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Queens_NYC

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Jan 8, 2017
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Saturday, November 27th, 2021
2:00 PM
Fifth Third Arena
ESPN+

Thought it was odd to see this team on schedule. This is our first ever meeting.

Come to learn that their coach, King Rice, was a former UNC captain (like Miller), and also interviewed for the open UNC position last spring.

Now for the jaw dropper...

For the first and only time in Division 1 this season, two siblings will face off with one coaching and the other playing.

6'11 Walker Miller is a former UNC walk-on and now the starting center for Monmouth as a grad transfer. He's Wes Miller's younger brother and averages 15 & 8 per game so far.

Bearcats are favored by 11.
 
Queens_NYC said:
Saturday, November 27th, 2021
2:00 PM
Fifth Third Arena
ESPN+

Thought it was odd to see this team on schedule. This is our first ever meeting.

Come to learn that their coach, King Rice, was a former UNC captain (like Miller), and also interviewed for the open UNC position last spring.

Now for the jaw dropper...

For the first and only time in Division 1 this season, two siblings will face off with one coaching and the other playing.

6'11 Walker Miller is a former UNC walk-on and now the starting center for Monmouth as a grad transfer. He's Wes Miller's younger brother and averages 15 & 8 per game so far.

Bearcats are favored by 11.
Click to expand...

How does Wes have 7ft brother??
 
Any word on what happened to Newman? He's on the bench in a suit, so must be some sort of injury.
 
For how much bigger we were, our rebounding wasn't great either. We were around 30% offensive rebound percentage, while they were around 25% OR%. It seems to be the theme under Miller, good to great defense and we don't turn the ball over. But our half court offense sucks and if they other team can avoid giving us fast break points and make some tough shots (or run good offense), we are in trouble. We also don't rebound nearly as well as we should given our size.
 
skyblade said:
For how much bigger we were, our rebounding wasn't great either. We were around 30% offensive rebound percentage, while they were around 25% OR%. It seems to be the theme under Miller, good to great defense and we don't turn the ball over. But our half court offense sucks and if they other team can avoid giving us fast break points and make some tough shots (or run good offense), we are in trouble. We also don't rebound nearly as well as we should given our size.
Click to expand...

Agree. But to be fair we have a team full of mid major players, with the exception of DDJ, ody, and lahkin. So I’m not surprised we aren’t good this year.
 
Bcatfollower said:
Agree. But to be fair we have a team full of mid major players, with the exception of DDJ, ody, and lahkin. So I’m not surprised we aren’t good this year.
Click to expand...

We have plenty of high major level players, the problem isn't we don't have many (if any) guys who would be one of the top guys on a high major team. We've got a bunch of guys who would be the third to sixth best player on most teams. Even Lakhin and Ody aren't great right now, they have the potential, but it's quite possible they won't reach it this year.

It also seems like we don't have a Gary Clark or Tre Scott (or Tari Eason) type who just wants the ball more and grabs key rebounds. This is the second straight game when we needed a defensive rebound after the other team missed with under a minute left and we did not get it. Our guys don't box out well and they don't crash the glass all that well.

Monmouth shot 45.3% from the field, our defense isn't consistently all that good at FG% defense either. We've had some really good games, but we've had quite a few where teams have shot well against us from the field.

What we do really well is harass the guy with the ball and force TO's. We also don't turn it over ourselves. That will keep us in a lot of games, but we need to shoot better, make our FG's and/or rebound it better to win games.
 
TheLivingLegend said:
We take so many bad shots...

This game was a major disappointment.
Click to expand...

I did not get to see the game. But we have been taking 3 balls way too fast in the clock (in other games) and many of those are on the move. If we clean up the ill advised shots we should get better at making them. I can appreciate Miller letting it fly but when it's not working we have to start dialing it back. We can get a bad 3 ball up at any point in the shot clock.

I did get to see a few plays of the game early on and watched JD take a running 3 ball from the top of the key. We got the rebound for a good kick out for Mason who missed but his was a good set shot.
 
Seems to me like pairing Ody with Lakhin would be a useful pairing at 4 and 5. They are tops on the team in rebounding per 40 minutes (by a good margin) and also well ahead of the other bigs in scoring per 40 (about double). Put JD at the 3 to keep shooting on the floor and help rebound as well. DD and MAW to round it out.

Then bring in your subs as needed. Mikey, Ado, Newman, Koval and MM etc etc.
 
Ody and Lakhin have to play more... And frankly... We need to run sets through Vik in the post. He has an ability to score.

Jd takes some insanely bad shots, along with Newman. It needs to be addressed.

Mason is in some sort of slump. Not sure how to get out of it... But this team needs him making shots.

All and all I think the last two games where incredibly disappointing. Lack of rebounding. Lack of good sets on offense. Way to much iso ball...

And on top of it all our coach didn't know what was on the clock to end the game.

Just a disaster. I expect better.
 
TheLivingLegend said:
Ody and Lakhin have to play more... And frankly... We need to run sets through Vik in the post. He has an ability to score.

Jd takes some insanely bad shots, along with Newman. It needs to be addressed.

Mason is in some sort of slump. Not sure how to get out of it... But this team needs him making shots.

All and all I think the last two games where incredibly disappointing. Lack of rebounding. Lack of good sets on offense. Way to much iso ball...

And on top of it all our coach didn't know what was on the clock to end the game.

Just a disaster. I expect better.
Click to expand...

I agree with your fist points. But Mason isn’t in a slump, his 3 % wasn’t good last year either. He may get hot but it doesn’t justify jacking up 7 3’s and making 1.
 
I'd say bad shot selection is more of a symptom of our overall bad offense than it is a main problem.

The problem is we don't run good offense. The ball doesn't move quickly, we rarely have a series of crisp passes. Instead it's pass, guy spends a couple second with the ball (probing his defender) while the defense resets and then passes it off. We don't have much of an interior game, sometimes Ody/Lakhin can create something, but Ado/Koval don't do much so teams don't have to worry about us pounding it inside. Eventually someone either forces up a three or tries to drive to the basket.

This game, some of our best offense was an objectively a bad shot (DDJ step back long two). Our lack of weapons on offense on the interior and from three makes it easy for teams to guard us. Our lack of good passing makes it even easier. There's a lot that needs fixed, not just one thing. Not sure how much that will happen this year, but let's hope Miller can do something.

I expect us to be a bad shooting team all year and take our fair share of bad shots. We can still win games though, if we defend at a high level (which we do more often than not), rebound it well on both ends (we don't, but we should be able to), force TO's and avoid TO's (which we do very well).
 

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