Thursday, February 12, 2015

Postgame Thoughts: Furman

I try to be calm and reasonable after big losses and big wins, but tonight deserves some extra celebrating and embellishment. This was by far the best performance of the year for the Keydets, from a shooting standpoint, as well as on defense and in transition. Despite the same old first half defensive nonsense, allowing Furman easy, uncontested layups and second-chance points off rebounds. But, much like last Saturday, we get our act together in half two and cruise for a blowout win that no one who follows this team was expecting.

It should be duly noted that our three-point shooting tonight was insane: 24 for 45 and 53% is not going to happen again this season, and probably for long after that. But it did show that these players are capable of shooting well without a true PG, although having one is certainly a necessity in order to stabilize the offense and run the motions. Our overall shooting and 3P shooting were practically identical, so we were hitting two-point shots as well, just not taking them often, and we clearly didn't need to. And it's not as if Furman came in with a bad defense: they've allowed 65.4 PPG this season, around middle of the pack among national ranks.

Brown had a saintly night, going off for 29 points 9 of 14 shooting from behind the arc. Forget what anyone did overall. Weethee was 3 of 4 on treys and had 9 points for another solid game. Jordan's 3PT shooting has picked up as of late and it's incredibly pleasing. Marshall was 7 of 15 for 25 with three dimes. Anglade had five blocks and four points, but it'd be nice to see him get more boards. Bench scoring wasn't what it's usually been, but Trey and Craig both had five points and each hit a long ball. Always good, too, to see Niles Tate to get some action, who scored late to provide for the 34-point margin.

Eleby was much better than he has been most of the year but still isn't what we need at the PG position. He essentially cost us the Wofford game (not just with the two clumsy late turnovers (and the five overall), but 1 of 9 shooting and two assists were pitiful). He hit 3 of 9 overall and had 9 points, 4 boards, and six assists. For the past few weeks our offense has seriously suffered when he runs the point, but tonight it was much better. Not sure that he had much to do with that more so than the fact that Brian simply decided to take the game over and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

On defense we held one of the SoCon's elite guards (Croone) to just 10 points where he had been averaging 18 per game coming in. Furman was actually very good shooting-wise, hitting 48% of their shots; they just turned the ball over 15 times and made only one three. I reiterate that on almost any other night, we lose, or at the very least come close to losing this game. Tonight we hit 24 three-point attempts (a DI record), but imagine what would've happened had we been stuck at our season average of 30% - we'd make only 14 and lose 30 of our 93 points. Makes a difference, doesn't it?

Getting to the line is one thing that must improve. We took only four FTs tonight, three of which came off a questionable 3PT foul on Marshall (for what it's worth we hit 75% of them). Again we get outrebounded both offensively and defensively (32-27 overall), but our shooting made that stat picayune. We scored 90+ for the first time since the Marist game and also dished out 21 assists. Turnovers were better: we had only nine.

Let not our shooting deceive you. This team still has serious kinks it needs to work out but tonight was a good start on what was largely a failed homestand. I said in an earlier post that we needed to go 4-1 to essentially lock position for a bye; we go 2-3. Realistically 4-1 wasn't possible and I really thought we'd go 3-2, but what can you do? Western Carolina and UNCG came in and dominated, and in hindsight we should've seen it coming. We had a chance to win that Wofford game late but the game was really lost in the first half. So much for the past now. The guys will head to Charleston in the next two days and better get prepared for a big and loud crowd at McAlister. It's incredibly difficult to beat a team three times in one season; we can only hope it won't have to be four come tournament time.

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