vs. Buffalo (1/27)

[mbenecke]

Tonight, our Falcons (13-7, 4-4 MAC) have a pretty big game against Buffalo (13-7, 3-5 MAC) at the Stroh Center. Game will tip at 7:00pm and will stream on ESPN+.

The ticket office is running a special snow day deal for this one - everyone 18 and under gets in free, and adults can get GA tickets for just $6. If you're getting stir crazy from all the snow and cold, why not take a trip to the Stroh tonight for a big game?

Go Falcons!

[fanatic13]

Tonight, our Falcons (13-7, 4-4 MAC) have a pretty big game against Buffalo (13-7, 3-5 MAC) at the Stroh Center. Game will tip at 7:00pm and will stream on ESPN+.

The ticket office is running a special snow day deal for this one - everyone 18 and under gets in free, and adults can get GA tickets for just $6. If you're getting stir crazy from all the snow and cold, why not take a trip to the Stroh tonight for a big game?

Go Falcons!

Thanks for getting things moving around here again! Site still isn't working great

We're getting a lot of good looks on offense and buffalo is only staying in it early because they're on fire from three

[fanatic13]

We're not getting stops at all right now plain and simple

[fanatic13]

We changed to switching pretty much every screen and it's worked a lot better with us starting to string together stops. Curious to see if we can keep that up when Oboh comes back in

[BleedOrange]

This team doesn't move the ball well and we don't have outside shooting. Campbell forces too much.

I hate playing a 7 man rotation. That's Dan Dakich s**t. Simon hasn't developed any depth this year. Leach and Karol should have been getting more minutes.

[BleedOrange]

@mbenecke, are you the site administrator here?

[guest44]

Terrible defensive effort, but Buffalo shot it really well. I’m not sure even Cleveland is a guarantee anymore. Miami and Akron are the clear best teams in the MAC and the next 6 are all kind of interchangeable.

[mbenecke]

@mbenecke, are you the site administrator here?

I’m not! I’m just a typical fan who likes to organize these game threads for discussion, and I figure the “previews” that I write contain general/relevant info that kinda frame those discussions. I’m an organized guy so it bugs me just a little bit if things aren’t formatted the same, so I try to take the lead on that. Probably a little bit of a psycho move. Lol

I also click onto this site far more often than anyone reasonably should to check what’s being talked about, so I often see when the site is up/down. I put writing game previews in my daily calendar/schedule (going to try to write up the CMU preview later this morning after my coffee kicks in, if the site is still up) so I don’t forget, but otherwise I’m just a regular around here like anyone else.

[mbenecke]

Terrible defensive effort, but Buffalo shot it really well. I’m not sure even Cleveland is a guarantee anymore. Miami and Akron are the clear best teams in the MAC and the next 6 are all kind of interchangeable.

Todd tore into the team about defense in his postgame presser.

I think we’re still going to get to Cleveland, but it’s important we start stacking wins in the upcoming games against teams we are “better” than or it might become a struggle.

[guest44]

Wol’s defensive effort was awful as was his defense against Toledo in which he didnt pick up the shooter on the game winning three. Thomas if healthy will be right back in the mix sooner than later.

[hammb]

Terrible defensive effort, but Buffalo shot it really well. I’m not sure even Cleveland is a guarantee anymore. Miami and Akron are the clear best teams in the MAC and the next 6 are all kind of interchangeable.

Todd tore into the team about defense in his postgame presser.

I think we’re still going to get to Cleveland, but it’s important we start stacking wins in the upcoming games against teams we are “better” than or it might become a struggle.

He can tear into them all he wants but unless the players are just completely ignoring him/undisciplined we look like a group that has a poorly coached defensive philosophy. We have a bunch of kids who individually are pretty good defenders but we are constantly hedging screens overplaying passing lanes, etc. Last night we continuously were switching ball screens putting Glover on their guards and Shackledord on their bigs. 2 guys that are pretty decent defenders put into really poor positions.

