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Few thoughts on last night’s game
Posted on: December 22, 2016 at 08:44:45 CT
FIJItiger MU
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Overall, I was reasonably impressed. The Illini are not a particularly good team and are poorly coached, but on paper that is not the kind of team we should be able to hang with and we did. There was really no portions of the game where we were entirely out of it and it was at least reasonably competitive throughout.
The performances of Woods and Geist are sort of what I hoped/expected we would see out of Kim’s team thus far into his tenure. Neither one of those guys have the talent to be playing at this level, but they are thriving simply by playing harder than anyone else on the court. That is certainly to be commended. I can’t imagine when he was in JUCO that Woods envisioned he would be the man holding down the blocks on a major D1 program, but he does a commendable job of it.
Hughes appears to me to be dangerously close to the tipping point of developing so many bad habits they will be difficult to break. That may be the largest detrimental impact of this season, in that I think on paper he has the ability to contribute at this level but he simply is bringing nothing to the table anymore and his shot selection is killing us. Someone has got to reach him to attack the basket and walk him through some game film of what constitutes a good shot, and find other ways he can contribute when his shot isn’t falling.
Puryear consistently brings great effort and demands the ball. Tip of the cap to him on his development, because as a freshman he was a very weak rebounder and defender and that isn’t the case anymore. He may struggle at times in conference because he is a little miscast and undersized, but I feel like he is the only consistent thing you can reasonably count on….he is most of the time going to give you good production and good effort.
I can’t imagine how frustrated Walton must be. I don’t even have a comment other than to say it is baffling and I feel sorry for that young man. To a lesser degree, same goes for Willie Jackson. Hope they are able to stick it out and find a more appropriate role under a normal staff. I think Barnett could be useful to in a more defined role, but its hard to tell at this point.
Overall I thought it was a reasonably good performance from the players. Our backcourt is just so weak, and I expected going into the season it would be our frontcourt that would cause us the biggest issues. Phillips, Vanleer, and this current version of Hughes are just really going to struggle against legit major college opposition and they don’t bring much to the table for the amount of minutes they are being given. But I think a similar performance will beat Lipscomb, and I think it would defeat 3 or 4 lower level SEC opponents at home.
The performances of Woods and Geist are sort of what I hoped/expected we would see out of Kim’s team thus far into his tenure. Neither one of those guys have the talent to be playing at this level, but they are thriving simply by playing harder than anyone else on the court. That is certainly to be commended. I can’t imagine when he was in JUCO that Woods envisioned he would be the man holding down the blocks on a major D1 program, but he does a commendable job of it.
Hughes appears to me to be dangerously close to the tipping point of developing so many bad habits they will be difficult to break. That may be the largest detrimental impact of this season, in that I think on paper he has the ability to contribute at this level but he simply is bringing nothing to the table anymore and his shot selection is killing us. Someone has got to reach him to attack the basket and walk him through some game film of what constitutes a good shot, and find other ways he can contribute when his shot isn’t falling.
Puryear consistently brings great effort and demands the ball. Tip of the cap to him on his development, because as a freshman he was a very weak rebounder and defender and that isn’t the case anymore. He may struggle at times in conference because he is a little miscast and undersized, but I feel like he is the only consistent thing you can reasonably count on….he is most of the time going to give you good production and good effort.
I can’t imagine how frustrated Walton must be. I don’t even have a comment other than to say it is baffling and I feel sorry for that young man. To a lesser degree, same goes for Willie Jackson. Hope they are able to stick it out and find a more appropriate role under a normal staff. I think Barnett could be useful to in a more defined role, but its hard to tell at this point.
Overall I thought it was a reasonably good performance from the players. Our backcourt is just so weak, and I expected going into the season it would be our frontcourt that would cause us the biggest issues. Phillips, Vanleer, and this current version of Hughes are just really going to struggle against legit major college opposition and they don’t bring much to the table for the amount of minutes they are being given. But I think a similar performance will beat Lipscomb, and I think it would defeat 3 or 4 lower level SEC opponents at home.
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Few thoughts on last night’s game - FIJItiger MU - 12/22 08:44:45