Wanna know how FGCU is successful?
- Thread starter MDBSnare
- Start date
Of course you're right Earle. But, dang, don't you think we have the athletes to compete at that level? I know about our "leadership" issues w.r.t. class rank - but still...don't you think we could run an offense similar to theirs? I may be crazy, but, give me the same players, and with my novice coaching abilities - I beat Grant's offensive productivity with just a few down-screens, with post-out passing, and some movement up top with 2 and 3-spot (help) screens - well...or, heck, any motion around the front-court, along with simple backside crosses ....and we have a much higher probability of scoring. We have a very good defense, but defense is very instinctual - doesn't require a whole lot of coaching (IMHO). What we need is MOVEMENT offensively, which we don't seem to do....I appreciate any input you may have with respect to this....
Defense is 10x harder to coach than offense. You can make a lucky shot. But if youre out of position by a split second the dribbler has already blown past you and either shoots it or kicks it out to the perimeter player for the open shot.
Im not in love with Grant as our coach, I still believe he'd be the best assistant coach in the ncaas. But I do commend his defensive knowledge and the ability to teach it to our team. I have a good feeling about next year especially if we win the nit. Look at the Wichita st team we lost to two years ago in the nit final and where they are now. We need to be patient and I do too sometimes myself after a gutted loss.
....
Tell me how great of a coach he is after Florida beats them by 30 points next week.
I like the FGCU story as much as anyone but just because they've won a couple of upset games against teams that didn't take them seriously doesn't make their coach the next John Wooden.
I'll take the Coach we have. In a one game scenario for all the marbles I think we'd beat FGCU and as I mentioned above I think Florida will totally dismantle them.
more to it than that. although they did upset a pretty good Hoya squad, they had a favorable 2nd round matchup.
Given the performance of the A-10 in the tournament, I wouldn't hold that against them.
..and I wonder what the reaction would be if Coach Grant lost to Maine, East Tennessee, Stetson, and David Lipscomb twice?
They have players to go along with that. Enfield is a great "shooting" coach and his players put it on display. I don't think UF will beat them by 30, but I think UF will win.
Couple of years ago Shaka Smart (Good Coach) was the "Flavor of the Tournament", now it's Enfield. Pretty much all coaches know the the same X's and O's, it's what your "Jimmy's and Joe's" do with those "X's and O's" that make the difference.
Couple of years ago Shaka Smart (Good Coach) was the "Flavor of the Tournament", now it's Enfield. Pretty much all coaches know the the same X's and O's, it's what your "Jimmy's and Joe's" do with those "X's and O's" that make the difference.
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Heard a clip on the radio this morning of their PG talking about the crowd getting involved. He said when they get their transition baskets and the crowd gets into the game, they are a hard team to beat. Sounds awful lot like Bama in that regard.
I seriously doubt Florida wins by more than 30. This team beat #2 seed Miami by 12 earlier this year as well, so I'm not sure why they would be drummed like that after beating them and Georgetown this year. Not to mention I think their defense will more than keep them in the game against UF. I honestly think FGCU pulls the upset again.
This is like watching an UNC team (better shooting of course) on offense and a Bama team on defense. I love Enfield's style, he just made sure he has a raise or possibly a pretty dang good job if he wants it...
It's always exciting to see a small school team from nowhere make a run into the Sweet 16.
But we've seen this movie before. Many times.
We know how it ends.
But we've seen this movie before. Many times.
We know how it ends.
Well, I haven't noticed a lack of movement. I have noticed a lack of productive movement. The reason our guards are continually, it seems, circling the outside is that we don't have an effective five. Eng was well on his way to becoming that and, although some here seem intent on dissing him, we would be a far different team, had he been able to continue. Gueye can't receive and he can't pass out of the post. I can think of three different times in the last game (I've probably suppressed some) when the ball hit him in the hands and either bounced off or he dropped it. Also, he can't recognize the open guard and get the ball to him. This is not bashing MG. American kids grow up playing sports involving hand-eye coordination with balls - base or softball, basketball, football. MG probably grew up kicking a ball instead. Even after he grew into a goalie, a goalie's hand skills are pretty rudimentary. When MG does get the ball close enough to score, he doesn't really have glass skills and usually misses. As I asked several times after his misses in the game thread, I don't know why he doesn't just dunk. Gueye has vastly improved his defense, though. Jacobs always looks to score - and he's developed some more moves for that. I can't think of when he spotted and hit the open man. He'd be much more effective playing the 4. Those are the reasons I think our guard motion seems fruitless so often. There are other offenses we could run that other teams without an effective big run, but you can't run them with only seven effective players.
