Anyone else feel that Barford is trying too hard on offense and maybe lacking in his D? Seems like I am watching a different team than what I saw in Portland, the NC game notwithstanding. They had so much energy and played like they wanted it. I’m just not seeing it the last few games, and it really jumped out in the Houston game. They got whipped–no excuses. Thoughts?
I think it’s waaaay early. Many dips and rises to comes.
I think they all stunk against Houston. In the CSU game he started out real cold (maybe 4 pts in the first half, all late), and at the end of the game he had 19 pts. We need him to be aggressive offensively, but with the caveat within the offense. I know Mike got real mad at Macon the other night when he had the ball for like 5 seconds, then put up a contested 3. Mike made some angry gestures to move the ball and pulled him from the game.
We’ve only had 2 games since the PK80. Everybody sucked at Houston except for maybe CJ, Beard, and Thomas. Everybody played well against Colorado State. Kind of difficult to draw a trend line there.
Against Colorado State after a slow start Barford in 25 minutes had 19 points on 65% from the floor, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 TO, and got cheated out of a spectacular block. That’s an outstanding performance in terms of his line. Jimmy might have some interesting stuff on his individual defensive performance on the season.
Because of their importance on O, both Macon and Barford have probably conserved some energy and fouls at the defensive end early in the season out of necessity. Given the absences on the roster, the youth in the rotation, and schedule difficulty, I get the impression that CMA narrowed the focus to our immediate strengths to survive November, which we did as well as could have been hoped. With the emergence of Gafford and Jones and the addition of Thomas we seem to be working on expanding the O now. Macon focusing on distribution against CSU seemed to be by design. Hopefully a full rotation will mean it won’t be disaster if Macon or Barford have to sit with fouls. They will be able to expend more energy on D if their normal minutes get down to the high 20’s instead of mid-30’s.
Colorado State was the worst offensive team that we have faced, but we held them to 0.92 points per possession, our third-best defensive performance by raw efficiency. We took the foot off the pedal at the end of the game, too. We basically shut them down like we were supposed to. I wouldn’t call it a triumph or a disappointment, more par for the course against the level of competition as compared to our average defensive performance on the season, which has been much better than I at least anticipated.
The staff has definitely taken notice of his slow starts and encouraged him to be aggressive coming out of the gate. If you remember, he’d do the same thing at times last year too, start slow and then erupt on a little personal 8-0 run midway through the first half or something similar.
He’s been extremely efficient from the floor. That will probably dip some as the season continues, but he’s been fantastic so far.
I think he’s been really good defensively, especially as an on-ball defender. He’s done a nice job of walling people off and looks a bit quicker laterally than he did last year. Synergy says Darious is the best perimeter defender on the team (82nd percentile), followed closely by C.J., who I do think has been better at times but is still hit or miss, so this is where you bring up sample size. Anton and Jaylen both rate as solid defenders while Daryl has struggled.
To me, I think Darious has been great both on and off the ball, in the halfcourt, at least. Really impressed me with his awareness. I’ve thought Jaylen and Anton have both been very solid for the most part. C.J. has mental mistakes, but is stronger and in the right place more often than last year. Daryl is at times good on the ball, but has been pretty bad off it.
Well, on the contrary, the first four games of the year, Barford had a huge first half and then tailed off in the second. I think it is rare that a player has two huge halves in the same game. What would be ideal is if he spreads out the scoring more even in the two halves. But I wonder if it really matters if he puts up 19 a game and Macon and Barford takes turns in being hot.
I’m assuming the staff member was speaking about his most recent performances: 2 points in the first half vs Houston, no points in the first 17+ minutes vs CSU. We had the chat while walking out of Bud Walton on Tuesday night. I think they’re just telling him to be more consistently aggressive. He didn’t take a shot the first 6+ minutes Tuesday before being subbed out.
Got it. Good point. I too noticed that he hadn’t taken a shot and got subbed out.
That was a problem in the slow starts against Houston and CSU, namely the offense settling for the weaker scorers to take challenged shots to start the game. It was compounded with a bunch of TOs against Houston. The 11 - 0 deficit at Houston was mainly about the 0. Houston didn’t get off to a hot start either. They just weren’t inert.