Lots of progress this year, but, tonight, he has been brutal on both ends of the court. Hope it is a learning experience for him and he continues to mature and grow. He is such a likeable kid but tonight has just been awful for him.
Well there is a talent gap.
Just sayin.
Huge talent gap. I am sure he is a nice kid, but he can't hold the pass or make a shot from 3 to 4 feet. Gardner is 10x better offensively and showed tonight against great opposition.
Chris one of those McDonald's players, the kind that eat there.
Quote from: nyg on March 25, 2011, 08:07:24 PM
Huge talent gap. I am sure he is a nice kid, but he can't hold the pass or make a shot from 3 to 4 feet. Gardner is 10x better offensively and showed tonight against great opposition.
He is fine playing against smaller players. he is completely lost tonight.
O'Toule has improved a ton but he is not a big program guy.
Quote from: 79Warrior on March 25, 2011, 08:09:51 PM
He is fine playing against smaller players. he is completely lost tonight.
+1. Chris really struggles against guys his size or bigger...something to focus on in the off-season.
There will be better days.
Due to his disability, he will never be an offensive force. He does well defensively.
He's come a long way in 2 1/2 years of healthy practice time....excited to see if he can take it to another level with 2 more years of practice..
Agree there are some physical limitations there though.
I give Chris props on making huge strides in only his second season (first complete season) of playing D1 basketball. Yes he was 0-4 tonight but he did grab 8 boards (4 offensive) and had 2 blocks against one of the longest and most talented front courts in the country.
Also why are you ragging on Chris when our star junior guard was 2-9 with 7 points and had 4 turnovers??
Otule is a back up. If the people cannot see that, then I feel sorry. nothing against the guy, that is what he is. gardner is the future. Spare me the raves.
Otule didn't have a great game, but the passes into him were absolutely ATROCIOUS!! The kind of passes a varsity girls team would make! AWFUL! I'd say it was honestly 70 percent bad passes and 30 percent Chris needing to go get them. Terrible!
I still like Chris, by the way!
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:21:05 PM
Otule didn't have a great game, but the passes into him were absolutely ATROCIOUS!! The kind of passes a varsity girls team would make! AWFUL! I'd say it was honestly 70 percent bad passes and 30 percent Chris needing to go get them. Terrible!
I still like Chris, by the way!
I absolutely agree. Crowder may be the worst passer I have ever seen.
Quote from: wadesworld on March 25, 2011, 10:22:57 PM
I absolutely agree. Crowder may be the worst passer I have ever seen.
Crowder and Buycks can both be lazy passers. Today, it was exposed. The lazy entry pass allowed Zeller to poke it away.
Watching OSU right now and noticing that any time Sullinger is ANYwhere near the basket, he's elevating over the rim and attempting a dunk.
I'm not dumb enough to think that Otule is that athletic but he IS 6'11. He tended way too often this year to try fadeaways or 3 foot bankers or fallaways when he needs to realize he can be a better dunker than a shooter and try more often to elevate and attempt to hammer it home.
At the very least he'll draw more fouls than getting facialized.
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:21:05 PM
Otule didn't have a great game, but the passes into him were absolutely ATROCIOUS!! The kind of passes a varsity girls team would make! AWFUL! I'd say it was honestly 70 percent bad passes and 30 percent Chris needing to go get them. Terrible!
I still like Chris, by the way!
Yep, those are risky entry passes and given Otule's poor conversation rate it's not worth trying to get him the ball.
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:21:05 PM
Otule didn't have a great game, but the passes into him were absolutely ATROCIOUS!! The kind of passes a varsity girls team would make! AWFUL! I'd say it was honestly 70 percent bad passes and 30 percent Chris needing to go get them.
The passes to Otule are awful because he can't catch a hard bounce pass or chest pass. The lob is the only pass he can catch. UNC had that figured out before the game started so they overplayed the lob but we kept doing it again and again. Even when he did manage to receive the pass he was totally ineffective. I like the kid as a defensive stopper, but we need him out of the low post and not clogging the lane with extra defenders when he is in there.
