Coach Moore here with another blog. Well it is on to conference play for the rest of the season as we wrapped up our non-conference part of our schedule with an overtime win on Sunday over Texas A&M International. It was a nice finish to our non conference schedule as we went 7-2 in those games, which is good considering some of the competition we played this year for our non-conference games.
As for the game against Texas A&M International. It was again a game where we really struggled at times to get any offensive flow. We came out of the gate strong going up 15-3 to start but our offense really started to bog down as they were able to set up their full court press after makes, slowing us down on offense as we did not attack the press very well at all. Then once we were into the front court we only had 25 seconds to get into an offense to get a shot off, which we then took our time to do so we were left with little time to effectively get a shot off. I really liked their press as it did a great job of slowing us down and it shows a press is not used just to create turnovers or trap everywhere. They used it to slow us down and slow the pace of the game down, just like we will see later this year as some other teams in our conference press not to trap but to slow the other team down offensively. The press was really affective cause we didn't attack it like we wanted to. But it was another good learning lesson and our guys hopefully will carry it over for the rest of the season.
Some other key aspects of the game once again was our ability to hang around in the game and make enough plays in the end to win. We could have easily have given up at many different junctions of the game but our guys didn't quit which was really impressive because we were not in any rhythm on offense for most of the game and we struggled to stop them at times during the game. Our guys though kept plugging away, made some plays and caused them to get in a panick and not finish some plays to get us back into the game. It was also nice to see once in overtime how aggressive we were going to the basket and getting to the foul line. The main reason we were able to get to the line was we had great ball movement and we found the open man who then was fouled otherwise we had the open lay-up. Also our ability to make free throws down the stretch was a huge reason why we won, because in the first half we didn't make our free throws and we were down at break because of it.
A couple of areas we need to clean up are making our short range shots. We had a ton of easy buckets we didn't convert. I don't know if we didn't do this because we were worried about getting our shot blocked or if it was just one of those days. Hopefully it was just one of those days but we need to finish those easy looks. If we finish those looks this game is not going into overtime and we are not down for most of the game. Our guys just need to go quick and strong to the hoop, if the shot is block it is blocked, nothing we can do if we are going as strong as we can at the hoop. Finally our shooting from the outside was off for most of this game. Everyone knows this will happen in games over the year so we cannot continually go with the outside shot if it is not falling, we need to get to the hoop sooner then we did during the game. If we can get better balance of scoring from the inside and outside it will make us a much tougher team to stop on offense.
Overall we knew this was not our best performance of the year but every team has games like this one. That is what makes the game of basketball so much fun to play and coach. Good teams will find ways to win the game if one area of their game is not going well for them during that particular game. So far over these past couple of games we have been able to do that. That is the real nice part of our last couple of wins, we know we haven't played well at times but we pulled out a win. So if we can put an entire game together where we are playing really well through the entire game then we will be a tough team to beat but until we are going to have these close games.
Well that is about all I have for today. Check back on Wednesday as I will post some alumni updates, an update on our three players we have signed for next year and our "Get to Know Your Warriors" segment.
Take care everyone, Go Warriors!!!
As for the game against Texas A&M International. It was again a game where we really struggled at times to get any offensive flow. We came out of the gate strong going up 15-3 to start but our offense really started to bog down as they were able to set up their full court press after makes, slowing us down on offense as we did not attack the press very well at all. Then once we were into the front court we only had 25 seconds to get into an offense to get a shot off, which we then took our time to do so we were left with little time to effectively get a shot off. I really liked their press as it did a great job of slowing us down and it shows a press is not used just to create turnovers or trap everywhere. They used it to slow us down and slow the pace of the game down, just like we will see later this year as some other teams in our conference press not to trap but to slow the other team down offensively. The press was really affective cause we didn't attack it like we wanted to. But it was another good learning lesson and our guys hopefully will carry it over for the rest of the season.
Some other key aspects of the game once again was our ability to hang around in the game and make enough plays in the end to win. We could have easily have given up at many different junctions of the game but our guys didn't quit which was really impressive because we were not in any rhythm on offense for most of the game and we struggled to stop them at times during the game. Our guys though kept plugging away, made some plays and caused them to get in a panick and not finish some plays to get us back into the game. It was also nice to see once in overtime how aggressive we were going to the basket and getting to the foul line. The main reason we were able to get to the line was we had great ball movement and we found the open man who then was fouled otherwise we had the open lay-up. Also our ability to make free throws down the stretch was a huge reason why we won, because in the first half we didn't make our free throws and we were down at break because of it.
A couple of areas we need to clean up are making our short range shots. We had a ton of easy buckets we didn't convert. I don't know if we didn't do this because we were worried about getting our shot blocked or if it was just one of those days. Hopefully it was just one of those days but we need to finish those easy looks. If we finish those looks this game is not going into overtime and we are not down for most of the game. Our guys just need to go quick and strong to the hoop, if the shot is block it is blocked, nothing we can do if we are going as strong as we can at the hoop. Finally our shooting from the outside was off for most of this game. Everyone knows this will happen in games over the year so we cannot continually go with the outside shot if it is not falling, we need to get to the hoop sooner then we did during the game. If we can get better balance of scoring from the inside and outside it will make us a much tougher team to stop on offense.
Overall we knew this was not our best performance of the year but every team has games like this one. That is what makes the game of basketball so much fun to play and coach. Good teams will find ways to win the game if one area of their game is not going well for them during that particular game. So far over these past couple of games we have been able to do that. That is the real nice part of our last couple of wins, we know we haven't played well at times but we pulled out a win. So if we can put an entire game together where we are playing really well through the entire game then we will be a tough team to beat but until we are going to have these close games.
Well that is about all I have for today. Check back on Wednesday as I will post some alumni updates, an update on our three players we have signed for next year and our "Get to Know Your Warriors" segment.
Take care everyone, Go Warriors!!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment