Continues to sit on the bench?
It’s a big boy, physical league. Him sitting is not our problem. He could not play against Tennessee. He’d get killed defensively, especially.
Agree, we need to get him on the floor other than at desperation time. Our lack of shooters is killing us. And our dribble/drive penetration approach to getting buckets is taking a real beating now that we can’t seem to make layups or free throws when it counts.
Getting Pinion more court time and addressing a myriad of defensive issues, we may need to consider playing more zone. Just throwing it out there.
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Voices have also called for Graham, after a good scoring night, yet he was totally out of his element last night. Maybe Coach knows a little bit about what he is doing. I hope that Pinion becomes everything that some people already think he is.
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What a profound statement due to what we witnessed last night…
Pinion will dive on the floor after loose balls……We didn’t see any of that last night.
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Our outside shooting did not do us in last night.
16 turnovers and interior defense did
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He made a 3 and gave up on 3 on the very next possession.
No one was physical, not even Pinion when he got in the game. I’m all for playing other players, but it wouldn’t have mattered with what we saw last night. I thought Graham should have played the entire second half after the dismal rebounding and defensive effort of the the Mitchell bros. But defense is what will get us to the elite 8. So that needs to be the focus. Unfortunately that’s not Pinion or Graham, though Graham did have a block and is rebounding better of late, which is another reason I wanted to see more of him last night. His D wouldn’t haven been worse than what I was watching.
Except for the possession where the Tennessee player in a low post position with his back to Graham went right around him for a lay up. Graham has been a little better on defense, particularly in coming from off-ball to contest shots, but he’s still not a good post defender and can’t hold off most rebounders inside.
He got minutes last night more because of how badly the twins played than anything else. I will be very, very interested to see if the twins bounce back against Kentucky.
The only credit I can give the twins is the whistle, which was blowing a lot and makes it hard to figure out what you can and can’t do in the paint, especially if not being consistent. Not saying that was the case, but just saying it can cause some mental problems, and those two were in out with fouls and I think that got to them mentally. They did well against KY with physicality the first time. But the refs allowed that physicality. Will have to see how it unfolds.
Who in Tennessee’s top 6-7 guys would Pinion have defended last night had he played more minutes?
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Gosh, The guy has game…he can score…last night they were running circles around us and we were throwing up bricks! go ahead…rip me up…make some more profound obvious statements…good grief!
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I figured this up on Jan. 20. I’m not sure if I shared here, but here you go:
Through SEC games as of Jan. 18, Joseph Pinion has defended 21 shots in 55 minutes in SEC play. Devo Davis has defended 27 shots in 217 minutes.
Opponents go at him when he’s on the floor for extended stretches. They hunt him. Also, three-point shooting wasn’t an issue at Tennessee. Arkansas made 8 threes and 6 layups/dunks.
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Keep reading that players like Pinion, Ford, Dunning, and Graham can’t get playing time because of their lack of defensive prowess. Well, most of the starters haven’t been lighting it up defensively lately either.
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correct
no one in an Arkansas uniform played good defense last night
hope the defensive effort is better Saturday
Shhh, facts are not welcome in this series of rants.
I know he is a defensive liability, but he’s not a turnover machine like our guards have been lately and wont brick free throws. Tennessee scored at will against us anyway. When the game got out of hand mid second half he damned sure wouldn’t have hurt.
why don’t you offer an opinion then about what went wrong last night against Tennessee and what can be done to improve the team going forward?
or r u 2 scared ?
I like PInion’s future. i think this time next year he could be in the rotation and be an effective player.
But the statement that he’s not a turnover machine does not mean much, because he is not handling the ball that much when he’s in the game, and he’s not acting as either a point guard or a guy who will have the ball in his hands a lot to make plays. He’s shown some ability to drive the ball, and on a couple of occasions has made good passes off short drives. But he hasn’t been up above the foul line handling the ball much or trying to run the offense.
He should hardly ever turn the ball over when that’s his role on the Court, so he gets a check for not being an absolute liability doing anything but catch and shoot. It does not in any way mean he would take care of the ball better than Black, Council, Davis and Smith if he was asked to do what they do.
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