There is so much going wrong that we look worse than what talent is on the floor. We have failed in so many ways :
1) Our offense has to swing the ball and get Cliff the ball on the block. Cliff has to be instructed that if he doesn’t have the angle , then his guards and forwards have to move around the three point line and make them easier for him to find. Also, used to see it all the time and see it with Edey a lot , first pass from the wing doesn’t give Edey an angle , he dishes it back and then send it back to him in a better position. I have not seen 1 guard do that once this year and Paul used to do it often.
2) You run high pick and roll and guys have to be moving , Cliff has to roll , Gavin or Hyatt have to move to make it easier for the guards to hit them , Mag can then cut and crash the boards on a secondary cut if the PNR does not work.
3) Our guards have to get the ball to Hyatt, Gavin , or even Derek or Noah in their shooting pocket up high without having to bend or hesitate.
4) Hyatt especially has to be ready to shoot and Noah as well. They are open for a split second . Let it fly . Their hesitation has killed us and Hyatt was especially bad yesterday. He hesitated 3 times where he should have let it fly and drove instead and got fouled once and 2 times a turnover or threw up a bad shot. That has to end.
5) the stat I heard yesterday was ridiculous and it is all mental with our players. We are shooting 61.5% at the foul line at home making us the worst team in the country and shooting 78.5% on the road , which would make us top 10 in the country. That is almost impossible. Yesterday , it reared its ugly head. As we were having our pathetic first half offensively we were 5-12 but also missed the front ends of 1 and 1’s on three occasions. That is 10 points we left on the board in the first half and we were down 12 at half. We also had the field goal drought at that time which made it worse.
6) We have to shoot more 3’s and those threes have to set up better . Granted we are missing a ton of wide open threes , everybody , Hyatt, Gavin , Noah , Derek , Mag , JMike but we do not shoot enough of them off of screens, double screens , moving without the ball and better passing by our guards. You cannot win today hitting 3-4 threes a game and only taking 10-12 .We have to play inside out and when we get an offensive rebound , we do not have to go back up with it considering how bad we are around the rim , but look to kick out , which is the best time to shoot the three.
7) Pike has done a bad job coaching . Now some say the players are not good so he can only do so much. But you cannot be doing the substitutions he has been doing because he is not maximizing the abilities of his players. He pulls his starters too quickly , he doesn’t allow any continuity with almost his entire roster. Cliff’s least productive season is partially on Cliff but part on Pike. That is the biggest reason we are struggling so much. Cliff was expected to have 15-20 points a night with 10 plus rebounds and blocks and altering shots. We have gotten only the blocks and alterations of shots. We cannot have 5 and 6 point games out of Cliff. Part of that is Cliff and a good part is the horrific job our guards have done of passing him the ball. Pike not having Cliff pass out of the post and play inside out is also a bad coaching job. He hasn’t demanded it. Because if it was done then when the shot goes up , Cliff is in position for the offensive rebound and put back , something he has done his previous 3 years but hardly at all this year.
8) Pikiell is so obsessed with defense , kinda like Greene , that he has so little pin downs and staggered and double screens in his offense. You have 3 legitimate 3 point threats , Hyatt, Gavin and Noah. They have all failed miserably with the 3’s they have taken in the isolation offense with the exception of 1 game from Noah ( 5-5 against Wisconsin) . Gavin if he is at 28 feet but open thinks he should launch and he has probably made 10% of those . But Hyatt or Gavin in some pin downs instead of just standing in the corner with get us better 3 point attempts .
We should not be as bad as we look and the Penn State and Maryland home games were 2 of the worst in the last 5 years. We have played 1 good offensive game at home against Wisconsin. The play at the RAC has been dismal , worse than on the road offensively at least , and that has to be figured out.
