Dixon talking about beating some good teams with scoring , but not defending consistently.
May be time to go back to zoning teams.
May be time to go back to zoning teams.
"... We got what we deserved."
- Thread starter SoufOaklin4Life
- Start date
I've been wondering why we haven't even sniffed a zone recently. Heck, after the Purdue game I thought it should've been our base defense.
If you cant score points yourself it wouldn't matter what type of D you played.Unless of course you held them down yourself.Which we didn't.You cant expect to comeback from the hole we put ourselves tonight by a style of play.Our overall play was just horrible early on and it cost us...
Best shot in basketball is a fast break layup off a live ball turnover.
Defense creates easy offense.
Ncsu shot over 60% from 3 in the first and 58% from the field.
That's your ball game.
I agree, you can't expect to come back from that large of a deficit if you can't defend.
People love seeing alley-oops and big dunks, but for some reason can't see that these happen way more often after a defensive rebound or a steal.
Scored 42 points in the second half. Let them score 44 points in first half then 34 in second half. Try thinking a little bit next time?
True..But when you fall in that big a hole that's what happens most of the time.
Still came up short on the scoreboard my friend no matter how you look at it..Maybe I should have said scored when we really needed it...And not given up points when we had no room to give them up.
Shot in the 30's (again) and got destroyed on the boards. The first half reminded me of the old Chipman teams just entering the BE.
I don't think Pitt can correct it's bad defense as long as James Robinson is your starting PG. It's not fun to admit but I don't think Jamie has a realistic starting 5 that could be anything more than a below average defensive team.
Souf, I notice you made NO mention about James being a consistently EFFECTIVE defender. But what you said is true -- he's consistently slower than the man he's defending, consistently running after the man he's guarding because that man has run past him. I, however, am not exactly sure what you are watching that shows James Robinson being consistently good. He has the lateral quickness of a giant tortoise. Our PG guard play has been ho-hum for several years now - DO you remember Levance Fields and Carl Krauser at all?
James is a significantly better defender than Levance.
Krauser wasn't a lock down guy either...
But the team defense was significantly better.
As opposed to scoring when we didn't need it or giving up points when it didn't matter?
Except for the first two years he started when the teams he played on were pretty good defensively. If you think James Robinson is the biggest problem defensively, you have no idea what you are watching.
Exactly correct. Robinson is never going to be a lock-down defender. He doesn't have great quickness. Yet, for most of his career he has been the guy we put on the opposition's best scorer.
Levance was a poor defender. He was always assigned to opponents' weakest scoring guard. Ramon, who was an average defender at best always got the better scorer. Levance was a nice player but honestly, other than the winning trey against Duke, he was not the God that fans try to make him.
Robinson is a good solid PG. He is never going to be the guy who takes over the game like Barber did yesterday, but he is also not often going to have 8 turnovers like Barber did yesterday. Brber scored 14 of his points at the FT line, about 10 of them in the last couple minutes when we were fouling to get the ball.
We didn't lose this game because Barber outplayed Robinson. We lost this game because we couldn't hit the ocean from the beach and we got outrebounded by 17.
It really doesn't matter who we play. If we shoot 36% and get outrebounded by that margin, we would lose to a middle school girl's team.
As you say, we have a lot of fans who don't understand what they are watching.
I mean, Barber was 8-18 shooting (second worst shooting percentage on NC State last night), and many of those were long two pointers where he crossed over several times to create space.
Robinson's athleticism does limit his effectiveness defensively, but there's a reason he has been getting assigned to the opponents toughest guards since his freshman season.
This is not meant to defend JRob or to knock him defensively.
Talking about watching the game.
IMO, Barber saw how the rest of the team was locked in offensively and worked a LOT more as a distributor last night than he did the last time. He did not need to, and because of that did on attack offensively near as much as he normally would do.
So, to whatever extent his offense was limited last night, it was in great part due to SELF limitations.
That was
Yea he was just a "nice" player. How bout that he made, I dont know THE BIGGGEST SHOT IN PITT HISTORY, the step back 3 to beat Xavier.
How bout the 3 big nuts foul shots he made to tie Villanova with less than 5 seconds?
Robinson is a "nice" player.
Fields is an all-time Pitt legend. Dont get that mistaken.
lol ... I will admit I tuned out with a couple minutes left in the first half, that was my point of reference.
He "only" had about a half dozen shots at that point.
Well, given that he scored well above his average and did take 18 official shots, not counting some wiped out by our fouls, he didn't exactly become a shrinking violet offensively. Barber shot more than his average (18 vs 16.8) and his shooting percentage was .430 vs his usual .413. He had 4 more assists than his average but almost 6 more turnovers.
Nevertheless, we lost because their bigs beat up our bigs and stole our lunch money.
Those recently celebrating our offensive prowess have just been slapped with a dose of reality.
We can outscore teams, even good teams IF we're hitting jump shots. If not, we can lose to anyone. Some semblence of defense and toughness must be present for games with even average shooting nights or the remander of this season is likely to get very unpleasant.
Edit: Jeff, I'm not attacking you with these comments, You made many of the same points in another thread. But, it is a problem and it probably isn't going away with this personnel group.
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Yeah, I know, thanks for saying that.
With Barber, I bailed just before halftime.
I think the game was functionally over at that point.
He had about a half dozen shots then, and most of the scoring damage was done by the rest of the team.
It wasn't like the game last year where he had 21 at the half ...
