commonsense wrote:hammb, all that you say is true. Especially about on the ball defense. I will probably never agree that our other guards play that great of defense though. I just think it is funny that after every game Floyd gets blamed for this and that, when we have other problems, such as being out rebounded in every MAC game except the game that was just played.
I think the biggest reason why Floyd gets blamed so much is because he has been the PG in the past. As such the ball is in his hands a lot, and that's who people watch. I know I hated watching him play PG, but I think he has actually shown some real value the last 3-4 games by being away from the ball. He is one of only a couple guys who will actively move without the ball, and get to the open spot. He's still a defensive liability, but since he's had less of the PG duties, he's really looked like an actual player. He won't be winning any POY awards, but he's a lot more valuable to this team off the ball.
As for the rebounding, It hasn't been discussed too much on here, but this is one of my 2 biggest pet peeves about Dan as a head coach. For the life of me I cannot remember us EVER being a great rebounding team since he's been here. That includes when we've had tremendous inside presence with guys like Esterkamp & Matela, or even great individual rebounders like Stacey. All the years that we haven't had guys like that we tend to get DOMINATED on the boards. The reason why is pretty simple: we don't box out. EVER. We are terrible at it in fact. What's worse when we do box out most of our guys don't attack the ball like it's their livelihood. I cannot tell you how many times our guys have been in position to make a rebound and then rather than going up and getting the ball they let it come to them only to have it knocked around and have the opposing team come up with it. Soler is the only decent individual rebounder we have. I really hope Sullivan can get his butt on the court next year, because I believe he talked about how he feels about rebounding in an article last year, and we could really use that.
Jacobs4Heisman wrote:I think this has been the most frustrating aspect of the season for me. I was prepared for us to have a pretty poor year, but I expected it to be a rebuilding year. Other than Marschall, there has been no steady playing time for the young guys on the team. What do we gain from not playing the freshman more?
Now J4H hits on my #1 Pet peeve about Dan Dakich as a coach. He flat out refuses to use his bench. Even when our starters are racking up fouls at an alarming rate Saturday, he refused to bring those guys off the bench until it was absolutely necessary, but by then it was too late, they all had 4 fouls.
In the postgame Dan mentioned that the guys on the 2nd team are not competing. He said that he's never in his life had to worry about the backups not playing hard. Went on to say that he doesn't feel he can trust them in the game because of how they practice. From those comments it sounds to me that it's not an issue of talent, but that they are not willing to work as hard as they need to in order to see the court. In Dan's defense those guys have pretty much looked lost when they were on the court, but that's still not an excuse. At some point you just have to get those guys on the court.
Jacobs4Heisman wrote:
We had an opportunity this year, with no real expectations, to get some valuable game experience for the kids who hold the future of the program in their hands. We've squandered that opportunity, and it will hurt us badly in terms of future production, recruiting, and yes, probably more transfers.
Agreed. It would be a lot easier to stomach this below average team if we were actually getting good experience for our young guys. Instead we're losing with a lot of upper classmen who don't have much growth potential. There is no reason why Moten & Clements don't get at least 5-10 mins a game. This team is not good enough to leave them on the bench.
As for transfers at this point I would be quite surprised to see Sullivan, Moten, and Clements all on this team next year. I just don't see why they'd stick around...
