Iowa State and AZ might both end up as 1 seeds. Kansas is at least a 3 or a 4 seed. This is a 3 game stretch that could be replicated as an elite 8, final 4, and Championship game stretch. That’s rough. But we can adjust and Sampson has shown the ability to do so
Agreed…don’t need to try and reinvent the wheel here…just be better. The good news is, we’ve seen BETTER from Uzan (and others), so, the precedent is there to be hopeful of a turnaround.
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Uzan problems are ongoing.
He cannot get around his defender.
Dribbles endlessly as a result
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Great point Jayram. High altitude games played back to back make an impact.
IMO, not having a big inside with back to the basket and scoring, will be a huge weakness in the Dance. I had high hopes for JoJo developing into this type of player.
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Our 4 main opponents for The Big 12 Title this season are Tx Tech,Arizona, Kansas, and Iowa St.
We are 1-4 against them.
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1-1 at home, 0-3 on the road.
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Seems to me defenders are coming out farther from the basket on our guards because there is no threat we will drop a pass inside. It is a constant weave outside the arc and a high pick with no roll action so still no inside threat or reason to defend the paint. When we shoot a high number of 3s the rebounds come off harder so there aren’t many easy put backs either and can lead to breaks the other way.
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I thought J’wan Roberts eventually developed into that “back-to-the-basket” player. He had a credible baby hook that opponents had to account for as offense. Recall last year, there were many games down the stretch that Sampson specifically ran a play to Roberts to start the game, to show the opponent the baby hook. Tugler’s baby hook has largerly been ineffective, and mostly ugly to watch.
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Sampson put all his chips on tugler and its back fire badly.
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We have had problems with setting screens because we have been getting so many fouls called on us. Our guards usually get loose off screens.
We do miss J’wan and Francis.
The puzzling thing is why our shooting has been so bad the last few games. It’s the whole team. They can’t even score near the basket. Is it fatigue? I would understand why one player’s shooting would be off, but it’s the whole team. It’s not just the other team’s defense. We are missing wide open shots near the basket.
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I too am a proponent of increasing our rebounds to get our edge back. With that being said having Cenac, Flemdawg, and Mercy on the court with whomever delivers a much needed infusion of boards. I would have said a couple of weeks ago that Harwell would be that guy. But he just seems off. Maybe his injury. The problem is the offensive rebounds. Sahko is getting shoved around. And if Jojo commits another foul 16 ft from the basket I’m going to scream.
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Thank you for a good analysis. A few comments: - We are in too many half court sets, running the clock down and forcing up a single shot as the time expires. - We have too many occasions where a quick pass is fumbled because the ‘passee’ is not paying attention. - At the start of the Kansas game we had four players underneath and rebounding. We were up and playing like the Cougars of old. What happened? Why did we stop? We are not a half court set team. We are a rebound the miss and reset team., or rebound the other teams’ miss and convert that. Just my two cents.
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Nailed it. This is exactly what I’m seeing offensively and it is a big problem if we don’t do something about it.
I’m surprised Cenac doesn’t Pick and Pop but that still wouldn’t force anything inside
We have thoroughly reviewed the problems.
Mostly we did not replace Roberts/Francis.
And we see that replacing Uzan with Flemings means Uzan takes the Cryer role.
But Uzan is not Cryer. Indeed he mostly cannot get past his defender and ends up endlessly dribbling.
Easy to analyze. Our Coaches see it. But do not correct it.
I think Miller should replace Uzan because he can get past his defender and take it to the paint.
Uzan becomes our sixth man. He can spell either Moller or Flemings.
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Uzan’s regression is disappointing but not surprising to anyone who has played basketball before. Sometimes you just don’t mesh with a player (especially if they’re fairly ball dominant like Flemings) so you don’t get the ball when and where you like it as much, etc. Uzan is clearly not as comfortable in this offense as he was last year when Cryer (who played way more off ball) was the other main guy in the back court. He’s been forced to play mostly the spot up shooter role and he’s just not as good at that (I also wonder if him playing off ball has made him more passive overall. I don’t hardly ever see him trying to drive the ball to the hoop anymore.)
I also wonder how the decision process went to essentially replace Francis with Sakho. Was he our primary target? Did we have other guys we wanted in the portal we whiffed on? Did we simply not have enough money to get someone better? Francis was underratedly competent on offense and surely the coaches saw the film and knew Sakho didn’t have 10% of Francis’s coordination and offensive ability. He’s been a little better defensively lately but hard not to count him as a big whiff almost on par with Dunn.
The pick at the top of the key is not working. Teams are ignoring our big men and not switching. They’re basically doubling the guard the whole time and ignoring the roll from the center.
I wish we would do what we did when we played Auburn in the tournament several years ago. We put Tramon Mark around the free-throw line, and we killed them doing that with his short-range jump shot.
I don’t know why we can’t make the defense honest and try something different instead of just trying to dribble around the double team.
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Cenac can hit shots from the top of the key.
Why isn’t he there, with Tugler down low for rebounds and putbacks?
Baffling!
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