Weaknesses Exposed

Well, so I'm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, swaying back and forth in my cabin, when I realize that the Illini game may be on TV. Big mistake. If I didn't already want to vomit, I pretty much had to after I flipped it on and saw that we were down by 18. Ouch. Actually, after I turned on the TV, we didn't really play that bad. We got down by 21, and then actually made a 12-0 run, and cut it to 9. But, they turned it up on defense, and we weren't able to really stop them on D (since we were gunning for turnovers at that point, and didn't have time to try to just lock down). They brought it back up to 17, and we made another run to get it to 10. But that was about it. Ran out of time.

From what I saw, it was the same story. We didn't play our two bigs together, and we have problems with this three guard lineup on defense. Ohio St. spread us out, and we weren't able to recover quickly enough, and they got open looks. And apparently, they shot the lights out in the first half (which I missed).

So, my question is this... when do we force other teams to deal with both of our bigs and force Auggie to extend out on D? Teams are comfortable only running one post player on us, and we counter with running 3 guards. Only, it puts us in a bad situation on our offensive end. Perhaps we should force Auggie to defend out there, consequences be damned, so that we can run our best offensive lineup out there.

Of course, if Randle were even a 30% shooter from 3, we'd be just fine. But he shoots 21%. And even that number seems high. Which is strange, because his stroke doesn't look like it should be that bad. Last year, we'd run Powell at the 4 often, and he wouldn't hurt us at all on the offensive end. He was an adequate shooter from outside, and could work in the post at times. This year, all we get out of Randle is the hustle points from loose balls, follow ups, and the occasional dribble penetration. And why don't we try to punish teams for running small lineups out there against us? I don't know.

We'll see if we can get anything figured out.

-Chairman