Obviously none of us have a clue if they're being taught to do these things, maybe they're just all really undisciplined defenders but, unlike last year they're at least capable and show the effort. They just get undressed by quality offendes that consistently find the open man that we've left in an effort to force turnovers.

The other big issue is a recurring Simon theme. We never have the shooting depth that the good MAC teams do. If you give up open looks other teams are going to occasionally have those 15-35 type nights from 3 and we never have the horses to keep up with that. Wol and Ruffin are good shooters. Campbell, towns and Thomas are ok. But other teams always seem to have 4-5 guys that could hit 4 or 5 threes on any given night. We have like 1-2 that have that in them.

The frustrating part for me is I didn't think we played poorly last night at all. We shot a respectable, for us, 35% from 3. We were over 50% fg. We out rebounded them. We played hard defense. It was just the defensive philosophy getting picked apart by the opposition combined with not being capable of matching the three ball volume. We finished down like 24 points behind the arc. The only way to over come that is to be nearly perfect everywhere else.

[hammb]

Wol’s defensive effort was awful as was his defense against Toledo in which he didnt pick up the shooter on the game winning three. Thomas if healthy will be right back in the mix sooner than later.

His defense is so up and down and it's so frustrating. He's a good athlete and he's got length. Just seems to have no idea how to use those tools.

And he's our only real offensive threat outside of Campbell so we really can't afford to take him off the floor.

[guest44]

[quote=guest44 post_id=469567 time=<a href="tel:1769603302">1769603302</a> user_id=909]
Wol’s defensive effort was awful as was his defense against Toledo in which he didnt pick up the shooter on the game winning three. Thomas if healthy will be right back in the mix sooner than later.

His defense is so up and down and it's so frustrating. He's a good athlete and he's got length. Just seems to have no idea how to use those tools.

And he's our only real offensive threat outside of Campbell so we really can't afford to take him off the floor.
[/quote]

Especially can’t take him off the floor when playing from behind in nearly every MAC game. I’m willing to see them go back to last years zone with Campbell at the top and just use that length because they are getting torched by everyone not Western Michigan.

[hammb]

[quote=guest44 post_id=469567 time=<a href="tel:1769603302">1769603302</a> user_id=909]
Wol’s defensive effort was awful as was his defense against Toledo in which he didnt pick up the shooter on the game winning three. Thomas if healthy will be right back in the mix sooner than later.

His defense is so up and down and it's so frustrating. He's a good athlete and he's got length. Just seems to have no idea how to use those tools.

And he's our only real offensive threat outside of Campbell so we really can't afford to take him off the floor.

Especially can’t take him off the floor when playing from behind in nearly every MAC game. I’m willing to see them go back to last years zone with Campbell at the top and just use that length because they are getting torched by everyone not Western Michigan.
[/quote]

We have length, so the zone could be effective (and has at times), but I'm generally not a fan of it. I'd much rather see us attempt to just play good man defense. Fight over screens and stay with your man. Obviously need to help when somebody gets beat, but we don't have to swarm every ball, abandoning our own man. Stop jumping passing lanes to gamble on steals. Stop trapping PGs at the top who aren't really killing us. It's like we started the season causing all the TOs so we made that our entire identity; when good teams find the open men we can't just get stops.

Most of our guys appear to be more than capable 1v1 defenders. Wol is really the only truly bad defender in our rotation (Leach, Karel, Goins are awful when they get in there), And even Wol, in most matchups can be capable just with his length. This isn't like last season where we were putting 3 guys out there that couldn't guard a chair...they don't need to be helping/hedging/trapping nearly as much as we do.

[BGorDeath]

Wol’s defensive effort was awful as was his defense against Toledo in which he didnt pick up the shooter on the game winning three. Thomas if healthy will be right back in the mix sooner than later.

His defense is so up and down and it's so frustrating. He's a good athlete and he's got length. Just seems to have no idea how to use those tools.

And he's our only real offensive threat outside of Campbell so we really can't afford to take him off the floor.

Wol's ball handling skills are very suspect, and that's being nice. Whenever he drives to the hoop or just dribbles the ball, it is a new adventure in tension.