Crosstown Shootout

I'm not even saying this was a moral victory. I'm just saying we're the better team over the whole season. That makes the loss sting even more. A moral victory would be if we played great against a much better team than us but came just short. That's not what happened here.

sedziobs said:

I don't buy that they were better coached. We beat them down the court constantly. They let 6'9 Ody Oguama walk down the lane for a dunk. They didn't make any adjustments to keep Newman out of the lane. They couldn't get anything going inside, rarely doing anything to pull Aziz out of the lane. They got outrebounded and wildly outscored in the paint. They just got bailed out by two hot shooters. You want to give Sean Miller credit for that?

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Yes, good coaches know their players and put them in positions to succeed. Wes does not do that and Sean does. CJ should have plays ran for him, Wes doesn’t. Skillings should limit and 3 or jump shot, Wes doesn’t. Lahkin should not take threes, Wes let’s him. So many things coaches do lead to players success. Sean Miller has that, plus’s all that money he used to spend on player, while Wes just chews gum.

Bcatfollower said:

Yes, good coaches know their players and put them in positions to succeed. Wes does not do that and Sean does. CJ should have plays ran for him, Wes doesn’t. Skillings should limit and 3 or jump shot, Wes doesn’t. Lahkin should not take threes, Wes let’s him. So many things coaches do lead to players success. Sean Miller has that, plus’s all that money he used to spend on player, while Wes just chews gum.

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When the threes aren't falling or the other team makes shots, Xavier loses to Oakland and Delaware. Hoping for hot shooting is not good coaching. Nothing I saw tonight was the result of Sean Miller putting anyone in position to succeed. Sean Miller is not the reason Olivari made 6 threes, some from 30 feet or while being fouled.

UC looked really good tonight. I give Wes a ton of credit. It’s not easy to win at the cintas center (disregard Oakland and Delaware). Only losing by 5 after a couple miracle non contested 3’s should absolutely count as a win for Wes. Xavier was just better. It’s been that way for 30 years- UC fans are used to it now.

Shoot my 28 year old nephew has only seen 8 wins against them.

sedziobs said:

When the threes aren't falling or the other team makes shots, Xavier loses to Oakland and Delaware. Hoping for hot shooting is not good coaching. Nothing I saw tonight was the result of Sean Miller putting anyone in position to succeed. Sean Miller is not the reason Olivari made 6 threes, some from 30 feet or while being fouled.

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So I’m not sure why teams have coaches at all? The shots either fall or they don’t. You don’t think sean miller made adjustments and uc didnt? Is it just a coincidence that Wes’s team never shows up to big games? Looking like Mick 2.0

Kingsley Court said:

UC looked really good tonight. I give Wes a ton of credit. It’s not easy to win at the cintas center (disregard Oakland and Delaware). Only losing by 5 after a couple miracle non contested 3’s should absolutely count as a win for Wes. Xavier was just better. It’s been that way for 30 years- UC fans are used to it now.

Shoot my 28 year old nephew has only seen 8 wins against them.

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Yea lucky we have the crosstown shootout to talk about because UC has not been nationally irrelevant for 50 years and X never has. Been nationally relevant.

sedziobs said:

When the threes aren't falling or the other team makes shots, Xavier loses to Oakland and Delaware. Hoping for hot shooting is not good coaching. Nothing I saw tonight was the result of Sean Miller putting anyone in position to succeed. Sean Miller is not the reason Olivari made 6 threes, some from 30 feet or while being fouled.

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Olivari scored 34 points against Delaware and made 5/10 3s (the team made 8/16), so he clearly entered the game in an offensive rhythm and confident.

Xavier cut down their turnovers from 17 to 8 as well - most assuredly a byproduct of coaching adjustments.

Beyond the stats from last night, what's most concerning is the psychological component that has taken over this rivalry and its effect on the game no matter who's coaching and who's playing.

4 victories over the past 17 match-ups, despite the teams being evenly matched more often than not, shows that there are intangibles in play that have been mastered by Xavier which have allowed them to overperform.

Rivalry aside, I'm worried about this team's ability to keep their bearings away from Fifth Third.

The Howard performance is looking to be less of an anomaly now, and if we lose to Dayton, I'd be very concerned about our ability to compete in the Big 12.

Queens_NYC said:

Olivari scored 34 points against Delaware and made 5/10 3s (the team made 8/16), so he clearly entered the game in an offensive rhythm and confident.

Xavier cut down their turnovers from 17 to 8 as well - most assuredly a byproduct of coaching adjustments.

Beyond the stats from last night, what's most concerning is the psychological component that has taken over this rivalry and its effect on the game no matter who's coaching and who's playing.

4 victories over the past 17 match-ups, despite the teams being evenly matched more often than not, shows that there are intangibles in play that have been mastered by Xavier which have allowed them to overperform.

Rivalry aside, I'm worried about this team's ability to keep their bearings away from Fifth Third.

The Howard performance is looking to be less of an anomaly now, and if we lose to Dayton, I'd be very concerned about our ability to compete in the Big 12.

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I’m concerned as it doesn’t appear Wes prepares for teams. He just puts his guys on the floor and let’s them play. Street ball and let’s the play “free”. How about some dedicated plays for peoples strengths. They never work anything for cj on the perimeter. Jizzles’s and day days mid range jumpers are also concerning.

