[NU Sports] hoops and walker

[Michael Jackson]

Our BB team has a number of deficiencies that never seem to go away no
matter who is playing for us.  We are consistently a poor rebounding
team.  Our offense is designed to get the open shot.  In the process,
most of the players are out of position for the rebound.  Our defense, a
match-up 1-3-1 zone, should give us a better chance for the boards, but
we don't block out well.  If you always rely on only one shot each time
down the court, our shooting must be perfect for us to have a chance to
win the tough games.  Our free throw shooting is also weak.  Too many
close games are decided by only a few points.  We need to get and make
our free throws.  In the Penn St game we only shot three free throws and
made none I think.  PS made 20 out of 26 if I'm not mistaken.  It is
hard to win that way.  Our third major fault is that our offense works
better against a man-to-man defense than against a zone.  Wisky played
us man-to-man.  We were able to work the ball and get either an open
jumper or a back-door lay up.  If you will notice, most of our tough
losses are against teams that play a tough zone defense.  I don't
understand why any team plays us man.  
 
BC has an outstanding class coming in next year.  What he does well is
develop the talent he gets as the year goes on.  Our teams always
improve as the season goes on.  If we can work on our deficiencies and
improve, I see no reason why we can't make the next step up to
consistency.  We have come a long way.  Many good coaches have failed at
NU BB.  I think our best chance is to allow BC a chance to build
something here.  We seem to forget how miserable NU was at football a
few decades ago.  Our BB team is quite competitive in the B10.  We just
need to be more consistent.  Have faith.  
 
Mike
 
 
 
 
 
 
Penn State beat us because they forced us to be dependent on the 3-point

shot.  We couldn't get the ball inside against their zone.  When we can 
get the ball inside, and make the three a part of our arsenal instead of

the whole thing, we are a much better team.
 
The other way to beat a zone is to reverse the ball and penetrate 
quickly.  I thought that we didn't reverse it enough, and when we tried 
we either weren't crisp enough and they picked off the pass, or we 
hesitated too long and missed the opportunity to drive against the zone.

  But it's a lot easier to see the openings from the camera-eye view,
too.
 
-Michael
 
John Labbe wrote:
> 
> On Feb 26, 2006, at 6:57 PM, Brad Wilson wrote:
> 
>>  As
>> usual the team is totally dependent on the 3-point
>> shot and has no inside game on offense (NU shot 3 free throws ALL 
>> GAME at Penn State Saturday) or defense.
>>
> 
> I don't know why there's the perception that we're "totally dependent 
> on
> the 3-point shot."  It often seems that way when we lose, like we did 
> against Penn State.