** I thought I had a pretty fair plan.
** Because I missed the WVU game and because the result was what it was, I decided to go into this one with Michigan with a fresh perspective. I didn’t even watch my recording, and resisting reading most of the posts about the game, let alone post anything about it myself.
** After all, that game had the feel of one that got away from us somewhat, and I really didn’t think it was completely fair to begin judging this team until Big John was back.
** With this, I was actually looking forward to this one against the Wolverines. I wasn’t really expecting a win. But I was expecting a game. That wasn’t what we got.
** What we got looked like JV versus the Varsity. Or perhaps a legit P-5 team against an Atlantic Sun Conference team.
** Or maybe instead I should have said the Patriot Conference.
** When Nelly Cummings announced his commitment to Pitt, I had a conversation with a real local expert on college basketball and local talent who was less than impressed. His quote? “You recruit Colgate players, you get a Colgate team.”
** Then again, Colgate just beat Syracuse so maybe that comment set the bar too high.
** And this isn’t to single out Nelly Cummings as the reason for the Pitt loss. But it was hard not to watch him in this game today and feel he was anywhere near the level of Michigan’s guards. In short, he looked next to unable to make any impact on this game, unfortunately.
** The reality is that there wasn’t any Panther who looked like he was able to make an impact on the game, on either end of the court.
** But let’s start on the offensive end. First, Blake Hinson has come back to earth since his flashy start and has proven he not an All-American when his opponents actually guard him. He’s got to be smarter and not take contested ones that he probably can’t make.
** Greg Elliot has been competent, and looks to be an upgrade over Horton. But I think today’s performance represents his ceiling. Jamarius Burton has too often proven to be just a one on one player and Nike Sibande looks like he’s somehow lost his game, depending of course on whether or not you believe he had much to begin with. I for one thought so, and therefore I’m disappointed with what we’ve seen thus far.
** Maybe it’s fair to give Nate Santos a shout out for solid minutes, but he’s a bench player at this stage regardless.
** Big John will contribute more as he gets into better shape. But I think it’s also fair to say that the way he played today was often reminiscent in style of what we saw from John last year. So another way of saying this is that I’m not sure Big John in midseason form fairs any better on the offensive end than he did tonight.
** Yet, going over the offensive performances in this game misses the point. This game was nothing better than a failure on the defensive end.
** We looked both underprepared and unable to do anything to stop a Michigan offense which really shouldn’t be seen as a buzzsaw. Other than a little stretch in the first half when we effectively double teamed Dickinson, we almost never made anything difficult.
** And we offered basically no opposition in the second half. 53 points on 34 possessions (my quick count). That’s truly troublingly terrible.
** Our defense also seemed like a bad combination of effort and execution. The decision to go under screens allowed plenty of freedom of ball and dribble movement. We never kept dribblers in front of us, shooters were always open, and it wasn’t even because their All-American played all that well.
** I suppose all I’ve done to this point is just offer a far too wordy description of what everyone already saw. The bigger question is what does it all mean? Can we get better?
** Well, if the talent disparity is truly as much as it appeared today, that’s not a very good sign. I still have to believe there’s more to be gathered from our guys. Like we all know, Big John will still get better, and even if Nelly isn’t an ACC level starter, we also know he has it in him to play like he did against Wisconsin in last year’s NCAA tournament.
** This leaves it all up to Coach Capel. From this point on, he’s obviously coaching for his job. I have no reason to doubt his resolve. But I do doubt his ability. We haven’t seen it in his first four years here, and three contests into campaign five, one could say it looks worse.
** So any road back starts tomorrow at 7pm. My plan, like almost always, is to watch the game. I just hope this time there is a game to watch.
