…after sitting on the bench, resting, not fouling, he comes back on the court at the 10:00 minute mark in the 2nd half. He never touches the ball on offense for 5:00 minutes. Macon and Barford never look to pass inside at all. Beard makes a token attempt early in the clock a couple of times, decides not to pass it to him, and never tries again for the rest of the possession. As we continue to slip further behind, Barford or Macon (whichever got the ball first) again and again dribbled around, juked and jived, and jacked up a shot without ever looking to pass. Neither was very successful but that didn’t seem to stop them from doing it all over again.
How about a rule that if you shoot without passing the ball to Gafford first you go to the bench? Force them to collapse on Gafford, get the return pass, and only THEN you can shoot it. Use the one on one ability on the break out, but get the whole team involved or the shot clock about to run out before any guard goes one against the world to jack up a shot. JMVVVVVVHO
This was a huge impact on the game. That’s why they were able to guard us so effectively. They knew we would only pass on the perimeter so all the had to do was man up and stick close till we tried a late shotclock highly contested 3 pointer
They do that in every game. It just seems to get noticed more when we are losing. I said earlier in the year, I though Gafford should be flirting with a quadruple double every night (pts, rbds, assts, and blocks). To me the assists should be the easiest for him to get to double figures, as you said when they collapse, kick it out to the open man.
Joe Kleine has talked about this on the radio. It is not all on the guards. A big man has to make himself available for the pass and Gafford is still learning what to do when the defender fronts him. And sometimes when the defender is behind him, a double team is not too far.
It is not as easy as how everyone makes it sound. If it was, I guarantee you that is exactly what every team would do with their bigs. We forget we are playing a team of players who are not nailed to the floor and all Gafford has to do is receive the pass.
Yes, guards sometimes don’t pass because they want to score themselves, but it is not all on them.
Did you not notice them trying (I would argue over-doing it)? Give Mizzou, who is a good defensive team, credit. They were making it hard. That one on one you saw was because we’d burn the clock trying to get it to him instead of running our offense more crisply.
This is where CMA’s lack of sets hurt us. If we don’t get it out of transition or our base offense, we struggle. The good news is that we usually don’t need sets - we’ve been great offensively this year. But, against good defensive teams, we’ll see these struggles.
We saw Trey in there with Gafford a lot in the second half. Mizzou sagged on him, making it tough to get the ball to Gafford and forcing Trey to shoot outside, which he did successfully a few times. They did the same thing with DT. Good game plan by Cuonzo, a good defensive coach. We have to adjust. I actually like like picking and rolling with Gafford more when we get in that type of predicament.