...and we're gettin' there.
- We got exactly what many of us anticipated: Keatts trying to ugly-up the game and keep us out of transition. They were often successful with that, especially in the 1st half (when the zebra crew enabled it) as they fouled our rebounders and grabbed our outlet guys. They were also able to iso and use clock.
- we aided and abetted their efforts with uncharacteristic poor shooting, and for a while fell into their briar patch by forcing shots or not pitching ahead consistently. RJ in particular got frustrated and lost patience and we weren't strong enough with the rock.
- Here comes the good news: We kept everything in hand by continuing our commitment to
defense,... and other than a few blown off-ball coverages, continued it throughout.
- Speaking of D, I'm gonna give a special shout-out to young Mr. Cadeau, who not only avoided foul trouble, absolutely STONED what looked to be layup drives no less than FOUR times in the first half to help keep everything in line.
- also, a nice job of our guys compensating for losing Mando for long stretches (that flagrant call was theatrical BS from a guy who had been throwing cheapies around). JWash hung in there despite being banged around and Ingram decided to take up the rebounding slack.
- We also adjusted to the Burns iso with a variety of doubles when he started way too far out, and then flat wore him out on the other end --- more on that below
- RJ got past his early forces and being fouled often with ZERO trips to the line, still managing 16 on a night with only two double-figure scorers.
- amazingly, we got to the line all of TWO times in the first half, and when they called a travel on Mando when he got tripped on our first Secondary, welp... here we go again. HOWEVER, perhaps there was another half-time lecture, and y'all saw what happened when we actually got some calls on the constant contact.
- The bad news was we had an awful FT shooting night. That's usually deadly in tough road games, so that speaks well to the number we did on the wuffies in the 2nd half.
- Back to RJ, I have noticed in recent weeks more than one ACC team (including us) have been using Tony's "flair cuts" off screen action at the foul line-extended that makes UVA's Guards such a pain. We did that a couple of times early in the 2nd half to get RJ going and boy, did that set up the
coup-de-gras. Once we baited them into chasing RJ off that early action, we started slipping EC up to take the hand-off and put fat-boy into a 20ft ball-screen, then EC and Mando took them to school on P&Rs. IIRC, we ran that action on 4 straight possessions and they didn't defend it once --- game over for all intents and purposes.
- Moment: Cadeau made a hotly contested drive and somehow got up an impossible lob to the rim, but JWash didn't go to the rack for what would have been a dunk --- that comes from still learning to play with a savant PG, and that comes with consistent minutes with him on the floor. 33 minutes tonight and over 20 of those with RJ precurses what we can be,
- Finally, on that note, on a "physical" night when we didn't get to 70, we nonetheless managed a sneaky
33 transition points,. That, along with the sweet X-and-O adjustment mentioned above, was all she wrote, folks.
Anyway, always good to keep things in order and State in their place --- especially AT their place. If we keep playing with this sort of defensive intensity and guys get used to playing together, and eso=pecially with our shiny new PG, well... we might just get there yet...
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