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Buffalo @ CMU (1/18 @ 2:00 pm)


Jeseph

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Going to be a tough game. Central is 3-1 in conference and 9-0 at home. And they can score. So our defense will be really tested in what could be a track meet. If we play defense we win. If we let them get up and down bc of turnovers and get easy buckets we’re screwed. 

Kevin McKay is their main scorer. 6’5 guard averaging about 15 a game and is also their leading rebounder with 6 a game. He shooting 66% from the field. Crazy percentage. Interestingly enough he doesn’t take or make many 3s. Will be interesting to see who guards him.

Edited by DooleyBull06
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1 hour ago, DooleyBull06 said:

So our defense will be really tested in what could be a track meet. If we play defense we win. If we let them get up and down bc of turnovers and get easy buckets we’re screwed.

This. I see this as a challenge for our offense as much as our defense. We have struggled defensively but how much have that has been poor shot selection and/or sloppy passes putting us in bad positions?

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35 minutes ago, Erie County said:

There will be zero defense played in this one. 

If UB can shoot ok, they'll make it out with a win.

If they go cold like Ball state, it might be a really long night.

I like to think that you'll be wrong. I hope I'm right anyway. Hopefully our players are getting healthy and the illnesses have passed and the team continues to figure it out on both sides of the floor. CMU definitely has some good shooters. I'm sure we'll game plan to close out strongly on them.

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2 hours ago, DooleyBull06 said:

Going to be a tough game. Central is 3-1 in conference and 9-0 at home. And they can score. So our defense will be really tested in what could be a track meet. If we play defense we win. If we let them get up and down bc of turnovers and get easy buckets we’re screwed. 

Kevin McKay is their main scorer. 6’5 guard averaging about 15 a game and is also their leading rebounder with 6 a game. He shooting 66% from the field. Crazy percentage. Interestingly enough he doesn’t take or make many 3s. Will be interesting to see who guards him.

McKay has not played in their last 2 games. Havent really seen any info on that

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1 hour ago, Jeseph said:

This. I see this as a challenge for our offense as much as our defense. We have struggled defensively but how much have that has been poor shot selection and/or sloppy passes putting us in bad positions?

I agree with you about poor shot selection and turnovers however to think that it’s ok to just have a mindset of not playing defense and depending solely on the offense I question. We need to improve defensively if we want to win consistently. I’m not even talking about being a lockdown team. Even just a marginal improvement and we can win consistently. 

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22 minutes ago, Jeseph said:

Who has that mindset?

Not me. And hopefully not the team. You had mentioned that this is a challenge for the offense. I think our offense will be able to score. Which to me if we play even a little defense we should win. Yes I agree our offense needs to help the defense but of the two units the defense has been worse.

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So despite what looks like a down year, looking at our per game stat averages, it’s very clear what our weakness this year is. 
 

At this point in the season, we rank 49th in the country in total points scored (1350). We are also 27th in the country in points per game (79.4). Field goal percentage could be greatly improved if we stop taking low percentage shots (kind of an obvious statement) but we are middle of the pack in that category, being 145th in the country (44.3%). Our 3 point percentage is down this year from last year, we are shooting 33.4% which is good for 174th in the country. Our rebounding is a clear strength, as we are 17th in the country with 41.2 rebounds per game. We are 24th in the country in assists per game (16.4). Our assist to turnover ratio (1.2) puts us at 33rd in the country. Lastly our blocked shots per game (4.4) puts us at 53rd in the country.

Theres positives that can be taken away from that for sure. But among those good stats, there’s also very bad. We rank almost last in the country in free throw percentage (332nd), shooting 63.6%. We also are 222nd in the country in turnovers per game, committing 14.1 per game. 
 

Taking away from all this, I can easily say that our weaknesses are on the defensive side, since we are averaging almost 80 points per game and most of our games have been really close. In my opinion, if you’re scoring almost 80 points per game, you should win every time. Any game where the other team scores over 70 is a failed defensive effort. Which is exactly what defense is...EFFORT. We can score all the points in the world and play fast, but if we’re getting fast points, it means the other team is getting the ball back quickly too. All the points mean nothing if you can’t stop the other team from scoring more.

Our shot selection really needs to improve as well. Many people on here have pointed it out, but this team plays more selfishly than last years team. Making that “one more” pass to go from a good shot, to finding a guy for a wide open even batter shot goes a long way. The turnovers come from driving the ball into the lane being surrounded by 3 players trying to somehow pass the ball out of that scenario. 
 

Summary of all this? We are good offensively but could be even better with shot selection improvement. Defensively? We are horrible and need somebody to step up and be that Caruthers to help Jordan. We are still a relatively young team too and it shows in our discipline -> turnovers

Edited by 961819
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