Pop Hughes looked like he was fighting off a nap to start the game. He was lackadaisical. He started of so sluggish that in the first minute I was yelling at the TV screen and Bo had to take him out and put the freshman in. So let's note that our PG was having an off-day.
The Badgers get up big in the second half Tubby is forced to engage THE KENTUCKY PRESS on us. And the major problem for the Badgers is that their press breaking strategy is to throw it to Hughes and have him dribble it up. This is the strategy. Throw it to somebody else and that person will stand there and look to give it to Hughes so he can dribble it through the press. Even if Hughes was at top form, this would be a terrible idea. Thursday night, it was fatal.
The Swing offense has been our guiding ship, but she has several maddening faults. One of them is that the Swing demands that the passer chose good passing lanes. Our kids get coached up on how to pivot and makes a safe pass in a half court set. This works great when we are in a half court set controlling the tempo. But it instills in our players a hesitancy. Save for Hughes, none of our players runs and dribbles with any confidence at all. This kills us against the press. We inbound the ball to a guy who does not even attempt to beat his man up court. The guy (Bot, Landry, Jarmz, BWM, Bobo, Gullicksmash) is only looking to get it to our PG. This is not sustainable.
The Badgers consistently struggle against the press, but usually manage to pull out wins because of clock management. But what the hell was going on in this game? THREE times we break the press and the guy in the front court goes for a courageous ridiculous lay-up?? Pull the ball out gentlemen. We do it all game long. Run some clock. I could not believe this was happening. We were going to win this game until all those ridiculous attempts in the last minute.
One thing that I need to know: How come Bo Ryan, a pressing coach in DIII, can not teach the press? Skip the fact that our team can't break a press. How come we can't enact the press? You'd think Bo would want to incorporate this into our arsenal. How much practice time would it take to be good at the press? This seems like it could take us to the next level. Anyway, I need to get the answer to this.
This is the last team in the league I would want to lose that game to.
1 comment:
Good posts on this tragic game, guys. I was too blind with rage and disappointment to pinpoint reasons for this loss, but you both did it well. The two rare things that have frustrated me about the Badgers under Bo have been the press break and inbounds plays from under the basket.
The thing about those layup attempts after breaking the press were that they were sort of weak attempts, too, very blockable. Still, if they do the smart thing and pull it back out you run off another 15-20 seconds and there's not enough time for that end of regulation foolishness.
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