Yes, I get it’s too early to guage results in tournament play but I have a few questions.
How will this team do against a grind it to a halt half court set? Say an old Princeton like team. This team loves to run and shoot, how do they adjust?
How about a team with a solid big man and inside game? Will UCF give us our first look? I do love how Brandy has really played inside. He really kept us in the game against Temple.
What about a team that has a stifling perimeter defense. We have seen what happens when the team is not hitting from the outside. The team can fall behind.
First, defense travels. We will continue to get better on defense as the season because of more experience under the system for younger rotation players plus our better length
Second, I think some of the slow start last nite was a result of the change in the starting lineup. We went from an offensive approach of 4 perimeter guys to a set more like last season. Fabian can stretch the defense somewhat but won’t be setting up at the 3-point line
Second weekend for sure. Beyond that it’s match ups, off nights, hot shooters, etc. This team has so much depth that the off nights don’t hurt as much and it plays defense so consistently that the floor is really high. I don’t think the Coogs have worse than a 40% chance against any team in the country.
Any given night any team can beat a team they are not supposed to, we could be out in first round but we could make final four if brackets and “breaks “ fall our way
It’d be nice to get at least a 5 seed and to have our 1st round opponent be clearly inferior to us. After that all bets are off. It’s March and it’s designed to break your heart.
Not sure how anyone can project this team as a final four team…or even a Sweet 16 team…
Coach Sampson is still trying to figure out his starting five.
Frankly, in our first 16 games I have seen nothing to make me believe this team is anywhere near a final four or Sweet 16 bunch.
Last year we rode the coat tail of a hot Rob Gray to a second place finish in the conference tourney and then our first NCAA tourney victory since Hakeem left school a zillion years ago,
So far in conference games I have come to the conclusion that we are in for a big time war to finish in the top 3.
Wichita State came to play last night and we were off early last night. The Shockers, who many proclaimed to be garbage, was far from that last night. They played very good defense and hit key shots until our defense finally threw their game off late.
Right now we are not a dominate team…we will probably have a hard time at SMU like we always do.
Temple has proved to be decent, but don’t look now but USF has shown it can play some ball.
It would not surprise me if the conference champ has at least four losses.
I still contend we are no where near the team we hopefully will be down the stretch. Inserting White into the lineup is a big step IMO. He can give us the mid range shot and can be a factor around the basket.
And right now we are basically getting very little from Breon…I can see his minutes going down and Gresham’s minutes going up as the season progresses, Wichita roughed our big guys up last night, but I thought Breon had a pretty bad night after his best outing of the year against Temple.
Hinton took a slight move backward last night, but you can bet as the season progresses he is going to be a key for this team.
Hopefully we will get better in the turnover department especially in the first half. Last night we committed some silly turnovers that really cost us. And why are we slipping on the court so much? Haven’t seen our foes having that problem…
I am also really concerned about our ability to handle the press. Galen Robinson cannot do it by himself. The bad guys got several easy layups last night because we couldn’t get guys open on the inbounds pass.
Oregon did the same to us and cut into a 20 point Coog lead and made it oh too close late.
Like 72 said, we have to wait for the younger guys to mature and fully understand Sampson’s game plan.
This is an exciting team, but has so much more potential than we have shown recently.
We have won a lot of close games, especially at home, that should have never been close.
All that said, I expect this team to jell within the next four to five games. Playing on the road will be an adventure…and if we are going to be a decent tourney team we are going to have to win key games on the road…
defensive reliant teams never get far on the tourney …look at Cincinnati. their ability to get in the tournament is top 10 nationally, the reason they aren’t a blue blood is they always lose the 1st 2 rounds as a all defense teams
defense wins championships in football NOT basketball…elite guard play wins championship in basketball
we are also heavily reliant on 3s that are fallng every night…
if im honest, as the teams is “right now”, i dont think we get very far, and we are prime suspects for upset potential…but that is “as we are now”…we have to improve the offense, we have to improve the slow starts…
but i think we have the pieces to be a final 4 team they jusy need to develop, fabian, dejon, hinton…they are slowly getting better and are gaining confidence as shooters…and if we can bring “temple” breon to every game, that would also be special
Put me down in the slow your roll camp as well. We’ve played one team that would likely be in the tourney as an at large team in LSU (likely a 7 to 10ish seed at the moment) and beat them by 6 at home. Temple is probably just outside the tourney as well right now but could get in. We know we lost a tough one on the road to those guys with some questionable officiating.
If we get hot we can hang with a lot of teams but someone talking about getting to the second weekend as our floor is just crazy. We’re nowhere close to Duke and a ways from some of the other top teams.
