***OFFICIAL ARKANSAS PINE BLUFF AT MINNESOTA IN-GAME THREAD!!!***

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We should become a zone team almost exclusively. We have pretty good length which is quite useful in a zone.

It's obvious that we're WAY too slow to play man to man, guard penetration is going to be a huge issue all season.

One of the drawbacks of playing zone is that it can be tough to rebound out of, but we're an atrocious defensive rebounding team anyways so....

I know BJ/Thor didn't envisage us being a zone team/program. But any chance we have of winning some games this season will rely on making the switch, might as well do so now.
 


BarnBurner said:
This is not a young team, overall.

Samuels, Garcia, Cooper, Battle.
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True. I hope Carrington, Payne, & Ola-Joseph are all starting by the end of the year. I hope CBJ has the courage to do that.

I'll settle for 25 minutes per game each.
 


Zeppelin Gopher said:
We should become a zone team almost exclusively. We have pretty good length which is quite useful in a zone.

It's obvious that we're WAY too slow to play man to man, guard penetration is going to be a huge issue all season.

One of the drawbacks of playing zone is that it can be tough to rebound out of, but we're an atrocious defensive rebounding team anyways so....

I know BJ/Thor didn't envisage us being a zone team/program. But any chance we have of winning some games this season will rely on making the switch, might as well do so now.
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I'd put practicing the defense we hope to play in the future ahead of winning now.
 





Bayfieldgopher said:
What you see is what you get!!

BJ not willing to go zone inspite of APB clearly having the advantage with the dribble drive. Great adjustment by their coach but not from Ben. It worked when he finally gave it a chance. I was screaming at the TV but to no avail. Where is his great D mentor Thorson when Ben needs it?

They finally tried to establish the post but with limited success. Lots of ops but guys weren't able to execute. Best ball movement probably all season.

Confidence builder for Carrington and Battle but not so much for JOJ and PP. Why did Ben put TT out there instead of JOJ? Another head scratcher.
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Building as much depth as possible. JOJ and PP get plenty of time in most other games and BJ felt comfortable enough to give TT more in this game.
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Maybe someone with more discerning eyes than mine can answer: are they getting any better defensively? They seem terrible at hedging, they switch and get caught in bad mismatches. Last night it seemed, at times, they just realized the opponent can dribble.
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Like many have said, the initial issue is team speed. We are woefully slow, not one player on our team is a + speed guy. That is simple physical limitation, Ben recruited a group of slow footed guys who outside of PP/JOJ have no intent on being physical. From there, our coaching staff is doing a horrendous job in my opinion of putting these guys in better spots. We all know we are slow, so playing just straight up man, no traps no doubles nothing, is a total coaching failure. Thorson built a rep on defense, that IMO was built on great man to man defense with the caveat that probably 90%+ of the games he coached his players had physical advantages over their opponent. They are trying to use a square peg in a round hole DOES NOT WORK.

Someone asked about Samuels. He is not good, the issue is that he is less bad than Henley is so we are stuck. At this point I would be playing Carrington 30min a night and get Henley in for 10 min a game. Its going to be an awful 10 min but at least get him some experience I guess. Playing Samuels is foolish.

And yah we can stop with the young stuff, like someone posted, 5 players got over 25 min last night. Four of which have over 3 years of college exp. It is time you give that up. If the 4 freshman had played 25+min each maybe you can talk about that.
 



MNJay said:
I'd put practicing the defense we hope to play in the future ahead of winning now.
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Thought it was the right balance, run your sets get guys in, do what you need to do in winning time to get the dub. Hopefully we can keep it close enough in conference play where we are in striking distance to mix in a zone. We did a good job of that in the road wins vs Pitt, Miss State and Michigan last year. Even in the rallies that fell short against Iowa and Indiana, the zone getting mixed in threw them off, I think it's the mixing and matching that throws teams off more than anything. Tonight it definitely gave Cooper and Samuels some relief, as Milton and Doss were blowing by them for Pine Bluff. But you also risks giving up more offensive rebounds in a Zone
 

3399 said:
I just find it a bit concerning that they HAD to go to a zone in this one to win it. Anyone else?
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I don't get concerned by wins. As a fan of minnesota pro and college sports, I get enough disappointment with games we actually lose to be too worried about the ones we win. I have lots of gripes about how Johnson is doing, but how he wins the ones he wins is not one of then.

I am consistent, just like I won't get worked up about looking bad in a win, I also don't take much solace in looking good in a loss.
 



Zeppelin Gopher said:
I'd argue winning games by whatever means necessary is more important than anything else.
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You're getting lots of agreement on this.

But I strongly disagree. In our situation...I think development for the future is far more important than squeezing out a few more wins.
 

bga1 said:
Maybe we should just cancel the rest of the games and just practice.
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In this scenario those games are the barometer for our practice. They are measurements to the progress being made in practice.
 

maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but I always thought one of the first rules of defense was overplay to the strong side.

I see so many Gopher players getting beat by simple strong-side dribble-drives. so, it seems logical to have them overplay to the strong side and cut off the drive, or force the ball-handler to go to his weak side. (assuming there is weak-side defensive help)

is this an outdated philosophy? or have all of those concussions I got from falling down while drunk catching up to me?
 

short ornery norwegian said:
maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but I always thought one of the first rules of defense was overplay to the strong side.

