mobrien
Masters Student
Posts: 402
Loc: New York
Reg: 04-18-17
|
01-27-18 01:42 AM - Post#244762
In response to SRP
I trekked up to New Haven for the game. A few thoughts:
- The first eight minutes might have been the best Harvard has played all year. It helps when Corey is making threes, but the defense was excellent (as it was most of the rest of the game), and the offense wasn't turning it over.
- Bryce was rusty. He turned it over on a bad pass his first possession, and didn't look confident trying to score on his own. Still, it was great to see him back on the court, and hopefully he can get back to what we need him to be...
- Because the offense is still god awful without him. Juzang competes really hard on defense, but he's a walking turnover on offense. Seth still settles for too many contested threes/long twos when he can generate better looks on his own. Lewis carried us for stretches, but the guards really struggle just entering the ball to him in the post. They try to do it almost straight on instead of from the wing where they have an angle. It remains the case that our offense is entirely dependent on hitting threes just to be okay.
- On a related note: the late game playcalling was pretty atrocious too. I would have liked to see a Seth/Lewis pick and roll from the middle starting with 12-15 seconds left on the shot clock, but instead we ended up waiting till there was 6-7 seconds left and giving Seth the ball deep on the wing/baseline. A bunch of possessions that had no chance when we were clinging to a three point lead.
- The good news, though, is that the defense continues to be nasty. We have a bunch of quick, physical wings who can switch a lot of actions. The communication between them all when they do it is impressive too. It doesn't hurt that Lewis is behind them to clean up anything that gets past them.
- Random observation: I'd like to see more of Djuricic. He's really active on the glass, is a better athlete than people realize, and, although he didn't show it tonight, can stretch the defense. In the right matchup (i.e., against a team without a big center), I wonder if it'd be worth trying him as a smallball five when Lewis needs a breather instead of going big with Welsh (who was admittedly okay in his minutes).
- Put it all together, and it was a good win in a tough environment that, if we can get Bryce healthy, gives us some hope that the team might be able to start living up to the potential we thought it had before the season. The defense is elite, and if a healthy Bryce can just make the offense slightly below average, we should have a very good chance to win the Ivies.
|
