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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Paging Mr. Green....

What the heck is going on??? We need Jeff in order to do anything this year. He turned in another lackluster performance against Fairfield. At least, Summers stepped up and carried the team. Rivers, Sapp, and J-Wal also played well. I assume they used the zone to neutralize Roy, though no one on Fairfield is taller than 6'7. Egerson and Ticket got extended PT and reportedly looked good. (Note: Summers got the start over Egerson. JTIII is using him as the zone buster.) I didn't see it but based on the box score here are my thoughts.

1. We need to twist the dagger when we build a lead. We let Fairfield back into the game at the end of the first half.

2. Summers and Ticket are going to live up to their billing sooner rather than later.

3. Rivers is better than we expected him to be.

4. J-Wall is shooting well over 50% from behind the arc. He should take the shot every time it is open. Period.

5. We are still out of sync and not clicking. Jeff needs to get out of his funk. We need to utilize Roy better and clearly our defense is not where it needs to be -- but the trajectory is correct.

Here are some articles:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112202174.html

http://www.connpost.com/sports/ci_4708895

2 comments:

Jester of Magellan said...

I listented to the game on the radio. Hibbert was just as bad as Green. Neither showed up at all during the first half. I am very concerned that we are not dominating the boards against bad teams that don't match up well against us down low. Though my prediction about Green did not come true, I'm still confident that he will snap out of it soon. To be honest, JTIII kept both Green and Hibs off the floor a lot last night. The game was close at times, but it was obvious that we were using this contest as an opportunity to get PT for younger players.

Summers was great. There were stretches of the game where he sounded dominant. I really wish I could have seen whether he looked as good as the Hoyas' play-by-play made him sound.

Sapp was almost as good as Summers. I am very happy to see the way he is progressing this year. He had three steals, and really seemed to be driving towards the basket when he had opportunities. There seemed to be quite a few instances where Sapp drove to the hoop and then kicked it back out when the defense collapsed. That is exactly what we should be doing against the zone.

Speaking of zone. I know that the Staggs flipped back and forth between playing zone and man. I am not sure why they even tried man against us in light of how we've performed against the zone. I would be very interested to know whether our scoring bursts coincided with the defenses that were being played against us.

Jester of Magellan said...

I wanted to follow up on my earlier post by noting that Jeff Green might not have been as invisible as previously indicted. I just checked the box score again and noticed that he lead the team in both rebounds (6) and assists (5). One of those assists can be seen in the highlights on ESPN.com's In Motion service.

Though I know what we need to see some more points from Jeff, we need to remember that he has always been someone who contributes in ways other than scoring. In a night that showcased the Hoyas's young talent (the one-handed dunk from Macklin, which can also be seen on that In Motion clip was just sick), Jeff played a different kind of role. But it was still an important role.