I see so many Gopher players getting beat by simple strong-side dribble-drives. so, it seems logical to have them overplay to the strong side and cut off the drive, or force the ball-handler to go to his weak side. (assuming there is weak-side defensive help)

is this an outdated philosophy? or have all of those concussions I got from falling down while drunk catching up to me?
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Shooter from Hoosiers?
 

Didn't look great last night against a bad team. A win is a win though.

Carrington and Battle getting some shots to go in and Garcia looking good again were the positives I saw.

The biggest negative of the whole night for me was seeing that crowd. How sad what the barn has become.
 

MNJay said:
You're getting lots of agreement on this.

But I strongly disagree. In our situation...I think development for the future is far more important than squeezing out a few more wins.
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I agree with you here. Going zone against maybe/probably the worst opponent on the schedule because even they were able to beat your man-to-man was - the word that comes to mind is pitiful. A team with any sort of competence (not the case last night) is going to torch that defense because of how difficult it is to rebound. The sad part is that the zone > man for this team, but that is not the recipe for any team not named Syracuse.

Demand the players be better at man. No playing time if you can't do your part, including Battle. You might sacrifice offense, but this is the foundation you want to be building.
 

formerlybis said:
I agree with you here. Going zone against maybe/probably the worst opponent on the schedule because even they were able to beat your man-to-man was - the word that comes to mind is pitiful. A team with any sort of competence (not the case last night) is going to torch that defense because of how difficult it is to rebound. The sad part is that the zone > man for this team, but that is not the recipe for any team not named Syracuse.

Demand the players be better at man. No playing time if you can't do your part, including Battle. You might sacrifice offense, but this is the foundation you want to be building.
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Agreed, but that's tough to do when your PG struggles at man and you also need him on the floor for 40 minutes.
 

MNJay said:
You're getting lots of agreement on this.

But I strongly disagree. In our situation...I think development for the future is far more important than squeezing out a few more wins.
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Losing begets losing. It sets in as a mentality. I'd be willing to bet that players under Bo Ryan, Bobby Knight and others had a feeling that their coaches would steer them to a win, not let them lose, because that is what they have seen before. Winning gets you the fans, winning gets you more players, winning help keeps the players you have. Winning makes players believe.
 


bga1 said:
Losing begets losing. It sets in as a mentality. I'd be willing to bet that players under Bo Ryan, Bobby Knight and others had a feeling that their coaches would steer them to a win, not let them lose, because that is what they have seen before. Winning gets you the fans, winning gets you more players, winning help keeps the players you have. Winning makes players believe.
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But the best path to winning is building from the ground up like Clem did. Then add transfers. Line up the players so we're good at every position at the same time...not losing key positions to graduation.
 

bga1 said:
Losing begets losing. It sets in as a mentality. I'd be willing to bet that players under Bo Ryan, Bobby Knight and others had a feeling that their coaches would steer them to a win, not let them lose, because that is what they have seen before. Winning gets you the fans, winning gets you more players, winning help keeps the players you have. Winning makes players believe.
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I see it differently.

Coaches like Ryan and Knight would have never switched to a zone against the likes of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Players that made defensive mistakes or made unforced turnovers would be immediately benched at the next whistle. Because players want to play, they would learn how to play the way the coach wanted them to. And the coach's way won. A lot.

Taking shortcuts to winning will not build the foundation for long term success. The fact this staff is willing to do that is a giant red flag.
 

formerlybis said:
I see it differently.

Coaches like Ryan and Knight would have never switched to a zone against the likes of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Players that made defensive mistakes or made unforced turnovers would be immediately benched at the next whistle. Because players want to play, they would learn how to play the way the coach wanted them to. And the coach's way won. A lot.

Taking shortcuts to winning will not build the foundation for long term success. The fact this staff is willing to do that is a giant red flag.
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when I went to St Thomas games last year (when they still had essentially a 100% D3 roster competing in D1), they had a few games still on the schedule with the likes of Crown College & Northland (2 programs that wouldn’t even be good enough for the MIAC).

When UST played their D1 opponents they could really only shoot treys as they had no size, and they would shoot them as fast as they could get them up…since they could not let the game get into a half court affair…since they would have no shot with their D3 roster.

So when they played Crown and Northland, they did the same because it didn’t benefit them to change their style to just more easily bet a very bad opponent. They new they had to perfect their style of play their new they had to play against their real opponents (summit league)… they didn’t post up the smaller school, they still were running and gunning.

The gophers should not have adapted to bet Arkansas PB as they know they need to get better at what will work against real teams, and they will be playing a lot of real teams in conference (sorry to say Arkansas PB is not a real team).
 

formerlybis said:
I see it differently.

Coaches like Ryan and Knight would have never switched to a zone against the likes of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Players that made defensive mistakes or made unforced turnovers would be immediately benched at the next whistle. Because players want to play, they would learn how to play the way the coach wanted them to. And the coach's way won. A lot.

Taking shortcuts to winning will not build the foundation for long term success. The fact this staff is willing to do that is a giant red flag.
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While I think it is utterly pathetic that a switch to zone was necessary to put the game away against a team as dismal as Ark-PB, I will give the coaching staff credit for making an adjustment that won us the game.

With that being said, the bigger question that needs to be answered is why can't we stay in front of bottom-dwelling SWAC talent. Why don't we have the "gritty" and "tough" players on our roster that can be trusted playing man-to-man defense?

I've said it in other threads, but CBJ is going to need to make some tough decision with the current personnel (specifically the upperclassmen) going into next season.
 

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