EFFICIENCY
WKU 97.5
MINN 120.2
If you would have told me, "Patillo will play very little in the first half. MINN will shoot 56% in the 1st half and WKU will shoot 39%. However, you will only be down six at half," I would have taken that deal without batting an eye. I felt OK at half. No way MINN would keep up that shooting. Patillo would come back and give us a lift. We'll adjust to the zone and more shots will go down. Of course, it only got worse in the 2nd. It was disappointing, but we can learn from this one. My concern is the short turnaround today. I wouldn't guess that examining what all went wrong yesterday will help much when we have a game today. At least not in any detailed way.
Defensively, it seemed nothing we did kept the ball from going into MINN's hoop. They missed 21 shots in a high-paced game. They got 10 of those back (nearly half...a theme so far for this team, unfortunately). They scored on an insane number of their possessions. Pettigrew played good position D on Sampson...and could do NOTHING to stop him from shooting that sweeping hook over him. Grew was a warrior, a Terminator even, raining in threes and scoring hoops even as his fleshy exterior burned in an inferno. He never stopped playing. Our bigs had NO answers for MINN down low. Add to that an extraordinary shooting night from the perimeter, and we had a Gopher buzzsaw on our hands. It was a perfect, buck-toothed storm.
We did force 19 TOs and created a positive TO margin. Good to see consistency in that department at least.
Offensively, we started out OK, but got stopped cold by their zone m!d-first half. And, we couldn't get much done on the interior. Grew was unconscious after a rough start, but Serge (5-15), Juan (3-8), and Cliff (0-5) were obviously bothered by the trees. We got some points in transition, but not enough, and credit MINN for a lot of that. We kept the pace high, but we weren't fast and tight, we got fast and loose (Ken Brown, 6 TOs). A lot of this will sort out, I think. Remember, Brown/Peters/Khalil have zero DI experience and they were up against a SR backcourt and a likely NCAA team. Outside of Pettigrew, Jamal Crook was a shining bright spot (6pts, 6ast, 5 rebs, 0 TOs). He played GREAT.
No reason (or time) to hang our heads. We did this to SJU. EVERYTHING went in for MINN. What we can't do is dwell on it and let it affect us vs Hofstra today. We should come out, push pace, make them stop Serge/Juan off the dribble and pressure on the perimeter. At some point, we have to get better keeping teams off the O-glass. Hofstra is picked middle-of-pack in the CAA, but they have CAA POY Charles Jenkins (a guard) to deal with.
Let's get two wins.
