy, he's hurt by this team not having a point guard on the floor and even more by the lack of perimeter shooting. I thought there would be more room to operate for Murphy this year on the block now that he had an actual basketball player next to him in the front court in Oturu or Curry. Look at some of the possessions where Maryland's bigs scores and they either had a whole side of the floor to work their post up one on one or got a deep paint touch that just required them to go straight up and score. Murphy might still struggle some in the latter scenario over length, but should draw some fouls (and unfortunately miss some free throws). The former situation is more troubling though as there is consistently no space for Murphy (or anyone) to really operate on offense. The only times it does seem like the Gophers get some easy looks is when Washington is in the game and creating off the dribble. Unfortunately those good looks are negated by poor decision making from Isaiah. The other issue with Murphy is he's never developed his offensive game to include a perimeter jump shot. Remember the Providence game to start last year? Murphy was hitting from 15 with regularity and looked like a potential All American. It turned out to just be a fortunate shooting game and not a sign of development.
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Been saying for three years he needed to develop J from 15-18 ft. He would then be deadly. Hasnt happened.
 

I thought about this overnight and it is still troubling me. IW23 tried to take charge and drive through Maryland's zone defense. He wasn't successful and was pulled immediately. Why?

It strikes me as poor coaching and coaching fear of the zone defense. If our FGs weren't dropping why were we not trying to do more penetration into the zone?

smh

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Here are my points I noted from the box score:

Outrebounded - worse yet was our terribly low defensive rebounding numbers. Of course when the other team isn't missing shots its hard to get rebounds. which leads to....

2nd half defense - 2nd game in a row where the other team has made better or some adjustments at half time and we have failed to match their coaching or play. They boxed Cowan up in the first half but let him play his game in the second and that cost us big. Only way we could have stayed with them would have been to make some.......

Free Throws - My goodness. All these guys should shoot 150 fts a day! It's called the "charity stripe" because it is supposed to be as easy as picking up an Obama phone in Baltimore when you can't afford rent. If only we knew how to...

Score against a zone - You beat a zone by moving the ball inside and out and inside and out and making the defense move. Of course you have to make the open shots when the ball movement creates them! Oturu missed a few close range shots but gamecenter doesn't let me know if Fernando (great name) was all over him or not. Murphy seems like low-motor Murph on gamecenter as well! If only we could....

Penetrate consistently - We haven't known how to penetrate effectively since the Facebook film! Doesn't help if the refs swallow the whistle though. Remember....

Basketball is a simple game:

You dribble the ball, (something our team has but keeps on the bench)
You pass the ball, (not scoring against a zone well says we don't do this effectively)
You shoot the ball, (and make a higher percentage than the other team)
You rebound the ball, (got to do a better job here)
and you play defense. (for the whole game! not just the first half. And if the other team changes things up, you have to react!)
 


This team will get better as Curry shakes off the rust. So far, I like his progress. I think he cramped up at the end of the game.

Regarding our play against a zone, we don't seem to attack. When passing and/or dribbling side to side, we need to attack. One play in particular, Dupree had the ball on left side of zone. We had two guys opposite him on the perimeter with a huge hole in the zone. Coffey was one and I think Stull or Gabe was the other. Coffey was in the best position to cut to the middle for an easy 5-7 footer. He was hitting those the entire game.

I sure hope they watch tape on Maryland's zone because there were many holes. I hate the dribble handoffs / weave as it doesn't get the zone defense moving at all.
 

Ewert86PC said:
I thought about this overnight and it is still troubling me. IW23 tried to take charge and drive through Maryland's zone defense. He wasn't successful and was pulled immediately. Why?

It strikes me as poor coaching and coaching fear of the zone defense. If our FGs weren't dropping why were we not trying to do more penetration into the zone?

smh

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Click to expand...

I agree. IW can help the team and it appears he was trying rather than doing it himself. Drive and dish or shoot. It seems as if RP will not give him the opp and pulls him if he screws up. Two assists and zero TO's in 17 minutes.

I say play him more.
 

GopherCountry said:
This team will get better as Curry shakes off the rust. So far, I like his progress. I think he cramped up at the end of the game.

Regarding our play against a zone, we don't seem to attack. When passing and/or dribbling side to side, we need to attack. One play in particular, Dupree had the ball on left side of zone. We had two guys opposite him on the perimeter with a huge hole in the zone. Coffey was one and I think Stull or Gabe was the other. Coffey was in the best position to cut to the middle for an easy 5-7 footer. He was hitting those the entire game.

I sure hope they watch tape on Maryland's zone because there were many holes. I hate the dribble handoffs / weave as it doesn't get the zone defense moving at all.
Click to expand...

