I've always been a pretty optimistic Scooper, but now that duanewade has pulled a 180 and turned into the most optimistic Scooper in history ... here are a few of my concerns now that last night's game has settled in ...
SIUE beating the press occasionally didn't bother me as much as it did some of y'all. We forced a crap-ton of turnovers, many after SIUE seemingly beat the press and got into the frontcourt. Those happen because the press sped up their entire team. That's one of the benefits of pressing. There will always be some dunks and layups against it; it's a high-risk, high-reward gambit. It takes time to perfect a press, and I'd have been surprised if it had worked much better than it did in Game 1 of the Shaka Era.
To me, the most disappointing things from last night were the rebounding and half-court defense.
Our bigs (and others) repeatedly failed to box out, which led to quite a few of their fouls. Lots of watching and/or reaching for the ball, rather than putting a body on a man and blocking out. And all game long, SIUE players got past MU defenders, and a huge percentage of the fouls were committed by guys who were on the side of the men they were supposed to be defending (rather than in front of them). I was surprised how often even Morsell was caught playing to the side of his man, but it wasn't just him. OMP was out of position much of the night. Kolek. Justin. It was up and down the lineup. SIUE also executed quite a few inbounds plays against us that got them good looks and seemed to catch our guys napping. The basket at the end of the first half was disappointing. The notion that Kuath is gonna be miles and miles better than Theo ... we'll see about that; he wasn't very impressive last night.
All of us know offense is gonna be a struggle this season. I thought that given Shaka's emphasis on defense, those basic defensive/rebounding fundamentals would have been a little further along. I certainly didn't expect to have so much trouble boxing out and staying in front of players from the basketball powerhouse that is SIUE.
There are plenty of offensive concerns, obviously. You have to hit 3s in today's basketball and the jury is out on whether the skill is there in this group. Not sure how many guys are gonna be able to create in the halfcourt, either. Kolek ... he did a nice job, especially in the first half, but I'll be real curious to see how much he can create for himself and others against P6 guards. Also quite concerned about MU's ability to take care of the ball late in close games against good opponents; will we be able to finish off teams both by not turning it over and by hitting FTs?
It was the first game. Shaka has a very imperfect win he can use to teach off of, a situation that lots of coaches actually like. As the year goes on and the guys get to know each other and get to know Shaka's system, I expect lots of improvement. Sometimes, we'll really be able to notice the improvement from one game to the next. Sometimes, it'll be more like a one-step-forward-two-steps-back thing. There will be a lot of ugly basketball. Hopefully, a lot of good basketball as the season progresses.
A few minutes ago, I bought tickets for NMD for me, my wife, my son and three Class of '82 buddies. Hopefully by Feb. 26, Shaka will have Marquette kickin' butt and takin' prisoners!
