baconus66 wrote:Sometimes when you watch on TV you can't always tell which players lead a team to victory because it's often based on things that don't show up on stats. I can tell you from being at the game last night that we won because of PJC. His leadership and decision making was evident throughout, but especially in the second half. Ya it was Northern Colorado but you can only play the opponent in front of you and he had a TJ like game (beautiful vision and passing, not great scoring but got it done when needed, and a strange number of rebounds that he stole from people 6-12 inches taller than him)
Yeah, he was the difference between a comfortable win vs someone having to step up and nail some big shots late against that zone. Strength of competition is something you have to take with a grain of salt sometimes and last night was one of those times. The zone may not have been Syracuse in March good, but to us it was. We were probably better off playing most of the top 10 defensive man-to-man teams in the country last night, rather than facing last night's zone. The results would have been better. He completely "TJ'd" us to a victory. He adjusted, to me, that was the thing that brought the biggest smile to my face. He probed once and saw, ok, this is the chink in the armor, and then didn't get away from that. And when he probed, he made the right decisions, when to go up strong, when to pull up and hit the floater, and when to dish. He had several huge boards in traffic like you said; a couple of really nice ball pest plays (the tie up, a near steal that lead to a shot clock violation to keep the crowd momentum up), and he hit his free throws. He needed to see he does not have to wait for an "on" game where he knocks down 3 or 4 threes to have a big impact on a game.
My only gripe from the 2nd half was there were a few times in transition where he slowed things down. We were struggling to score and he had two other finishers on either side, vs three Northern Colorado defenders who were still recovering. You gotta keep pushing there, they showed they can play zone D, now make them prove they can play good transition D. Instead, he backed it up and allowed for not only Northern Colorado's other two defenders to get back on D, he gave them time to all get to the right spots and set their zone. More frequently, we may not have had numbers, but he lolly gagged the ball up the court off a rebound and again allowed their whole team to get back and set their zone. If it's 4-on-4 because both centers are still in the back court trying to recover, that is an advantage because they cant play their zone with 4 men.