Agreed on both counts. Lane is way too sped up on offense. IMO, the lack of production at the four is a little overstated. It is hard to get a ton of defensive boards when you are chasing smaller wings around the perimeter. And it's hard to score when the ball goes to the five so much and seldom comes out. In 39 minutes between them, Felder and Fudge combined for 2-8 from the field, with 11 boards and 2 turnovers. It's not like they were taking a high volume of shots or making bad decisions, and they certainly weren't getting beat on the boards by smaller guys. They just missed some bunnies--like pretty much everyone on the team. They shot worse than the team overall from 2 (25% against 35%), but also didn't have many opportunities. That's why Golden made the comment about not dunking the ball when we had the chance. I was more concerned about their ball screen mistakes.
I just rewatched the FAU game. The biggest problem was on defense. FAU did not make a single contested 3-point shot. They made plenty of open 3’s. The Gators’ help defense on screens was horrendous, especially from the bigs. Fudge was lazy on defense. We played straight up man defense with no full or half court pressure until the last 4 or so minutes of the game. CC clearly was exhausted down the stretch of the game, and it affected his defense. Lofton and CC played a little too much of a 2-man game even though they were effective. Kugel is a really good passer. He needs to play more. JJ played well and needs to play more. Bonham needs to play more. Jones still has the rainbow shot and hasn’t looked good. I am counting on TG to make the right adjustments.
I love Bomham’s defensive aggression, guy was a one man wrecking crew causing steals on D (box score gave him 2, but it felt like he had 5) - but he needs to stop dribbling into no man’s land on offense!
Bling, I understand how you feel on Bonham dribbling into trouble. I’m torn between which is worse right now, that, or settling for a three-point shot that we likely won’t hit, and because everyone is on the perimeter, we have a low percentage chance of getting an offensive rebound. At least he’s trying to get into the paint. I kept thinking in the first half, “ is there a rule that says we can’t step into a part of the floor painted garnet?”
Golden texted me to let me know that he read my post above at halftime of the FSU game and made my suggested adjustments. He pointed out that he failed to play Kugel in the second half because he didn’t notice that I suggested Kugel play more. He pointed out that if I post using multiple paragraphs, he will catch all of my suggestions. Golden also said that he wants to use my game plans going forward along with any suggested changes that I think should be made for the second half of each game. He also is willing to pay me, but I told him that winning games will be enough compensation.
Right there. You just said it. Reminds me of the old media question: "Mr. X, when are going to stop beating your wife?" Hard to answer.
Lol. We have only signed one guy for the class. As you saw last year, he found Kugel and brought in a ton of highly regarded transfers. You don't sign good high school classes without a couple of years working on these prospects. I suspect we land a couple more in spring after the usual merry-go-round of coaching turnover gets some guys to open up again. We are in a ton of Atlanta kids right now for 2024 and following.
