Drake

[Jason94]

It is late, but in the post-thanksgiving reflection, I wanted to discuss the Drake game. One drawback of using kenpom to look at teams is that it lacks context for players who did not play D1 ball in the previous season. While this usually applies to freshmen, in the case of the Drake game it very much applied to the DII transfers that CBM brought over with him when he took the Drake job. So while Drake had a bunch of new players from the previous season, they did have the benefit of four of their starters having not only played together previously, but also under CBM. The difference was apparent as Drake was poised even as we were able to turn them over, and even as the game was played closer to the pace we prefer, it was us rather than them that came unraveled.

The other story was the complete domination on the boards. Drake had more offensive rebounds than we did defensive boards, and had more defensive rebounds than we did rebounds in total. Drake did not shoot poorly and still ended up with 13 offensive rebounds, which more than compensated for their 20 TO's. They did a great job of sharing the basketball, something that we had been good at up until this game, while we played a lot of one on one or one on two basketball when the pressure really went up.

Edwards shot the ball well and was our only player in double figures, but IMO he did not have a good game, and was out of control on several possessions, and ended up with a team high 5 TO's. Tanner and Huffman were probably our two best players in the Drake game, but not enough other players joined them.

Carey and McGlockton were pretty ineffective, and we are going to really struggle if Carey plays 21 minutes and gives us 0 points and 2 rebounds while Drake's main post ends up with 18 and 11.

This is probably the first game where a team really got us making bad decisions for much of the night. Probably the bad side of a lot of freedom is that at times players will make bad decisions, and there were a lot of them in that game.

The good news is that outside of that loss we played very well and Drake is clearly a lot better than the preseason 133 ranking that kenpom gave them. Whether they have enough depth to make a run in the BE to make the tournament is not clear, but they will be a very tough out because they are quite experienced, and unlike us, have a lot of familiarity with eachother and the coach/system.

The bad news is that we have a bit of work to do to be able to keep up with good teams that have a good amount of returning talent, and that unfortunately describes a large portion of the SEC. Drake exposed my fears of having such a new roster all trying to learn both eachother and a new coach, but I thought we would have seen that sooner than game 7.

Overall the Charleston tournament has to be considered a success, though not as wild as it might have been had we been able to pull out the Drake win. However, it was probably a bit of a wake up call for the team and one that was probably better delivered earlier than later in the season.

[dore74]

The rebound difference was glaring and it wasn’t against a more athletic or over sized team. I was just as concerned by our frenetic pace, especially as things were going downhill in the second half.

After today’s Tech game I got the sense we tried to stay more in control. Rebounding, against a lesser team, was still a concern, however.

Gotta say this team is fun to watch. Havent enjoyed VU hoops in that manner in too long a time. I like the style of play, the neat combinations on offense and intensity on defense. Hopefully playing together as the season progresses will enable us to minimize our deficits.