The pomp and circumstance for Sunday’s game was awesome and I enjoyed it immensely. Didn’t hurt that a buddy won an auction for court side seats and invited me to go. I also really enjoyed closing Hofheinz with a 22 point win. What I wasn’t so pumped up about was our complete inability to recognize how open the rolling center was on the pick-n-roll for the entire freaking game! Maybe it’s because Kyle Meyer can’t jump very high, or our guards aren’t confident enough to lob the ball up for an alley-oop. We ran the pick and roll to perfection exactly one time when Rob lobbed the ball to Nkali for the oop. Every other time the wide open roll man was either ignored or the ball was thrown at his feet. It would have been great if Sampson had pulled Meyer out and let Chicken or Nkali run the PNR with Galen or Rob the entire game until ECU figured out how to stop it. It had the potential of being a dunk fest like Harden and Capela.
Did anyone else notice this? Was there some kind of defensive shift someone with a better view point saw that I missed. Surely they weren’t intimidated by Washington who, while being very tall, was basically a big fat zero in the lane for ECU. It was so frustrating that we weren’t even trying to finish the PNR. Why even roll that guy to the basket if you’re not going to pass it to him when he’s open.
As a side note, I felt so bad for Dot. He’s such a great shooter and just couldn’t buy a bucket until the very end. I’m glad our guys kept feeding it to him though. He deserved to knock down that final 3 in the Hof. Hopefully he got that bad shooting out of his system and will back to form for the tourney.
Meyer has horrible hands and can’t finish at the rim. Opponents leave him open because of this. Even when he has the confidence to attempt to finish, he gets his shots blocked at the rim way too easily. That’s if he can catch the ball at all. He’s good at the top of the key as a passer and can bring some hustle at times, but he’s a microcosm of Sampson’s lack of recruiting any decent big men thus far. The only reason he plays is because he’s 6-10 and weighs in around 230 pounds. We NEED to get better inside if we ever hope on not only contending, but making serious noise in the NCAA’s.
100% agree with this assessment of Meyer. But Chicken and Nkali are much better finishers at the rim. Why not try the PNR more often with them? I honestly can’t tell if this problem was caused by lack of recognition by the coaching staff, players or simple lack of ability to execute. I have to believe if they are running this play in games that they are practicing it in practice as well.
Doesn’t look like we have much size in the middle coming in next year unless Sampson can find us another Juco center. So hopefully Valentine can be that guy next year. Otherwise, we’re going to have to beat teams by raining 3s on them.
As good as Sampson is at drawing up plays, it is not a problem of recognition. They ran it earlier in the game to Meyer who appeared to have an easy bucket but got it blocked at the rim. Bert is a good candidate for that play and he played well yesterday. The dribbler also has to have the space to get the pass off and generally will have the other team’s tallest player in his face. The rolling center is usually open but I think it is a combo of the defense, the smaller size of the UH guards and the current personnel on the roster much more than a recognition item. I give the coaching staff much more credit than that.
Speaking of Kyle Meyer, his biggest problem is defense of rebounding against SMU & Cincy. Like another poster said, his hands must be small and he can’t jump at all.
I wish we had another year or two of Nkali because the size post defense is mostly there with him and the offense got somewhat better from year 1 to 2. But even if we had those years (we don’t) the ceiling I’m thinking of is 7-8 ppg and 5-6 rpg. Not exactly amazing stuff.
Nkali was a much better rim protector than Meyer too. I would have been a lot more forgiving of Meyer’s offensive shortcomings if he was at least a good rebounder and defender. Unfortunately, he just didn’t add much of anything out there.
There are so many different ways to defend the PNR; it depends on what kind of threat the ball handler is and what kind of threat the roller is. Teams will then pick and choose what method they are going to use.