Now, for the screens. We just aren't very good at it. Ideally, you'd like a 4 or 5 setting them, just for the body size. In our case, that leaves no one in the post to throw into. As a result, teams are consistently doubling our shooters and they frequently run out of the screen straight into a defender, if not two. They also don't "scrape" off the screener, leaving room for the defender to simply run around the screen. Also, we set legal screens, where more and more of our opponents are using the illegal (and more effective) screen when they can get away with it. Gueye is not agile enough to set a decent screen, but it's not all on him.
I disagree about defense being instinctive. Most offenses are designed to trick you into doing what's instinctive - and dead wrong. As far as that's concerned, most one on one moves are calculated to do the same.
These are my thoughts and, of course, they're just the opinions of one guy. It may not be the most popular opinion around here, but I think Grant has just about maxed with the personnel problems we have. Some of our bad losses have something to do with the players themselves. Of course, the buck comes back and stops with Grant on both personnel and also getting 100% out of the kids. I think Grant gets at least one more year and, if he shows material progress next year, he'll have more than that. It's interesting to me that he's thought more of by other coaches than by our fan base...
I think CAG is a good coach, but he is the head of this team and while there may be several reasons for teams shortcomings this season, as was noted, the buck stops with him. I thought going into this year our inside presence would be below average. After Engstrom got hurt, I thought it would be minimal at best. I knew that we would have to rely mainly on guard play and defense, and with our abundant youth, expected some mistakes along the way. What was particularly frustrating was our defensive play at times, the way we seemed to "zone" out. When things didn't go well, sometimes we seemed to quit on both ends of the floor. We had stretches in games ( first UF game we were outscored by 12 pts. in five min...2nd uf game 15 pts. in ten min. etc.), stretches for complete halves (at AU we gave up 13 pts. the first half 36 the second, UGA at T-Town 18 pts. in the 1st 40 in the 2nd etc.) and some complete games ( Dayton scored 38 in the 1st and followed that up with 43 in the 2nd...OM scored 37 in the 1st and 50 in the 2nd etc.). My old hs coach used to say "you can have fun on offense, but ya have to work on defense", At times this year it seemed that when we quit having fun, we quit working too. Maybe the light bulb came on against Stanford, 40 minutes of good basketball beats the rollercoaster we've been on this season. I hope so. We'll see Tuesday night and hopefully next year. RTR
Alabama's defense leads to its offense most of the time. Won't give a percentage because I don't have one. Figure it's pretty high, though.
You mention the runs Florida and Auburn had against Alabama. Look at this post I had 2 weeks ago. Most every time a team has a big run on Alabama, Bama is in foul trouble. When Bama is in foul trouble, it can't play its defense.
When a team tries to play a smothering defense like Alabama, it can't have so many fouls called against it. Look at VCU and its "havoc" defense. They rely on not getting called for fouls, which allows them to get plenty of transition baskets.
The second Florida game numbers look like this:
Florida's run started at 15:48
Alabama called for 7 fouls (15 for the game)
Florida called for 6 (13 for the game)
The numbers don't look awful, but we need to remember Florida was in the bonus at the 14:56 mark and only had been called for 1 foul. That was the real turning point of the game.
FGCU is succeeding because they have a good guard and some surprisingly good athletes. I post on another board a lot on basketball and I made fun of FGCU calling them a community college. Everyone shouted me down telling me they were actually underseeded.
People who know college basketball thought this team was pretty good.
People who know college basketball thought this team was pretty good.
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