Like your analysis here. They did get open 3's, but they weren't falling. They needed to send someone to the middle to help the zone collapse a little more. Maybe Matthew Hurt is someone who gets a go there, but he'd been a defensive liability. Once Curry gets back into game mode, he'll be a great guy to flash and hit mid range jumpers. Otherwise Coffey was probably the best option.
 

Bayfield Gopher said:
I agree. IW can help the team and it appears he was trying rather than doing it himself. Drive and dish or shoot. It seems as if RP will not give him the opp and pulls him if he screws up. Two assists and zero TO's in 17 minutes.

I say play him more.
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IW was pretty good. Too bad he didn't get that foul call. That was awful and it lead to a momentum swinging 3. Atrocious miss by the refs that had a huge impact on the game.
 

manderson1984 said:
IW was pretty good. Too bad he didn't get that foul call. That was awful and it lead to a momentum swinging 3. Atrocious miss by the refs that had a huge impact on the game.
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I like the kids upside but what i saw was poor shooting and worse defense. In rewatching the film he will be graded poorly on defense.
 

Bordergopher said:
Main issue vs Maryland: Our relative lack of talent. We have a nice team, but the talent differential was fairly obvious. Maryland > Wisconsin by quite a bit based on my observations tonight. The rule of thumb seems to be that you need three studs that can take over a game. Maryland has that (Fernando, Smith, Cowan). MN has two (Coffey, Murphy), but Murphy is neutralized when he plays against skilled length as he is only about 6’6”.

Bottom line is we lost to a better team, but the difference is not as great as the final score. We are a bad FT-shooting team, but not 39% bad.
Click to expand...

This. Maryland is a better team with better players. The Gophers have glaring weaknesses that prevent them from making that next step as a team. PG play is #1. Inability to make open shots is #2.
 

manderson1984 said:
IW was pretty good. Too bad he didn't get that foul call. That was awful and it lead to a momentum swinging 3. Atrocious miss by the refs that had a huge impact on the game.
Click to expand...

Pretty good? What does bad look like?
 

builtbadgers said:
I like the kids upside but what i saw was poor shooting and worse defense. In rewatching the film he will be graded poorly on defense.
Click to expand...

Fair point, for him he was pretty good. He's been worse and seemed to give better effort on the defensive end. Yeah he still won't grade well.
 

The Gophers had a 7-point lead with 14:20 remaining, even while they were missing free throws and getting victimized by the worst officiating crew I've seen in some time. That's a game you need to be able to win. If the tide turning was a simple matter of Maryland switching to a zone defense, that's not a talent problem - it's a coaching problem, a poise problem, and a mental stamina problem.
 

Ewert86PC said:
I thought about this overnight and it is still troubling me. IW23 tried to take charge and drive through Maryland's zone defense. He wasn't successful and was pulled immediately. Why?

It strikes me as poor coaching and coaching fear of the zone defense. If our FGs weren't dropping why were we not trying to do more penetration into the zone?

smh

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I agree. Washington can do a good job of creating in the zone. Not sure both the offense or defense could have gotten much worse in the 2nd half so why not let him try to create some open looks?

I just realized this morning that the Gophers got outscored by 21 points in the 2nd half at home. That's pathetic no matter who they're playing.
 

manderson1984 said:
Fair point, for him he was pretty good. He's been worse and seemed to give better effort on the defensive end. Yeah he still won't grade well.
Click to expand...

Yep, not very defense and more poor rushed shots is what I saw. I honestly only want him shooting wide open layups that are there for him. He is not a good shooter\ and forces it waaaaay too much still. He looks like he is getting better, made some nice plays at first I though maybe he was figuring it out? I still wouldn't hang my hat on him until he figures out 1 on 4 doesn't work, period.
 

Bad Gopher said:
The Gophers had a 7-point lead with 14:20 remaining, even while they were missing free throws and getting victimized by the worst officiating crew I've seen in some time. That's a game you need to be able to win. If the tide turning was a simple matter of Maryland switching to a zone defense, that's not a talent problem - it's a coaching problem, a poise problem, and a mental stamina problem.
Click to expand...

I agree with the three things you list as issues, but for me the number 1 issue is recruiting.
I’m not saying it’s as easy to recruit at Mn, but look at the types of young players that Maryland had last night.
- shooting (including free throws)
- length
- physicality
- quickness
- defense
Any many of their best players are freshmen and sophomores.
 

builtbadgers said:
I like the kids upside but what i saw was poor shooting and worse defense. In rewatching the film he will be graded poorly on defense.
Click to expand...
As a Badger fan, I think we know pretty well what you appreciate.
 

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