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What will be the outcome?

  • UC wins by 9+

    Votes: 8 25.0%
  • UC wins by 5-8

    Votes: 12 37.5%
  • UC wins by 1-4

    Votes: 8 25.0%
  • Houston wins by 1-4

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Houston wins by 5+

    Votes: 2 6.3%

  • Total voters
    32
I think we might be way better than a lot of teams. Just need the guys to play like it.

Also, it looked like Mick took the reigns off the offense a little on the road. Sure we didn't shoot great but we had flow and good passing. Houston's slow pace kept the possessions down.

Yeah I wasn't tempted to gripe about the pace at all. Maybe when Caupain was on the bench in the 1st half when we hit a lull but it is what it is on that front.
 
The good:

That was a tremendous defensive effort. Everyone played well. It is easy to dismiss it as simply Houston sucking, but that is a team that has been very good on offense this year. They forced Houston to do what it didn't want to do, which is exactly what you want to do.

Washington played well in the second half, but the guards get credit for looking for him, after ignoring him in the first half. The team took very few bad perimeter shots.

The bad:

Free throw shooting is just terrible. KJ is pretty much the only one who feels trustworthy at the line, along with maybe Evans.

They really struggled to finish around the basket, excepting Washington in the 2nd half. Clark, who has been their best finisher, missed a couple he normally makes. Caupain missed an easy one. KJ seemed to get embarassed by Nkali every time he got anywhere near the rim.

The rebounding was not very good late in the game, after being solid most of the way. The entire late-game strategy seems questionable, although shortening the game when you have a lead and a great defense is not, in a theoretical sense, a terrible idea. It just seems to make them lose focus on offense.
 
13 pts, 6 rebs, 5 Assists, 0 TOs for Mr. Caupain. That's getting it done. (if his free throw shooting was better it would've been a perfect game for him)
 
Have to keep getting better but I really like how hard this taem plays. In my mind we really haven't played near as good and we can. We have a shot to be a really good team by years end.
 
The Marshall game seems more and more like a blessing in disguise.

yep.

I was a guy who didn't understand people wanting us to play more Man to man in the preseason. I just thought how could it be better than what the matchup is giving us.

man was I wrong. Our Matchup zone is mean, but our Man to man is even better. And I think we rebound better out of it
 
Almost guessing we drop in Kenpom after this game.


Our Defense will rise but our offense will fall I would guess.

We're not gonna drop overall for winning a game by 9 when he projected us to win by 1 unless other teams around us had massive blowouts against quality competition.
 
yep.

I was a guy who didn't understand people wanting us to play more Man to man in the preseason. I just thought how could it be better than what the matchup is giving us.

man was I wrong. Our Matchup zone is mean, but our Man to man is even better. And I think we rebound better out of it

I love being right! :)
 
Coach Cronin says we're an A+ in team chemistry and the guys being focused on winning.

Says we played tonight like we believed in ourselves and believed we're the better team.
 
yep.

I was a guy who didn't understand people wanting us to play more Man to man in the preseason. I just thought how could it be better than what the matchup is giving us.

man was I wrong. Our Matchup zone is mean, but our Man to man is even better. And I think we rebound better out of it

When some combination of Scott/Clark/KJ/Evans/Cumberland/Caupain are on the floor,they can switch screens in the m2m with confidence, regardless of the matchup. Washington & Brooks can get into trouble when they have to switch on a guard, but they can trap those and have enough length/quickness elsewhere to rotate and close out.

Personnel wise, this team is much better suited to playing an NBA-style "modern" man-to-man defense with aggressive switching than any Cronin has had.
 
Tonight was the full Kyle Washington experience, from the awkward shots that go in, to being an unstoppable force for stretches and following it up with questionable shot selection.

Was good to see him in attack mode though and show confidence. His rebounding was pretty solid too.

Also think this was arguably the teams best performance of the year. That's a quality win in a game they led by 8+ points the majority of the game.

Thank god we mostly played man.
 
Tonight was the full Kyle Washington experience, from the awkward shots that go in, to being an unstoppable force for stretches and following it up with questionable shot selection.

Was good to see him in attack mode though and show confidence. His rebounding was pretty solid too.

Also think this was arguably the teams best performance of the year. That's a quality win in a game they led by 8+ points the majority of the game.

Thank god we mostly played man.
Kyle's points were the difference tonight. They got us the separation early in the second half.

We all focus on this team's offense - with good reason - because we're used to being good defensively. However, I think we have under appreciated how good this team is defensively. And as others have noted, our man defense is better than our zone - which is saying something.

If we can get past SMU on Thursday, we could run away with the conference (which we should).

Go Cats!
 
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