Lets start with a
. Now that the dust has settled and the identity of the team is more clear, I used last night to really think about the reality of our team and how we got here. Warning, this might seem negative, but it’s truly not… I just think I might have pieced together the facts a bit better then I had before. Let’s begin:
Last year was our record breaking year. Hard to take that accomplishment away, but lets look at how they reached it. Free throw line, RPG, very fast tempo, very physical. IMO, those are the 4 things that got our team to the elite eight.
• Free throw line - Jake and Samuels led the team, but these drives into the lane came from break a ways and assists. Those were mainly from Clemente
• RPG - Had a great duo of Curtis and Sutton who stayed healthy and played all games last year. Sutton left us and no one has stepped up to join Curtis (McGruder yes, but he’s a guard...) and heck, Curtis has been MIA for so many different reasons.
• Very fast tempo - No need to talk about this one, this is obviously not the same without Clemente. Matter of fact, our ball control is nasty bad (nearly at the bottom in the turnover cat.)
• Very physical - From top to bottom – Merriewether (I honestly believe he hustled the most, gave 110% on the court at all times, and was very physical.. mainly with charges and loose ball fights), Colon, Clemente, Samuels, Sutton, Kelly. Please note that 4/6 are gone.
I also think the Big 12 in general was pretty weak compared to this year and previous years. I could spend a lot of time researching this, but simply put, we played against 3 unique ranked Big 12 opponents. 1 was KU 3x’s (3 losses), 1 was Texas 1x (win but they were over rated), 1 was BU 2x’s (unranked first time, #20 second.. but either way, a very underrated team that we beat twice). We were no doubt the second best team and finished that way very clearly (didn’t put up a fight for 1st). However, this got us in a great seed and after the first round, I believe we played the weakest of the opponents we could have played. That is a very strange statement to make considering they all won, but I have always believed NCAA tourney has luck involved, and that plus the 4 bullets above equaled a elite eight appearance.
Now to this year. A lot of hype after a good NCAA tourney run. Pullen was back, along with Kelly and 6th man Samuels, Judge we thought was ready to play, Asprilla was going to take over Colon who we thought would be 3x Colon, and heck, we had a number of new guards that surely one could semi replace Clemente? Answer: Never ever assume anything (at least that’s what they tell me at work all the time). The reality is… We don’t make it to the free throw line as much and when we do, we are the worst ever. We don’t out rebound by nearly as much as we use to (a guard is leading our team). Our temp is not fast and when we try to go fast, the other team ends up doing better during those times. We are no longer physical, we just play worst and foul more. Pullen hasn’t been able to transition into the new role like we were afraid, which had led to some very bad slumps, but hasn’t shut him off completely as he is still getting 17+ avg. Judge is still mia and hopefully he is back giving great stats pretty soon. Asprilla is outplaying Colon, but we still don’t go into the paint on a constant bases. Our guards are alright, but to’s and bad passes are leading to a lot of fast breaks for the opponents.
The above is more around individual analysis. As a team… the energy is lacking, leads don’t stay around for long, once we get down we can’t seem to get back over the hump and grab a lead back, our rotation imo is to mixed up still which eliminates team unity, and we are rather young. Two under par teams have exploited us and walked away with easy victories and we are looking at a 4 game stretch that would make anyone cringe. I hate to say it, but unless Kelly comes back and is a new person… we could be looking at a 2-5/3-4 Big 12 start. Thoughts???
