[NU Sports] Thoughts on St. John's game

[Michael Jackson]

The weakness in the 1-3-1 is the two 1's.  Juice is too small to be playing
the low post 1.  He has to guard bigger men close to the basket.  We need a
taller, speedy guy with long arms to do this.  Unfortunately, we do not have
anyone like that on the team.  The high post 1 must keep the ball from
rotating.  We did not do that last night.  We also stayed in the 1-3-1 too
long.  The 1-3-1 has problems when there are more than one big on the
opposing team.  With two potential targets on the baseline, Juice or whoever
is the lower post 1 must protect both side of the bottom of the key.  That
is difficult when you have no size and limited height.  Couple that with
limited size from the bigs we do have, and you saw what happens.  Expect
plenty of that in Big Ten play.  It was obvious after about 5 minutes that
we were getting beat down low.  We should have gone to the match-up zone.

Our offense was hurt by the absence of Cobb.  He and Crawford must be able
to penetrate in order for our other outside shooters to get open.  We did
not do that yesterday.  Teams will see that they need to stay on our outside
3-poihnt shooters and force people to penetrate.  If we can't do that, we
will have plenty of trouble with Big Ten defenses.  AS many of you said, the
limited playing time for Juice hurt.  Crawford will make those shots more
often than not.  We had off nights for two of our three offensive threats.
It is hard to win when that happens.  

Let's hope that the team will keep improving.  Our center position is what
it is.  The rest of the team has to step up and carry the load.  We must win
the winnable games in Big Ten play in order to get to the dance. 

  

Mr. Kaplan (and his most excellent family) and I took in the debacle last
night together.

1. Our inside presence (or lack thereof) was glaring.

2. St. John's shot 80 percent from the floor in the second half. No one
beats anyone when said anyone shoots 80 percent.

3. Of course 80 percent could relate to factor (1) above.

4. Discuss.

5. Blue books will be collected at the end of the proctored period. Please
abide by all rules of the honor code. That is all.

Go Wildcats!
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