Happy fricken' New Year, ya'll !
Just a couple of observations from the Blades.....
Felt bad for Hamilton the way the whole sequence played out after the 3 shot foul, and for those not at the game,
I'll recap because I don't know how much you could see on TV. First it looked like he was gonna shoot right away...
then not... so he went over to the Uconn bench...but the officials were checking the monitor for time, so he walked
away .....Then it really got as weird as I've ever seen for a shooter in that situation.
He ended up at the half court circle completely by himself as both teams huddled by the bench for what seemed like
an eternity. It felt so weird with the crowd buzzing they broke out in a standing ovation for the kid....by that time I swear
the kids pulse must have been at 300 bpm and was shocked the staff didn't get him over to the huddle just to calm him
down and put an arm around him, but more to take the pressure off by discussing the D strategy "after Daniel makes the
shots were gonna do this".... a ploy I recall JC talking about doing with FT shooters at times in his career. It makes the
shooter concentrate on other things beside the pressure of the FT's and with the team....instead of standing by himself
alone on an Island with 13,000 fans staring at him and cheering.....don't know if would have changed the outcome...but
it's the weirdest thing I've seen in over 20 years as a season tix holder.
Secondly as Ozzie said..and to state the obvious..Uconn has no #2 guard to break anything down off the dribble without
Boat...this is gonna continue to be a problem all year. The 2 true PG thing in the backcourt which has been a NC staple of
Uconn just doesn't exist. Hamilton is probably the 2nd best on this team at creating a look/pass off the dribble but he doesn't
understand tempo yet and forces into things at to quick a speed, so the TO's ( 6 yesterday) just keep on coming. Same with
Purvis who has even worse vision and is a bulldozer/ klutz with a worse handle. Beyond them T-Sam wasn't expected to
have that skill set but now must. And Cass Jr has been a dud and struggles on D, just like Omar who gets beat off the
dribble repeatedly, so who's left ?
This team without Boat reminded me of Michigan St. that I watched 2 days ago vs. Maryland. Like Temple yesterday
Maryland was beating their men over and over going to the hoop, while everything Mich St. did was passing it around
on the perimeter hoping that something would open as they lost in OT ( after Tom Izzo twice stole regulation victory from
his own team with bad decisions)
So the bottom line on this is you better stop saving scholarships for walk-ons KO when you had 3 left and need to find
another guard with a breakdown game....for next year to go along with Adams too......and a 3 pt shooter would help while
your at it.
Lastly......you can tell this current Uconn group are front runners without a leader. They're more likely to score the 3
and hit FT's when they don't mean anything ( Central CT 92%) but in a close game they tense up ( less we forget Purvis
was on 1-4 FT's in the clutch yesterday too)..... That's 3 games now, on FT's... the 2 chokes by Boat and now
this game....which is the difference of being 6-5 or 9-2.
As far as winning anything I just don't see it, the 2 PG thing who can create doesn't exist and it's a major flaw. I hope
I'm wrong. Enjoy the Bowl games and your Holiday !!!
This post was edited on 1/1 9:36 AM by the Blades