From Meyer
- Thread starter gary2
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The Cards stepped it up considerably in the last 5 minutes. They did just enough to get the W.
Good coaches know how to get their teams to close out games. To hold onto leads and build upon them. To strategize. It's definitely not a coincidence that Pitt implodes late in games. Game after game.
I think it's more like coaches recruit players to programs like Louisville who are talented enough to turn it up to another gear in crunch time while our guys don't have another gear really. We play hard but...that's it
Not sure I’d put that on coaching. I don’t think Mack is long for Louisville as he strikes me as a guy in over his head.
Louisville isn’t a great team but they have the type of athletes/players that we don’t. Ellis was a highly regarded JuCo kid that they are able to bring off the bench, whereas he’d be a nailed on starter for us. Our guys played hard but when you don’t have the same level of talent, the margin for error is very slim
So when it happens game after game is it really luck or is it our defense and strategy?
It doesn’t matter how bad or good you are. That sort of shooting performance is bad luck, especially since many of those weren’t dunks or layups.
It could also be a product of a team with basically no bench, that is playing hard on defense, struggling on offense, and just runs out of gas.
Game after game year after year it's not luck.
I mean some of it is luck of course but they shot 7-21 from 3 and 48% overall so it’s not like they were lucky all game. They missed a lot of open shots early.. they made some tougher shots late. It is what it is. These teams also have players (Hubb, #3 last night) who can get their own Shot and make shots… which we don’t have.
My point isn’t that it’s all on us but I’m just telling you how a coach thinks. There’s 40 minutes in a game… if you want luck to go your way, fix the mistakes in the other 38 minutes so you’re not in a position for that to matter. I don’t think Capel’s speech post game was “ah bad luck guys.. we’ll get em next time”.
I’m no big Capel fan when it comes to X’s and O’s but common, I don’t think Beard did anything special to close out that game other than putting/keeping a guy named Ellis on the court.
Is it always as easy as…when the other team isn’t scoring we’re playing good defense, and when they are scoring we’re playing bad defense.
Sure that’s the case sometimes but no where near as often as we make it out to be. Sometimes how the other team’s offense is playing enters into it as well.
Sure that’s the case sometimes but no where near as often as we make it out to be. Sometimes how the other team’s offense is playing enters into it as well.
Ellis averaged 6.5 coming into the game. I wonder if he will score 16 or more the rest of the year. Say what you want about defense or lack there of, I would say that marginal players have a way of having way better than average games against us far to frequently. I would say that at least to some degree this team could use a little good luck. Had Ellis been cold or even average, maybe we win the game. Things tend to even out, so maybe we are due to have a little luck come our way.
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