Impressions from game yesterday

Posted on: December 4, 2016 at 09:32:57 CT

Phillips has a lot of room for improvement in the mental game. Made several careless plays and was largely ineffective in cracking wku's zone.

Walton/CVL can't be benched for Barnett soon enough. They just rotate the ball, and occasionally make a steal, assist or rebound. Non-factors and Walton has the ugliest jump shot form I've ever seen. Sharpshooter CVL was what...1 for 5 from 3? Only thing I will say for CVL is that he is the only sophomore that is playing with the right mindset. TP is out there having a little drama session with himself, and Walton looks like he hasn't played organized basketball. When the chips were on the line, CVL sealed the win.

In the second half the team had the play to break the zone. They ran it four times that I saw, and only successfully executed it once (woods uncontested dunk). The other three times were two turnovers and a missed gimme layup by woods.

Hughes played well. He made several hustle plays and his defense was good. He had several good drives beating his man, but couldn't finish the play. He just needs more time on the court.

Puryear/Woods seem to have this idea that they are big men. They get the entry, and instead of immediately going up, they dribble a couple times, get double teamed, and then pump fake their way into getting stuffed. Puryear is very effective with a quick mini hook, and when he makes a quick move to the hoop. I don't have much hope for Woods, but Puryear can be more effective if he plays to his strengths and stops trying to have a power game under the hoop. Smith got some minutes. Threw up an airball and got beat on every toss up rebound, but it was good that he was out there.

KA was not pleased yesterday. He completely lost it on Phillips after TP threw a terrible pass at Puryear's shins in the final few minutes. After the turnover phillips went into this smiling self-critical routine, and KA came off the bench and laid into him in the middle of the court. The only other coaching aspect I observed is that KA and all the assistants met during the final timeout, when WKU had a chance to shoot for the win, and they all seemed very forlorn. Not panicked, but they seemed to be without answers for this squad.

It's unfortunate that Barnett has to miss all these games and that Nikko is out. The team needs game time experience playing with each other. I wish we could play 20 non-conf cupcakes. It's apparent that these guys haven't developed a comfort level with each other yet. I'm not seeing any team identity on offense. We don't have the personnel to be an offensive powerhouse, but we do have a sufficient level of athleticism to compete. It isn't being realized at this point, largely because they don't play like guys that have played together for 2-3 seasons. The one guy that could mitigate this absence of experience is Phillips, and he's really not playing very smart to date this season.