Quote from: CTWarrior on March 25, 2011, 10:55:37 PM
The passes to Otule are awful because he can't catch a hard bounce pass or chest pass. The lob is the only pass he can catch. UNC had that figured out before the game started so they overplayed the lob but we kept doing it again and again. Even when he did manage to receive the pass he was totally ineffective. I like the kid as a defensive stopper, but we need him out of the low post and not clogging the lane with extra defenders when he is in there.
I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong. Otule wouldn't have made a difference, but the passing into Chris (and Davante) was TERRIBLE!! He needs to go get the ball, but those passes were lazy, soft and without intent.
North Carolina is going to win it all, by the way.
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:59:24 PM
North Carolina is going to win it all, by the way.
Losing to Kansas in the Finals. Called it from day 1.
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:59:24 PM
I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong. Otule wouldn't have made a difference, but the passing into Chris (and Davante) was TERRIBLE!! He needs to go get the ball, but those passes were lazy, soft and without intent.
North Carolina is going to win it all, by the way.
Guess the bounce pass for post entry is a lost art on our guys. Somebody (Blue, Cadougan, etc.) please develop an up top fake then step over to deliver a low hard bounce pass to the post.
Yeah, Otule had a rough game tonight, but I thought it was all about pace. You spend a year+ teaching him how to be a more traditional, (not in the BS white shooter sense of the word) back to the basket big man: play with his back to the basket, use his length on a traditional help defense, etc. Then you speed the game up tremendously, have him match up with one of the most athletic up and down big men in the country, and try to make him get up and down without utilizing that traditional positioning and of course he's going to have his problems.
Thought he busted his ass, but Zeller is a totally unique player thats next to impossible to scheme or simulate in practice.
Quote from: wadesworld on March 25, 2011, 11:09:57 PM
Losing to Kansas in the Finals. Called it from day 1.
Go Jayhawks
Quote from: Jacks DC on March 25, 2011, 10:51:08 PM
Yep, those are risky entry passes and given Otule's poor conversation rate it's not worth trying to get him the ball.
Put down the bottle!
Chris was hardly the problem tonight. You could just as easily jump on DJO and Buycks. As a team we had 18 TOs and only 8 assists, 5 from Junior. We were 2-16 from 3. This was a team loss and a coaching loss. But let's admit we're further than almost anyone predicted. It ended poorly but the season was hardly a failure.
Quote from: Goose on March 25, 2011, 08:11:06 PM
O'Toule has improved a ton but he is not a big program guy.
stupid comment.
Quote from: Stone Cold on March 25, 2011, 11:22:04 PM
Guess the bounce pass for post entry is a lost art on our guys. Somebody (Blue, Cadougan, etc.) please develop an up top fake then step over to deliver a low hard bounce pass to the post.
Crowder, Buycks, DJO ... all tried the bounce pass. Unfortunately, they threw it soft and UNC was able to get around Chris to poke it away. Passing was a weakness of this team all season.
Quote from: CTWarrior on March 25, 2011, 10:55:37 PM
The passes to Otule are awful because he can't catch a hard bounce pass or chest pass. The lob is the only pass he can catch. UNC had that figured out before the game started so they overplayed the lob but we kept doing it again and again. Even when he did manage to receive the pass he was totally ineffective. I like the kid as a defensive stopper, but we need him out of the low post and not clogging the lane with extra defenders when he is in there.
Not to belabor the point, but I think this is way off base. It's 80-90% the passer's fault. On several plays, Chris had his defender sealed, but the pass was thrown so poorly that it allowed the defender to recover. A proper pass (yes...a lob would be the proper pass) in those instances would have resulted in Chris completely sealing his guy off and a dropstep to the rim for a dunk. Instead, the passes were slow, telegraphed and to the wrong side of Chris's body (the side where the defender was sealed off).
Of course, this didn't occur every time, but on 3-4 occasions it was very obvious.
OT...but some bold predictions here :)
Quote from: PuertoRicanNightmare on March 25, 2011, 10:59:24 PM
North Carolina is going to win it all, by the way.
They're going to have to pick it up to even have a chance against Kentucky...
