Truck is the key because the rest of the team is essentially a known quantity. KJ's good for the double-double. Kilicli is good for half a dozen turnovers and 6-8 pts. Hinds will have a great steal one possesion and trail a cutting guard on D for an easy bucket the next. He'll hit a big shot and then throw up an airball. Gary Brown will drible too much and turn the ball over a couple of times but might give you offense when nothing else is working. Then there's Truck. Defenses have packed in the middle with a zone against KJ and taken advantage of Kilicli's poor hands. That leaves the perimeter a little susceptible to the three. When Truck's on, defenses have to come out to guard him, opening up the middle for the bigs. When he's not, they can focus on rebounding long balls which helps negate KJ's biggest advantage. This has been so much the case, we we're able to get by Providence despite KJs worst shooting effort in at least a year and a half.
Defensively, I can see them working on the changes. Teams look for a switching mismatch. This usually comes against one of the guards, Truck, Hinds or Brown. Unfortunately, Truck can make a 3 man look like an all american in the paint (reference Providence).
While I'll on D, hopefully someone is telling Kilicli he doesn't need to flash all the way out to half court on the screens. Teams will take advantage of his slow feet getting back to the paint!!.
Tonight Notre Dame is going to try to work over our guards on the perimeter with a lot of 3 point shots. Adkins and Grant are both shooting roughly 35-40%. They'll both take about 5 3-point shots a game and ND as a team averages 6-7 3-pointers a game. Beyond that, they're pretty balanced. All 5 starters are at or near double figures. They'll try to find the weak spot on our D and exploit it. They're not hiding anyone on offense.
We have to hold home court. Say we can beat Depaul and USF. At least we'll be favored in those games.
That leaves home and away against ND. Pitt on the road and Louisville and Marquette at home. We'll need 2 wins against the this group to make it to 20. 3 of them are home games. That makes tonights game very important.
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Additional notes.
Gary Brown also gets lost on D too often. (but hell so does truck).
If Kilicli is going to show that high, they need to trap off of it. Not a bad idea to try every now and then.
We couldn't stop anyone off the dribble against Prov. It was the worst man defense I've ever seen under Huggs. The switching was helpful, but I would agree that ND will expose us if we switch that much tonight.
It was hard for KJ to get rebounds against Providence as they shot +60% most of the game. (finished 51%) He's still a huge favorite for POY.
ND, Pitt, and USF are suddenly big games left on the schedule. It seemed like the competitive bubble teams were behind us in our schedule. But ND and Pitt have clearly put themselves in the running and while USF's performance against Georgetown makes them a longshot, a victory over us and a few more could give them an edge. I still only see 7 teams making it and Seton Hall is starting to look like they're a favorite for missing. It's definitely become more muddled than it had been.
A win tonight would certainly give me a lot of confidence in our chances, but I haven't seen much to praise in a couple of weeks. We'll see.
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