I haven’t seen it mentioned but we played down the stretch without a true 5. What were your thoughts and do u expect a lot more of this?
Small ball
- Thread starter djrc89
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I think that was due to PSU going small. If Ace can rebound like he did yesterday, that may work but most teams will have bigs on the floor vs RU and they will have to defend that.
I do love line ups with Ace, Dylan, 1 defender (Derkack/JWill), 2 shooters (Hayes, Acuff, Martini) on the floor.
i think it was what cowbell said....
He did go without a true 5 for a lot of the 2nd half against Notre dame.
Will be interesting to see how things shake out....in the past the 5 he trusted to be on the floor was actually Martini.....will he start to trust Ogbole or Sommerville closing out games?
Ace handled the rebounding well and he is much more likely to turn offensive rebounds into points than our bugs. Having said that, as mentioned above, PS facilitated that by going small, we also struggled defensively against the PS smaller lineup
And Indiana, with its 2 bigs.
Maryland with its 2 bigs.
I'd have to think about other Big Ten teams with 1 really good big: Purdue? Who else? I am not sure Bailey can defend against a true big post player ... he is really a pure WF, offensively and defensively.
That is the thing the Big 10 has a number of teams that play with 2 bigs like Michigan , where Ogbole will have to guard Goldin and Somerville will as well and ACE will guard Wolf. Indiana with E guarding Ballo and Lathan as well with Ace guarding Renaeau . Minnesota plays 2 bigs. UCLA sometimes plays 2 bigs.
Only with teams that don’t rely on a post up threat will ACE at the 5 with small ball be used.
Interesting last night , Penn State was getting great production from their center Konan with double figures plus blocks but he was held to 4 points as we did a good job on him and he got in foul trouble. So Penn State had not been playing small ball until last night.
If we could create more turnovers with our 5-out lineup it would help us keep them on the floor even against opposing bigs and make up for the lack of rebounding.
Good points. And as you (and Pike) said, EO and LS really played well defensively, last night against Konan (Niederhauser - was confused when they were calling him Niederhauser, but his jersey said Konan - if he likes being called Niederhauser, why not put that on the jersey?).
His last name is Konan Niederhauser. Too much to put on a jersey, so they just put Konan on it at Northern Illinois, and it carried over to PSU (which he said works for him).
There is no way Bailey can cover Reneau, or Reese/Queen ... maybe Wolf (I think he is the more outside-in , stretch 4 - or Goldin - whoever IS the stretch 4) in the post ... he is just too skinny and not powerful enough. He would get completely pushed around. It will be interesting to see how Pikiell coaches that.
If teams want to go small against RU, that plays into our hands
