Season Opener vs Longwood

Bona03

Bona03

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If anyone has any dick jokes left, now is the time. Its also time for the season! There are many reasons to be excited about this group. I am interested to see how the rotation plays out and whether we can make Longwood go limp. If we fancy ourselves as at large candidates, we win this game by double digits.
 
Season openers should always be taken with a grain of salt. Rebounding included, it’s premature to get into too much prognostication on what did or didn’t go well.

The only thing I’ll comment on was offensive rhythm and moving without the ball. I wanted to see a lot more of it than we did. More perimeter-planting than I would have liked.

On that note, MAW is no doubt still finding his footing in a new offense. And Luc played well in support. At times I would have liked him to command sets more, but there was little to none of the forcing it we became accustomed to last year. I was pleased with his poise and patience in his minutes, and a couple of big plays down the stretch.
 
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but our 31 3pt attempts would have been tied for the most we attempted in a game last year. It was a little odd seeing so many 3s attempted from well beyond NBA, but they did make them at a 36%.

Getting outrebounded by 16 is alarming any way you cut it. The team seemed a step slow all night on defense, but I do think we should be as good or if not better defensively this year.

Noel Brown played well and might be the best backup center we've ever had in a while.

A lot to work on obviously, but glad we didn't start this season with a Q3 or 4 loss. Now on to a Canisius team that was picked 3rd in the MAAC preseason poll..
 
Have to give some credit to Longwood, they are well coached and were better than I expected. Their big Zavala or whatever, he was not scrub. Also, loved their jerseys. They got after it on the offensive glass and played hard. I think if Venning were out there more, the rebounding would have been better but still with Brown, Yann or Evans out there we should be winning that battle.

The 1st half was rough, which was to be expected. The fact they had the lead at the half was a good sign to me. MAW is not ready to handle everything just yet and that is ok. Luc was able to make the plays at the end when we needed them. I thought for sure Schmidt would take him out after he got ripped at half court and then fouled.

Brown was good last night but you see his limitations if he plays a lot of minutes. Credit to him for not fouling at all over that 16 minute stretch Venning was out. Martinez clearly isnt ready either or else we would have seen him. I thought we still could have threw him out there for a few minutes to see if he could get some rebounds or keep them off the glass.

Pride is everything I thought he would be. This was not the only game this year he will save our asses. It was nice to see some balanced scoring but when we need a bucket, hes our guy.

Loved seeing Barry knock down a couple jumpers. If we can get 5-7 points from him every night that will help a lot.

This is a game we lose last year. It was not perfect at all but they still controlled most of the game. OK St lost last night so either that will wake them up or we can take them next week in Brooklyn. First, beat Caneatshit.
 
The 3 transfers made an immediate impact, I'm not sure Bonas Winns that game without any of them. Can anyone imagine how ugly last night could have gotten with Max or Mellouck at center.
I absolutely agree that Brown is the best backup center in years, and I think 15 minutes a game is about perfect for him.
MAW is still getting his feet wet and learning the playbook, but I still like the combination of him and Luc at the 1. It allows Luc to catch his breath both literally and figuratively something he did have the ability to do last year.
 
I think anyone that has been here or the other place for the last 10 or so years knows how i feel about guards chipping in to rebound. We didnt see nearly enough of that last night. Assa, Pride and Brown all played over 60% of the minutes and had lower rebound rates than Holmes did in his 3 years here. Thats our leading minute getters at the 3, 4, and 5 getting out rebounded by a SG, obviously sample sizes are a thing and any one game from those years you could skew the numbers a different way.

I guess it is more to say we need to team rebound, Schmidt's teams/junk defenses are only possible if the weakside guy or off ball defender is crashing the glass. Watch the last 60-90 seconds of last nights game and you see guards and wings getting rebounds down the stretch and helped with the game. If we are going to be an above average team we will need that effort for the full game.

Edit: Longwood had the 3rd best offensive rebound rate of all the teams that played yesterday and managed to get second chance opportunities on 50% of their misses.
 
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