Post defense and rebounding

[Viper]

Clark DNP last night. At this point of a lost season, get him some minutes. He's 1.5 yrs with the program. Is he not capable of even 10-12 mins of D and boards?

[BM1090]

Clark DNP last night. At this point of a lost season, get him some minutes. He's 1.5 yrs with the program. Is he not capable of even 10-12 mins of D and boards?

Yeah that made no sense to me. With Caedin being Caedin, Ben injured, and us getting bullied inside, seemed like a good chance to get him out there for ten minutes.

[panda]

Last season's downward spiral began when Stevie got banged up (surgery), Chase injured his thumb (surgery), and Ben's injuries (shin splints, broken finger) stacked up. 

For fun, name all of the MU teams over the years that have been successful with average guard play but really good post play. 

MU, like all teams, needs good guard play and enough versatile players up front.  It is possible to win a lot with merely adequate play up front if the guards are good enough.  It is nearly impossible to win with average guard play. 

So, if there are no more departures and therefore only room for one player to come in, I want a guard with size and experience playing point.

It actually started with horrible roster construction exasperating the issues above

[Mu8891]

Good questions ^

Why the heck would Clark not play ?
More bungling from Shaka.

[WhiteTrash]

Good questions ^

Why the heck would Clark not play ?
More bungling from Shaka.

Maybe he's told Shaka that he is leaving?

[Jay Bee]

Going to get there brains beat in

Hopefully not so bad such that they'd be unable to figure out there/their/they're usage.

[MU82]

well good luck going forward then in the Big East. Going to get there brains beat in with the front court they have now.

We won the Big East regular-season and tournament titles just 3 years ago with a mediocre-at-best rebounding team. And no real rim protector, either.

[Newsdreams]

We won the Big East regular-season and tournament titles just 3 years ago with a mediocre-at-best rebounding team. And no real rim protector, either.

Facts no matta

[Big Papi]

The number 1 issue right now is not having adequate bigs.  A shot blocker, a rebounder, a scorer down low.  Gold banging down low at the 5 is an adequate defender but his body is not meant to bang down low consistently with bigger guys.  That's why he has these nagging injuries.

Our defending is awful because we don't have a legit 5 shot blocking defender to mask our perimeter defending mistakes. 

Our offense stagnated against Depaul because we couldn't stop Depaul from scoring so no transition offense and our half-court offense this year is abysmal.  We made our run late in the game when we made stops.  The first half scoring spree by both teams was due to bad defending by all. 

This is a circle of bad starts with not having legit 5s.  That is the number 1 issue.

Clark has shown an ability to block shots down low and his height does cause some problems.  He should be consistently getting 15-20 minutes a game from here on out.  The best of the bad.  Shaka needs to solve this problem next year otherwise it will be as bad or worse next year.

[muwarrior69]

good post Connie. 10 of the 14 scholarship players are freshman and sophomore's. Difficult to win with that mix especially when your upperclassman aren't producing

Actually it is 9 of 14 scholarship players are underclassmen and two of them are redshirts and one upperclassmen is no longer on the team. It is not just difficult it is what you would expect.

[WellsstreetWanderer]

We won the Big East regular-season and tournament titles just 3 years ago with a mediocre-at-best rebounding team. And no real rim protector, either.
[/]
Wasn't it that Mississippi guy who owned the rim that burst our bubble? He owned the paint as I recall. With good guard play we still need someone who can own territory under the rim

[drbob]

I don't understand why people refuse to acknowledge the obvious. The lack of a proficient front court has been our achilles heel for the last 3 years. Kolek was right if he told Shaka we needed to get a big man in the portal. Oso would have made a better 4 . With a solid big who could score and rebound inside and rim protect that team would
 have been final 4 material. Look at the past UConn teams, also Creighton. I for one get tired of seeing us manhandled inside while also not having any post scoring.  Like playing 4 on 5 . Aircraftcarrier is correct.