Quote from: wadesworld on March 25, 2011, 11:09:57 PM
Losing to Kansas in the Finals. Called it from day 1.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on March 25, 2011, 11:57:19 PM
Go Jayhawks
Whoops! Go VCU! I haven't been predicting them to win anything (even their first game), but really proud of them. Who wouldn't like to root for them (and who wants to play them at this point)?!
Otule's strenght is defense. He should not have been the focus of the offense against North Carolina. The only way we could have beat North Carolina was to be making threes. Buzz's game plan was wrong. He was to worried about fast breaks off of missed threes and decided we needed to go inside as much as possible. That game plan took away any chance we had of winning. I love Buzz, but the way I see it his game plan led directly to us being routed.
Quote from: bilsu on March 27, 2011, 05:57:48 PM
Otule's strenght is defense. He should not have been the focus of the offense against North Carolina. The only way we could have beat North Carolina was to be making threes. Buzz's game plan was wrong. He was to worried about fast breaks off of missed threes and decided we needed to go inside as much as possible. That game plan took away any chance we had of winning. I love Buzz, but the way I see it his game plan led directly to us being routed.
I think he fell into the trap of wanting to slow down UNC and their transition points. Slow down isn't our game, and it actually suits UNC just fine because it gives them more opportunities to create turnovers. I definitely feel that our focus on slowing them directly contributed to the loss. That's okay, Buzz is young. Live and learn.
Quote from: ATL MU Warrior on March 26, 2011, 12:00:48 PM
Not to belabor the point, but I think this is way off base. It's 80-90% the passer's fault. On several plays, Chris had his defender sealed, but the pass was thrown so poorly that it allowed the defender to recover. A proper pass (yes...a lob would be the proper pass) in those instances would have resulted in Chris completely sealing his guy off and a dropstep to the rim for a dunk. Instead, the passes were slow, telegraphed and to the wrong side of Chris's body (the side where the defender was sealed off).
Of course, this didn't occur every time, but on 3-4 occasions it was very obvious.
I agree the passes stunk. My main point is that it is very hard to throw passes to Otule in the low post because the only pass he can catch with any consistency is a telegraphed lob. Against a good team with a big, mobile defender, the odds of us making that near perfect lob pass, Otule catching it, and then Otule making an offensive move that results in 2 points is so unlikely as to not be worth the effort. We wasted far too much time on this doomed strategy in the first half and paid dearly for it.
Quote from: rocky_warrior on March 27, 2011, 04:40:00 PM
Whoops! Go VCU! I haven't been predicting them to win anything (even their first game), but really proud of them. Who wouldn't like to root for them (and who wants to play them at this point)?!
Me neither - I actually had the winner of VCU-USC in the Sweet 16... until VCU actually won that game. Then I went back and changed it because I thought VCU was that bad. Shows what I know.
Agree, Brew. Slowdown play is lousy - remember last 6 min. vs. LVille.
Quote from: karavotsos on March 26, 2011, 01:09:20 AM
stupid comment.
Couldn't even get through the first word before proving that, too.
Learn how to throw him the ball inside, none of Zeller's steals were Chris's fault.
lazy stinkin passes.
Quote from: Brewtown Andy on March 28, 2011, 08:35:16 AM
Couldn't even get through the first word before proving that, too.
+1.. look around
Quote from: mileskishnish72 on March 28, 2011, 07:05:25 AM
Agree, Brew. Slowdown play is lousy - remember last 6 min. vs. LVille.
Part of the problem too was that our transition defense was lousy. No matter how many guys we had to defend them, it seemed like every play UNC made in transition ended in a backboard-shattering dunk.
Reminded me of Merritt vs. Brendan Haywood in 2001, OTule played better then Merritt did in that game versus UNC, but was still eaten alive.
Quote from: MUMac on March 25, 2011, 10:25:58 PM
Crowder and Buycks can both be lazy passers. Today, it was exposed. The lazy entry pass allowed Zeller to poke it away.
Not really, Note you have to telegraph everything to help Otule even catch the ball, sometimes this carrys over to their passes to Gardner as well..