Who Will Protect This House?

We will, we will.

We have a new intro before our basketball games. It adds the familiar Under Armour chant to what we had last year with Ali screaming "The Champ is here!"

My statements about this team still stand. At the start of the season, I figured on a Sweet 16 team. After our non-conference run, I was thinking Elite 8, maybe Final Four. And now, after we held serve against Michigan St.? No changes. Still Elite 8, maybe Final Four. We didn't find out anything new on the positive side, really.

Our defense is good. But we already knew that. You've seen me harp on this before. No one has cracked 65 on us. And Michigan St., who normally scores in the mid 80's was held to 50. Yikes. We force teams to do two things that most teams don't do well. One, they need to pass well at all 5 spots. You can't have some guy who can't make an effective pass, otherwise, we recover too quickly, and you have to work again. Very few teams can do that well. We saw that Michigan St. just couldn't take advantage the situations where they had us out of position. If you can't move the ball smoothly, forget about it. And if they happen to get a look going toward the hole, you may have Auggie flying at you to block your shot. The second thing, is that we force teams to make outside shots. Our defense is effective because the only open shots that we give up tend to be from outside. If you can't make open 3's on us, forget about it. Michigan St. had their share of open shots from the outside. They just didn't hit any of them, because they're not good shooters (just like the last 4 years, at least). We didn't give the ball away, so they didn't have transition opportunities. And we get back so well off of our own misses, than the few transition attempts they had got challenged. Interestingly, I think that teams that try to slow it down on us are doomed. Teams that waste 15 seconds on offense will only have 20 seconds to get a shot on us. We're so good that it's often on the third or fourth cycle through before you get a look on us. And 20 seconds just isn't enough time when you have to reset.

What was nice to find out is that we can still do this to a really athletic, talented team. I'm not sure if we can do this to a team that's as athletic as Michigan St. and really smart on the floor. And I hope that we don't have to find out.

Where this game actually gave me some questions was the holes that we had on offense.

Jamar Smith was taken out of the game, entirely, by Drew Neitzel. Up until this point, we hadn't faced a team that was able to have enough defenders to put someone legitimately pesky on Jamar. Most teams only have one real defender, and he would go on Dee. Michigan St. had the ability to put Shannon Brown on Dee (former HS teammates, no relation), and have Neitzel chase Jamar around the court. End result? Jamar only got one shot, a missed (though it looked on-line) three pointer. The thing is, if he can't get it going on offense, he's not good enough of a defender to keep in there against stronger players (like Michigan St. had). For the first time that I can really remember, Jamar was a non-factor when we actually needed his offense.

Auggie lost his confidence in the post. In the first half, he was fighting for position and getting the ball in great position. Problem is, he went off and was called for 4 travels early on (anyone who was watching on TV - were these legit calls?), and was clearly frustrated (and close to getting T'eed up). In the second half, he was content to be a high screener, rather than really fight in the post. In fact, none of our bigs really demanded the ball consistently. Pruitt did on a couple occasions, but it wasn't consistent throughout the game, and Marcus Arnold was a zero factor that game (and looked like he may have been a little gimpy). And oddly enough, Warren Carter only got one shot off. We just had nothing inside.

I was actually OK with how Rich played. He was in the flow of the offense, and even created his own shot once (nice little head fake outside, 2 dribbles toward the free throw line, buried a 18 footer). Where I am very concerned is with Randle. His range stops at 14 feet. Maybe. He's got no confidence in his shot right now. He's not taking makeable shots, and when he is forced to shoot (shot clock running down), he just chucks it up there with a resigned look on his face. Not good. His buckets need to come by breaking down defenders off the dribble. Which he can do to most 3's. But not with teams that run a smaller man at him. I haven't seen him work the post, but that may be where he needs to work to get some points.

Here's the deal. Teams that only have one scorer don't win championships. They can scare the daylights out of teams, but it's hard to win 4 consecutive games against good teams with only once scorer. Dee may be able to average 12 out of 22 per game over a season, but it's hard to do it 4 games in a row. There's bound to be one off game in there. If if no one else is used to coming up big, you'll end up with a tough loss. And we know that. We'll learn from this game. I think that we'll find more ways to get Jamar open. And we'll get to the point where our bigs will keep fighting for position (and get the ball). And Randle can't really keep shooting this badly (can he?). The question is always do the other teams learn to play us, or do we identify our weaknesses before that happens?

My prediction still stands. This team will have a legit shot to make a run in March. We're not as talented or dominant as last year, but we may be just as effective. Up next? At Iowa. Always a tough game, but we should be better. We'll see.

-Chairman