The UH Draw

All things considered this is not a terrible draw for UH. San Diego State is a hot team, but not necessarily a great team. They beat Gonzaga early in the season and beat Nevada twice down the stretch. Ken Pom has them as his 50th ranked team in the country. They will try to use their length to get 2nd chance opportunities on offense and disrupt passing lanes on defense. I think they will have a difficult time scoring on UH in the half court.

My 2 biggest concerns:
#1 Our halfcourt offense has not been good the last 2 weeks. The length of teams is giving our undersized team issues and teams have been overplaying Armoni Brooks forcing him to drive which has stifled his game. Either Brooks or Davis has to be a consistent 3rd scorer if UH wants to go as far as it wants.

#2 Can UH either control the glass or force some turnovers to get some easy 3’s and layups in transition?

538 gives UH a 71% chance to beat SD State and a 33% chance to beat Michigan. 2018 March Madness Predictions | FiveThirtyEight I’ll take those odds. I really think if UH plays its “A” game, there isn’t a team in this region that they can’t beat. They have seniors and they have an elite coach. In the words of Michael Jordan “The Ceiling is The Floor”.

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San Diego State is kind of a poor-man’s version of Cincinnati. They play great defense, and they’ve found some offense in the last month, which is how they beat Nevada twice in the last few weeks.

Michigan is a lousy matchup for us in the second round, especially if the refs have tight whistles. Our bigs are going to have a hell of a time staying out of foul trouble.

Hold up, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s play and win the first game before talking about the match-up against Michigan. We got some work to do before Thursday game with SDSU.

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I think Armoni would get much better looks from 3 if our bigs were actually setting screens out top and rolling instead of appearing and immediately disappearing without so much as touching the on ball defender. I really have no idea what we’re trying to accomplish out there with that movement. If we’re not going to set the screen, then we need RobG and GRob driving and kicking to the corners. Just watch some Rockets film and do what they do.

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My biggest grip with the big men is putting the ball on the floor. They will be under the basket and try to dribble. Never put the ball on the floor! Maybe Hakeem or Hayes can work on this with them in the offseason

To piggy-back on this, both Zanna and Brady are bad about passing to a cutting guard while under the basket. That guard is looking to rebound, not catch a pass from a big man directly under the basket. That drives me nuts!

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This article from Duarte is pretty funny.

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