Surely Hopkins will make adjustments so Mo doesn’t have wide open 13’ all afternoon, right? Zone is what they do so if they try go man I don’t expect them to be good at it. I think you’ll see them collapse on the middle leaving our wings open. If Mo will kick it out and we can hit 3s, Cougs should win. Now if they collapse on Mo and Roberts and Flowers just dribble it around and jack 3s, it’s likely going to be A long afternoon. Reality is we played really well Wednesday and only won by 8. Vegas likes the Cougs by 3.5 which may be too much.
Huck the Fuskies - Part 2
- Thread starter COUGinNCW
- Start date
Big game. A win likely puts us on a 4 game winning streak before the ducks and Pac tourney. Guessing 18 wins and and around a 50 net ranking pre tourney puts us in NIT, which was my hopes before the coug hype went wild.
Thanks, Larry Scott for your fabulous Pac 12 Network and its unavailability on most cable/streaming services.
Probably just as well. I'd be losing my mind. I see from the box score he is now up to 0-7.
PLEASE stop shooting.
Like many of the games I've watched this year, it's a never-ending stream of layups by the other team. Some get blocked but a lot are made. Meanwhile, WSU's offense consists of interspersed missed layups with chucking up an off-balance jumper.
I have been on a slow boil all game. I don't like talking about the refs. But, they have not been consistent all game. They have let the uw foul the Cougars several times on shots. They have let Brown create space with his arm extended. They have let Roberts go over the back on rebounds.
Yep, that was one of them. The refs have also let the uw shuffle their feet at least twice without a travel call.
1 for f'ing 11.
This is mind boggling. 1 for 11 is f'ing 1 for 11 with or without Excel.
Roberts a 1-8.
Nerdball is a hoax.
This is mind boggling. 1 for 11 is f'ing 1 for 11 with or without Excel.
Roberts a 1-8.
Nerdball is a hoax.
Nice play to get out of the press, but they let the UW kid dribble out of the trap...
Pretty much sums it up.
They slopped in quite a few shots that normslly dont drop
Nerdball was to get the job, not to work the job.
See Jerry Dipoto (Smith unlike Dipoto isn't a smarmy ass)
I like Kyle Smith the guy just fine. Probably the coach most likely to have a beer with.
I hate Kyle Smith the (lack of) offensive strategist. His offensive system is offensive.
For all Leach's flaws, his "if you're not coaching it, you're allowing it to happen" maxim is spot on. Noah Williams shouldn't be taking double digit shots. He just shouldn't. I don't give a darn if he threw in 40 points last season. Something is absolutely broken in his game and the coaching staff apparently thinks ongoing bad shot selection and 20% shooting is acceptable.
You can't tell me he is nailing shots in practice and then all of a sudden can't buy a bucket in games. This is on the coaches for giving the kid the green light. He's in a system that allows him to underperform.
Same with Roberts.
My take is the Cougs need a floor general. They just don’t have one. Why in the second half of a tense game everyone is looking at each other waiting for someone to make a play. Zero on floor leadership. I think Noah was supposed to be that guy but he’s not up to the task. I think once that guy emerges the Cougs will be on the other side of some of these tight games and smith will look a lot better as a coach.
I read or heard an interview with Smith regarding why Bonton was allowed to shoot so much while having such a low shooting percentage and he just said that is what the offense needed. We were better offensively with Bonton shooting so much. Somehow I don’t feel that’s the same with Noah.
Smith will keep us competitive for however long he’s here for, but if he wants to turn the corner and make the tournament he’s going need some more guards like flowers and Bonton. Dudes that can create their own shot and score off the dribble. Imagine if we had two guards who could beat their guys off the dribble. How much bette that would make Jackson, Gueye and Efe.
Definitely not Noah. When he has been the one attempting to make something off the dribble, in addition to missing a lot of shots, he turns it over a lot, too. Bonton had his faults and would make occasional--and, here and there, more than occasional--mistakes, but it was still worth it because he made it work more often than not and he was the only one on the floor who could create. The team has missed him this year much more than expected.
Statistically, Bonton was an extremely efficient player. Last year, he would have even been better, but he missed several games, and when he came back, he was not the explosive player he had been. I see some of that in Williams. He has not been as explosive this year as he was last year, and the year before. I wonder if he is battling an unknown to us, injury?
I liked Bonton quite a bit and his clutch play this year could've won at least a few of these close games the Cougars have played. But I don't agree that he was an extremely efficient player. I can't track down last year's individual efficiency statistics, but I've read from other sources that Bonton's efficiency stats were not very good. A quick glance at his stats last year shows that he averaged more than 15 shots a game but only made 6 of them (39%) which ranked 33rd in the Pac-12 among all qualified players in FG %. He was a 33% shooter from 3-point (not too bad) and a 65% FT shooter (not that great.) But as I said, he had a knack for hitting a big shot in crunch time, something that has been lacking this year,
I will agree that Noah is simply off, for whatever reason. He's missing shots at the rim more than I can remember as it seems he just can't finish his shots. Could be injury, could be simply loss of confidence. I think we all keep waiting for that game where he puts it all together this year....and sincerely hope he returns to the old Noah by next year. IMO, he's been the difference between this year's team competing for the top third of the conference (and likely NCAA berth) and where it is today.
Glad Cougar
Similar threads
