The easy answer is Sharp—“Shot Clock Sharp” proves he can take over. When the shot clock forces him to shoot, he creates great offense. If we can get him to play with that same mindset without the shot clock dictating it, he’d be a legitimate scoring threat.
Terrance has the highest offensive ceiling on the team. He can shoot, post up, drive, and draw fouls—all while being 6’7". If he were more aggressive, he’d be a mismatch nightmare. With confidence and consistency, he could easily be our top scorer this year. Unfortunately, I don’t think that confidence and consistency are coming this season.
Beyond individual players, we need to run better sets. Tugler and Francis are elite lob threats, yet we’ve thrown maybe five lobs all season.
The last three games have exposed a predictable flaw in our offense. When we run a screen for LJ or Uzan at the top of the key with Tugler or J’Wan, both defenders just follow LJ/Uzan and ignore the screener because they know tugler/jwan isn’t a threat to shoot from three. We need better strategies for how we use our screens and more ways to create open shots for Sharp, LJ, and Terrance.
Exactly, staff should have made sure LJ was the only one with the ball in his hands last few possessions…. shoots 97% from the line … Coogs were great , just had ball in wrong hands …and we have to rest Sharpe a few games …
I’m on board with riding a strategy until the other team stops it, but leaning on Roberts too much makes the rest of the offense stagnant if he isn’t passing out regularly. He thought he could take their guys to the hoop and didn’t pass, but he didn’t account for the refs not calling fouls.
Not having the threat of Sharp hitting 3s really hurts, as does his ability to drive the basket and get FTs - we really missed both of those yesterday.
TA is such a threat when he gets the ball in the right situations. I’d like to see them work the ball to him early in the game like they do with J’Wan - I think it would help get him into the game, which is always the challenge.
Road trip to Kansa, short turn around, off to West Virginia, short turnaround. Banged up team vs dangerous Tech team. Bad things happen.
It was not the jerseys.
Team almost pulled off despite that
we should all have the liberty to say our unpopular opinions without being slighted for it… so your take is valid… with that said i dont agree with that at all…
milos has played his role great, 1 missed FT doesn’t doesnt take away all he has done… he is the player i would change the least among all of our players … and on the reverse side mylik averages a total of 1 assist per game on 16mins per game and we want him to run pg?
I’ve been thinking on this one. LJ was hot last night. But we weren’t drawing up plays for him. I think it comes down to LJ not being an alpha. The alpha on this team is J’Wan. I think we will continue to see more of what we saw last night in tight games. J’Wan getting the rock and making a play.
No, but Terrance should be starting until Sharp is 100%, we will need him wholly healthy for the dance. Wilson should be first off the bench to switch for any of the three of Terrance, Cryer, and Uzan.
It’s the same reason Sampso loves LJ—it’s a double-edged sword.
Sampson has said that LJ always makes the smart decision and never forces bad shots. The issue is that against good defenses or in clutch situations, sometimes you have to take a step-back, off-the-dribble three—something LJ has simply chosen not to do this year. I don’t think it’s about him lacking an alpha mentality; if he had good looks, he’d take them without hesitation. The problem is that elite defenses don’t give good looks—someone has to take tough shots, and this team doesn’t have any tough shot-makers. Sasser, Grimes, Mills, Gray would take tough shots whe they needed to
As I mentioned in the OP, I think our dominance has actually hurt us in this regard. We haven’t had the chance to build reps or refine the skillset for tough shot-making because we’ve been blowing teams out. When you’re up by 25 every game, there’s no need to take contested threes—you can just wait for good shots.
That’s why I believe we’ll only rely on the all J’Wan approach for 2-3 more close games. It’s already become predictable, and it’s not complicated to stop. We have to evolve.
At the end of regulation, we ran a pick-and-roll with Uzan and J’Wan—everyone in the arena knew it was going to J’Wan. They doubled him, ignored Uzan, and J’Wan missed. In OT, we ran an iso for J’Wan, and Tech simply doubled J’wan and ignored Tugler, knowing full well Tugler wasn’t going to take the shot. And this was against Tech’s 6’6”/6’8” bigs, where we actually had a size advantage. That J’wan plan is in the scouting reports now
Milos needs to show his defender that he isn’t going to be bullied off the ball. The WVU tape is out there now and the guy guarding Milos yesterday was definitely aware of what happened that 2nd half against WVU. I have faith that Milos will once again rise above the adversity and meet the challenge but it’s completely fair for someone to question right now if Mylik Wilson is making his case for a more prominent role. Nobody wants to say it but at times between the 2nd half of WVU and the game at home against Tech Milos was happy just to pass the ball off without turning the ball over.
I don’t think the leg was the issue—he still shot at great percentages, almost better than when he was fully healthy. The real problem is that everyone else needs to step up. Uzan, Terrance, Sharp, and Tugler all need to be seen as legitimate scoring threats. get spacing threat
Right now, opponents know the ball is going to J’Wan, and they know he isn’t passing out of it. they just crowd the post.That predictability makes us easier to defend.
It ssems like it’s feast or famine with Roberts. One possession he looks unstoppable, the next he’s completely oblivious to the double team and gets stripped. He has to recognize the double sooner and pass out of it sooner and of course the open man must then make them pay.
Every single close game loss in the CKS era (big regular season game or during the tournament) comes down to the same exact thing:
In actual crunch time, we lack the offensive creativity to find that winning shot and we usually lose because of it.
Going down low to Roberts was as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.
I’m NOT saying CKS isn’t an outstanding coach but it wouldn’t hurt to add an elite offensive mind on his staff…especially since next year will be our best incoming class EVER.
Now…Rob Gray was offensively creative. I wonder if he could be an assistant coach here one day.
I agree that the guards that currently get all the playing time are not effective driving guards. However, we have one guard on the team in Miller that fits this bill who can score or dish to our bigs yet he can’t seem to get on the floor. Why? Is his defense that horrific? It seems to me that Miller can bring a new dynamic option to our offense that can break down a defense. How is he going to get better if he sits all the time? It’s worth a shot. What am I missing?
[quote=“pesik, post:7, topic:60542, full:true”]
However, since our guards don’t drive much, a guard-on-big matchup isn’t a major advantage for us, and we don’t have “blow-by” guards.[/quote]