Not sure I get the correlation of Mercy helping when our main issue was defending the pick and roll action. A couple observations about defense will get much better during the season. When we had Shead, Sasser and GROB we had elite ball stoppers, meaning they could push the pick roll out making it more difficult for the bigs to dive with success and eliminate a quality shot.
Adding to that, Shead was a exceptional last season on getting into the passing lanes and disrupting ball movement… This season we have more size to cover the top part of the pick which can help however we were really struggling to recover to the post. Not many, if any other than Kansas, will have a guy who can hurt us like Broome when he catches it deep.
We agree. Coach has said in upteen interviews that freshman are not ready for this level when they get to UH. Of course the players you mentioned contributed as freshman. Part of the formula is who the coach has ahead of the freshman to play. I will let Coach decide. I fully expect Mercy to be a contributor.
Remember, this was a fantasy scenario where I had Mercy and Pettiford in a freshman shootout matching basket-to-basket. It was for entertainment purposes only.
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Why didn’t Lath get some minutes, he played well was against Dickinson last year against Kansas at home can’t remember or was it in the long A&M game in tournament?
Whatever the case he could have muscled up Broome used some fouls, Broome not the best free throw shooter. Sampson’s utilization of players seemed strange Saturday
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I’ll put my $0.02 into this. Mercy will play it was just this particular game was not put in the situation where he could.
People asking for mecy and lath…
we’ve never played a team this good this early… we normally play the 15-36th ranked team around game 5 or 6… not a likely top 5 game 2
we play freshmen and will continue to do so, but if depth allowed it he wouldnt have played freshmen game 2 vs a top 10 team… anyone who has matched early games of ours (and not comping to how teams looked at the end of the season) know new players especially freshmen have defensive lapses …and you see Sampson imploding on the sideline or immediately temporarily pull them lol but it didnt matter those games becuase we were up 20…
jarace seems to be a strong counter point here… look at his minutes… he played 30min+ a game towards the end of the season… but our 1st close game of the year, GAME 9, vs a tourney saint mary, he chose not to play jarace when the game got tight in the end (onnly 19 minutes for the game) and play jwan (who wasnt an offensive player then) and reggie, almost the entire 2nd half together. he also pulled jarace from kent st a few games prior when that game was kinda close too
and the context of the game mattered…ive seen a lot of “try and see” and pull if its not working… it was a 1 possession game most of the game … it was 72-69 with 8 seconds to go… if you put a freshmen in, they defensively lapse for 3 possesion before pulling them, that actually flips the game… the risk reward isnt there
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What is the point of your post?
I didn’t mention the rotation nor did I say Mercy needed to be in it right now.
To say that Mercy is going two give up 4-6 points for every 2 he scores is hyperbolic.
It’s also unfounded.
You can post all the snapshots you want, there is zero shread of evidence in a minuscule sample size to say what you said.
we have the 1st game… in the 1st half when he played and the gaem still mattered, he came in and they immediately went on a run, he finished the 1st half with a -6 +/- , everyone else who played was close to +20 or more… then at the 2nd half there were multiple turnovers directly tied to him when jackson state started presssuring… auburn is on another level than jackson st
if you read the thread i posted youd know im a strong advocate for getting mercy good enough on defense to play and think its vital for the season… but there is evidence that he’d be a liability if he played right now, in a tight game vs a top 10 opponent
im not advocating for him to have played yesterday, im advocating for him to play as much as possible vs the lower end teams so he can starting getting a hang of the rotations and the game start to slow down for him
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Sharp was 3-6 on treys. Coach probably thought it wasn’t the time to throw Mercy to the wolves, which in this case was the Auburn defense
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Mercy will get his min and start working towards taking some from Wilson or Walker.
Playing this type of defense and pressure wasn’t the right time. It may happen next game or Vegas.
I also think TA will start working some into those min when Milo’s isn’t on the court.
Lol@ those who think Lath was a better option to play the pick and roll
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There we go!!!
lol the photo I posted of him was a positive one. Did you read what I put under it.
Just listens to what Pesik says I agree with everything he says. He articulates it better than me.
Gosh this guy is annoying 
@Pollardsvision
Yeah like @pesik has said Lath at best is a down low piece. He can push and not get moved, but bring him out into a pick and roll situation is asking for trouble. If Broome was straight up camping in the post I’d agree, but he was out towards the perimeter where it’s really easy to get Lath lost in space.
McFarland was definitely missed against Auburn. He’s so mobile for a 6’11 guy.
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Not again… no need to crap on another good poster just because they don’t think Mercy is ready to contribute against a top 10 team in GAME 2 of the season. They’ve already given you stats… if you still think he would have ‘saved’ us… then that’s your opinion.
He’s going to be really good here at Houston, but let’s not put some unrealistic expectations on the kid
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It’s crazy how we all thought we were this really deep team… but just losing a rotational big makes this “deep team” feeling go away immediately
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I think the bigger issue there was Francis not being 100% he’s probably our best pick and roll switch guy in the bigs. A healthy Francis probably snuffs out a decent amount of those pick and roll situations.
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Lots of people calling out Francis for his bad defense Saturday.
He was definitely slow on rotations because of his groin. It sucks to see he got me hyped on his first basket over Broome. And he’s one of if not the best defenders in the country. Our defense suffers without him.
Just need to get him healthy. If he’s healthy he’ll bring more offense down low than Tugler. And we’ll actually have 3 bigs to rotate instead of basically 2 this weekend. And because Arceneaux is on a minutes restriction we couldn’t really sub him in to play many minutes as the “4”.
Our team has another level which is exciting because we played Auburn back and forth without Francis and Arceneaux playing as much as they would’ve
But I agree with others that Mercy Miller can really take this team to another level.
I cringed when they showed the bench points for both teams and Auburn had 37 and we had 9. Mylik and Ramon play hard and make winning plays. But they give you virtually no offense against a top 10 team. If Miller can get some serious play time then we’ll actually have an offensive weapon off the bench. The biggest weaknesses we have imo are our lack of a backup point, lack of bench scoring, spacing, lack of a go-to guy or someone who can really create their own shot.
But still very exciting. Imagine Tugler and Arceneaux off the bench along with Miller by season’s end. That’s a really good top 8.
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You have a serious comprehension issue.
And now it’s “yeah, what Pesik says, me too”.
Pesik is a stat head……I would think he would be smart enough to know what an ample sample size actually is……apparently not.
14 minutes in one game does not put a label on a kid…. At least not anyone that has a lick of common sense.
But again, i”ll try one more time to type this like a five year old could understand….my post did not say Mercy has to be on the court, or we would have won had he played….never even insinuated anything close….the initial poster said “EVERY BUCKET MERCY GIVES YOU , HE’S GIVING UP 2 OR 3 ON THE OTHER END”
I said it was hyperbole and was not true.
In his FOURTEEN minutes Mercy scored 7 points on 50% shooting including a 3 ball.
He also had 2 rebounds ( one offensive), an assist and a steal with one turnover.
But according to the post I RESPONDED to, Mercy should have given up FOURTEEN to TWENTY-ONE points during his brief time on the court.
That is what I had an issue with because it is non-sense.
But by all means , the two of you please continue to prove that I am wrong by turning it in to something else….
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