...and great plays pull wins out of the fire.
Granted, for several reasons, the "fire" shouldn't have been quite that hot, but perhaps taking their cookies over there like that is more fun. OK, some stuff:
- Start right here - Keatts set out to ugly this one up with "physical" play from the tip, and with the passive acquiesence of Groover and his crew they did just that. So, question was, were we gonna be tough enough?
- They certainly beat us up on the boards early on, grabbing friggin 12 Offensive Rebs in the 1st half
. The saving grace was we kept fighting on D and limited the damage from that deficit to only 4 2nd-chance pts. The other good news was we got tougher on the boards after intermission, limiting them to 4 Offensive --- and those were mostly from half-assed one-handed rebound attempts on our part (Lubin, after getting some grown-man boards in the 1st half, was guilty of the one-handed stuff twice in the 2nd) --- and we actually ended up outrebounding them for the night. Not by much, but given our size situation, I will sure as hell take it!
- Credit where it's due to the wuffies. They played with a level of intensity that said they were trying to make this thing a rivalry again. They also scouted us very well. It drove me crazy that we kept accepting switches that ended up with #8 (Taylor) on our smallest Guards, and he was then able shot over them. They also scouted our fade-screen action and shut it down, but fortunately EC would counter by finding Jackson a click later (after Ian would continue to the corner) on cross-court dimes (those backhanded no-looks are just plain sick, BTW). IIRC, Ian made 5 3s and 4 of them came from improvs off that initial action.
- Our scrappiness (along with them selling out to the offensive glass) rewarded us with some sweet Fast Breaks. Drake executed a perfect "bust-out" and dime early on. Seth ain't quite himself on either end just yet (following what I'm told was a bad concussion), but he took revenge early in the 2nd half with a tough steal and run-out, and JWash triggered a classic Break at a key point in the 2nd half with a man-sized Block (that official number of 3 Blocks seems a but light, TBH).
- Man, there were times I thought we were about to be snake-bit. Hubert called a needed Timeout under 3:00 and the bench drew up a beautiful play that ended with RJ feeding a wide-open Jackson under the basket, and then our best finisher misses the damn bunny --- arrgh!... but alas, those things happen. Before that Eliot had 2 TOs, albeit both of which enabled by zebra whistle-swallowing --- Wash got held by Middlebrooks just as EC let go of the lob pass, and then EC suffered a damn take-down from #10, but of course, no whistles.
- Fortunately, those two guys stepped up in crunch-time with a Batman-and-Robin act on both ends:
One final note on the last play --- when State called timeout to set up their last play, I said out loud, "I'll bet he's gonna try to get that switch again to get EC or RJ picking up Taylor". Welp, sure enough. But, not only was JWash there to protect the rim, EC defended it spot-on moving his feet without fouling. Truth be known, I doubt if that shot would've even gotten over the rim, but JWash mooted that question (and hey, got to taunt the wuffie fans a bit to boot)!
Anyway, I'll refrain from complaining about the things we should be doing (fixing the Secondary, ditching the 5-out, et al) and just enjoy a HARD-FOUGHT win over a determined opponent in a notoriously hostile environment. Good on ya, fellas!...
Granted, for several reasons, the "fire" shouldn't have been quite that hot, but perhaps taking their cookies over there like that is more fun. OK, some stuff:
- Start right here - Keatts set out to ugly this one up with "physical" play from the tip, and with the passive acquiesence of Groover and his crew they did just that. So, question was, were we gonna be tough enough?
- They certainly beat us up on the boards early on, grabbing friggin 12 Offensive Rebs in the 1st half
. The saving grace was we kept fighting on D and limited the damage from that deficit to only 4 2nd-chance pts. The other good news was we got tougher on the boards after intermission, limiting them to 4 Offensive --- and those were mostly from half-assed one-handed rebound attempts on our part (Lubin, after getting some grown-man boards in the 1st half, was guilty of the one-handed stuff twice in the 2nd) --- and we actually ended up outrebounding them for the night. Not by much, but given our size situation, I will sure as hell take it!- Credit where it's due to the wuffies. They played with a level of intensity that said they were trying to make this thing a rivalry again. They also scouted us very well. It drove me crazy that we kept accepting switches that ended up with #8 (Taylor) on our smallest Guards, and he was then able shot over them. They also scouted our fade-screen action and shut it down, but fortunately EC would counter by finding Jackson a click later (after Ian would continue to the corner) on cross-court dimes (those backhanded no-looks are just plain sick, BTW). IIRC, Ian made 5 3s and 4 of them came from improvs off that initial action.
- Our scrappiness (along with them selling out to the offensive glass) rewarded us with some sweet Fast Breaks. Drake executed a perfect "bust-out" and dime early on. Seth ain't quite himself on either end just yet (following what I'm told was a bad concussion), but he took revenge early in the 2nd half with a tough steal and run-out, and JWash triggered a classic Break at a key point in the 2nd half with a man-sized Block (that official number of 3 Blocks seems a but light, TBH).
- Man, there were times I thought we were about to be snake-bit. Hubert called a needed Timeout under 3:00 and the bench drew up a beautiful play that ended with RJ feeding a wide-open Jackson under the basket, and then our best finisher misses the damn bunny --- arrgh!... but alas, those things happen. Before that Eliot had 2 TOs, albeit both of which enabled by zebra whistle-swallowing --- Wash got held by Middlebrooks just as EC let go of the lob pass, and then EC suffered a damn take-down from #10, but of course, no whistles.
- Fortunately, those two guys stepped up in crunch-time with a Batman-and-Robin act on both ends:
One final note on the last play --- when State called timeout to set up their last play, I said out loud, "I'll bet he's gonna try to get that switch again to get EC or RJ picking up Taylor". Welp, sure enough. But, not only was JWash there to protect the rim, EC defended it spot-on moving his feet without fouling. Truth be known, I doubt if that shot would've even gotten over the rim, but JWash mooted that question (and hey, got to taunt the wuffie fans a bit to boot)!
Anyway, I'll refrain from complaining about the things we should be doing (fixing the Secondary, ditching the 5-out, et al) and just enjoy a HARD-FOUGHT win over a determined opponent in a notoriously hostile environment. Good on ya, fellas!...