Bcatfollower said:

So I’m not sure why teams have coaches at all? The shots either fall or they don’t. You don’t think sean miller made adjustments and uc didnt? Is it just a coincidence that Wes’s team never shows up to big games? Looking like Mick 2.0

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We're not playing horse. Over a full season, taking more efficient shots will get you more wins. We have way more big games to go. We'll see if we end up better than Xavier.

Queens_NYC said:

Olivari scored 34 points against Delaware and made 5/10 3s (the team made 8/16), so he clearly entered the game in an offensive rhythm and confident.

Xavier cut down their turnovers from 17 to 8 as well - most assuredly a byproduct of coaching adjustments.

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I've been clear that I think we did a terrible job on Olivari. But even if he repeated his 5/10 performance, we probably win the game. There's more than a 5 point difference difference between 6/8 and 5/10.

sedziobs said:

I think the gameplan needs to focus on Olivari and Ousmani. We need to run Olivari off the 3pt line and be very aggressive on Ousmani, forcing him into a turnover or free throws rather than anything easy at the rim. Let the other guys take their midrange shots.

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I give Wes Miller an F for following my scouting report. Olivari scored zero points inside the arc, 18 from three, and 9 from the free throw line. We played him straight up, doing nothing to run him off the 3pt line and got baited into contact repeatedly. We let Ousmane go 4 for 6 at the rim and didn't put him on the free throw line once and didn't force a single turnover. These are things that are obvious from just looking at basic stats and box scores, and we didn't even try to execute any of them.

Otherwise the defense was pretty good. We held Xavier under 50% at the rim and outrebounded them. But after getting torched on the two biggest keys to the game, we still gave up 1.11 points per possession.

The offensive gameplan was excellent. We converted 21 of 33 at the rim including 5 dunks. Less than a quarter of our attempts came from midrange. We only committed 11 turnovers. Even with a horrible 3pt shooting night, we put up 1.05 points per possession. That's a solid offensive performance that will be enough to win some games against good teams. If we made just an ok 35% from three, we would have scored 1.17 points per possession. That's into top 15 offense territory.

This is not the same Wes Miller offense from the last few years. We're attacking the basket and getting rim looks. Big games aren't all going to look this where we can't hit any threes and a guy on the other side goes off. There will be some where those are reversed and we look elite. It's a long season. I'm still extremely disappointed that we don't seem to come up with individual gameplans tailored to the opponent, but I feel confident about the direction of this team.

sedziobs said:

We're not playing horse. Over a full season, taking more efficient shots will get you more wins. We have way more big games to go. We'll see if we end up better than Xavier.

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Maybe we are talking two different things. I would actually like us to beat x. I’d also like to have a good season, but both isn’t too much to ask. So far Wes can’t get it done in 3 games.

Bcatfollower said:

Maybe we are talking two different things. I would actually like us to beat x. I’d also like to have a good season, but both isn’t too much to ask. So far Wes can’t get it done in 3 games.

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I get it man. I hate Xavier. It sucks even more in years like this when we're the better team and we still can't get a W.

Man it was easy to see from the two X games before this one that they don't stop the drive to the hoop. Whenever Day Day or James was driving it was either a foul or decent look. We could have won it at the FT line if they all just kept going to the bucket.

I still continue to be extermely concerned about Wes' coaching. Fortunately his roster building ability seems to be top notch but will he actually be able to do something with it or just another Josh Pastner? I thought that new asst coach may help but Wes still doesn't show any ability to game plan or take advantage of their strengths. Howard game was same way. We had huge size advantage and they didn't even try to exploit it. Didn't with Xavier either. And all I hear is how good a defensive stopper Newman is yet every team has a guard or wing that seems to explode on us. If he is that good put him on their best player and see if he can shut him down.

It's completely inexcusable to get outclassed yet again by Xavier, especially this year when they are far less talented.

TheLongHaul said:

We had huge size advantage and they didn't even try to exploit it. Didn't with Xavier either.

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We outscored Xavier by 14 at the rim and outrebounded them. We outscored Howard by 24 at the rim and outrebounded them by 12. We dominated both games inside.

We struggled in both games because of three point shooting, which happens to most teams on the road, and I'm not sure what coaching changes would help (on offense). We had a lot of good looks. Fredricks is the kind of player who doesn't even need a good look, but sometimes they just don't fall. Lakhin and Newman are both hitting over 40% on the season, but went a combined 2 for 13 in those road games. But we still put up more than 1.1 points per possession.

Defense is another story. We've got to be better at identifying shooters and making things hard for them. We can't play shooters straight up. Putting Newman on a shooter isn't going to fix it. He's more of a straight up defender who can guard slashers. There are three basic strategies: 1) double team 2) stay on the shooting hand hip rather than in front 3) hedge all screens. All of those encourage passing or driving and limit shooting.

Cronin usually had great gameplans for taking one opponent away, but then we sometimes got burnt by leaving other areas open. "Stop them from scoring" isn't a gameplan. There are tradeoffs with any strategy. Wes seems to be reluctant to give up wide open threes. You rarely see us scramble to open shooters like we often did under Cronin, who was more willing to have secondary players shoot after taking away the primary option. And as a result we don't give up a lot of threes overall (we rank #41 in the country in fewest three point attempts allowed - in Cronin's last year we were #301). Wes likes to play straight up and we've been torched several times now by primary options. Hopefully that changes.

They shot 23 3's against X. 18 against Bryant which isn't a bad number but they could have scored at will in the paint and it didn't even seem like they tried.

They over commit on defense and that leaves them in bad position or chasing non-stop. Good teams will make you pay. Why not switch on screens? This team is very easy to spread out and penetrate.d