Saturday, March 29, 2008

Helpless


i'm a total bitch for posting this, because i thoroughly enjoyed jumping on the bandwagon of my favorite basketball team as if they had solved any and all offensive problems after a miserable loss at Duke. But it turns out that they really never changed, and that their ability to run an offense and play team defense was only
as imposing as their conference counterparts allowed it to be.
They still run the swing offense.
Despite having superior athletic talent, the swing looked like the inferior system. It made a huge difference that they (davidson) shot the lights out of course, but still, let there be no illusion to the fact that the swing is easily defendable by even the slightest of capable, athletic opponents.
No matter how athletic our recruits get, and no matter how disciplined our system may be run, I seriously doubt that the swing will ever be dominant in an NCAA tournament setting.
Hopefully someday soon I will be proven wrong, but this year's team was the best badger basketball team I had ever seen and I am not going to hold my breath waiting for another group to prove the swing more accomplished and athletic than it is. We need to be more diverse. We need to be more athletic. As much as it pains me to say, Hubert Davis was right. We need to score more points.

1 comment:

Mr.Man said...

Right. And who's the most athletic, dynamic offensive-minded player on the team? Hughes. I really think his loss was enormous. This game was tailor made for him to drive to the hoop, a lot. Not that Wisconsin would have won with Davidson nailing 50% of their three-pointers.

Given that, I have some optimism for next year. We're all too aware of Butch and Stiemsma's shortcomings on offense, and Flowers, while he became an excellent spot up three point shooter, never became really multi-faceted offensively. I think Leuer and Nankivil will turn out to be better. We just need Taylor or Wilson (the two incoming guard freshmen) to be good athletes and good shooters.