I don’t think it’s as much as you think. Davis plays good on ball D but he’s lousy at getting back on his own misses. He’s basically the poster child for transition baskets the other way on run outs off those ridiculous shots. He’s so similar to Tez in play style it’s scary.
The most important thing we needed to see yesterday
- Thread starter Arizona Knight
- Start date
Only thought is Pike wanted to play him a ton of minutes to see if he could handle it and give his body a taste of what that feels like
This is not directed at you but to those who saw negative only. Not sure if you were in the building but after the first 5-6 minutes were St. John’s got second chance shots of rebounding , Rutgers dominated St. John’s for about 35 minutes until 4 minutes were left in the game. From down 7 to up 14 after the 22-0 run and then maintaining a10 point lead the entire second half.
Most impressively Pitino played his starters the entire second half and every time they tried to cut into the lead, Rutgers kicked it back out to 8 or 10. Even when they got within 2 , Harper scored a few times and kicked it back up to 79-71. So the way I saw the game was very positive. ACE and Dylan were fantastic except Dylan’s last 4 minutes not playing defense or rebounding. Another positive was that we got almost nothing from our 3 returning players , Jeremiah , JMike and Big E. And was still comfortably leading for 30 plus minutes. But PJ and Jordan did a lot of good things and Martini was in foul trouble.
Now the lack of rebounding and the Dylan defense in the last 4 minutes are things that Pike can use to correct so it doesn’t happen that frequently.
I am totally discounting the last 4 minutes as Ace hardly touched the ball and Dylan was in foul trouble and Jeremiah and Jordan made uncharacteristic turnovers.
The overall assessment was we have a team that will be able to compete and we have the 2 best players on the court every night. Pike will fix the deficiencies. There might not be another game all year where ACE and Dylan combine for 3 rebounds.
they did have combined 9 rebounds.....Ace got 4 DREB and Dylan got 2.
Obviously you know the bar isn't to compete. I hope the bar is 20 wins.
I have confidence in Pike, but realize this window is 5 months. The month of November may be the most important month of the year (maybe I am being overdramatic).
As i said this game was a chicken parm sandwich with moldy bread (beginning and end of the game) and a nice piece of chicken with marinara and mozzarella cheese(middle of the game). It's tough for me not to throw out the entire sandwich.
Obviously you know the bar isn't to compete. I hope the bar is 20 wins.
I have confidence in Pike, but realize this window is 5 months. The month of November may be the most important month of the year (maybe I am being overdramatic).
As i said this game was a chicken parm sandwich with moldy bread (beginning and end of the game) and a nice piece of chicken with marinara and mozzarella cheese(middle of the game). It's tough for me not to throw out the entire sandwich.
Most B1G teams aren't going to play with the speed of SJU. They won't be able to keep up with Rutgers scoring and tempo
Every team will be different and have their own set of challenges. When we were winning with defense the mantra was defense always travels. We need to fix it so the opposite isn't true.
I can always look past an outcome when a team has a hot night or we just had a cold night.
SJU made 7-21 3s and 22-34 FTS. We were 18-22 from the line and banked in 2 3 pointers. We also had 11 assists on 29 FGs.
It was 1 exhibition game...I get it. Clearly showed that some nights we will just flat out win because of talent. Pike has a LOT of work to do to get this team to rebound, win loose balls and stay engaged on defense. He always rights the ship, but.....
I was at the game. My takeaways were 1) wow, we are going to win a bunch of games on talent alone and 2) this game was not played to win at the end. Not that we weren't trying to win, but that the lineups/substitutions/minutes distribution will look a lot different in a real game.
Playing a veteran team of upperclassmen in St. John's will help in the long run. I'm sure it showed our young guys how much harder they will need to work against better teams, since the early part of the season should be a bunch of walkovers.
Playing a veteran team of upperclassmen in St. John's will help in the long run. I'm sure it showed our young guys how much harder they will need to work against better teams, since the early part of the season should be a bunch of walkovers.
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