...and good grief.
I dunno if I have the energy to write much after that craziness, but here goes:
- I'll start with this: When I loolked up late and RJ had 30 points, that had to be the quietest 30 ever (prolly got lost in the surrounding clunkiness) but lemme tell ya, he got noisy at a good time with big 3s to keep Miami at bay on the way to a career game of 42 for the soon-to-be ACCPOY.
- RJ also had some big hustle plays, running down his FT miss to keep a key possession alive
- Speaking of that, despite an awful offensive outing, and some bad TOs, Ingram got key boards and again, kept a missed FT alive late when things were sketchy late
- Unfortunately, those previous points raise the ugliness of our FT shooting --- yikes! Let's not do that again.
- Speaking of bad outings, Cormac must've felt guilty about scorching UVA. Oof.
- On that note, Cormac's struggles opened more minutes for Seth with some good D on #7
- As for Miami, YGTBFKM with those 3s, including those fugly heaves from their Big. C'mon man. 2/3 of their first half points were 3s.
- Speaking of Bigs, there's no overstating how strong Mando's inside D was. Also, we basically took away their paint game, despite their usual phalanx of moving screens.
- OMG, I lost count at over a dozen blown finishes close for us, over half in transition (!). Too many forces, but mostly just failure to finish thru Miami's constant contact. Hell, we blew 9 dimes (6 close) from Eliot alone.
- Hafta to call out the staff on this one --- we did not handle their late pressure for two reasons: 1) losing continuity in personnel and mostly 2) not adjusting to Miami running level-2 traps --- In other words, we were abandoning our Press-O after the first inbound trap, but they were hitting us again right before half court, and we had no outlet. Granted, most teams don't do that anymore in the 30 sec era, but we have Dean's best-ever Press Offense at our disposal, which is based on counter-rotating to always show 1-3-1 spacing to the ball, which means there should ALWAYS be a reversal back-outlet until you cross the time line. By giving that up too soon, we played right into their hands. That first 10 second violation wasn't EC's fault, and even Ingram's bone-headed hesitation TO could've been avoided by one more iteration of team rotation. Need to get that cleaned up in practice, lest we see it again!
- Before I forget, BIG shoutout to Withers for contributions in both halves, including helping seal it late with a big offensive board and actually making 2 FT's
- Finally, since I call him out (when he often deserves it), credit where it's due to TV Teddy. He was the best zebra on the floor tonight, often making correct calls when his colleagues (cough, cough, Groover, cough) were ignoring them right in front of him.
Anyway, I'll ALWAYS take a win, but sheesh... seems like we can't have nice thing (like a blowout). Got a hungry State bunch coming in, so need a good week of productive practice. Meanwhile, I suppose the #1 ESPN story will be poor delicate Flopowski's "soreness" level...
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