turning back to this amidst worries about family and friends in the fire areas - sad as that was last night, welcome to think about something other than the fire and all the change since I grew up there in the 40s and 50s....
Thinking about the conference and the lineup - compared to our new reality of the Big Ten, we came out of what overall was a pretty finesse conference, a conference in which Mick's teams were bully boys - some also AZ and OR.
I wonder if didn't truly understand what he needed to compete in the Big Ten or if he had decent NIL money but had to spread it around bringing in a whole bunch of players which spread it thin. I'm thinking it was a bit of both.
traprh's warnings focused me early on the center position. Kyle seems a nice player, a nice support piece, and Bilodeau could hold his own inside in the Pac-12 but that doesn't do it against these opponents. Mara has great height and has talent but he's a project who won't really be competitive in the middle in a B1G school until at least his junior year if not until he's a senior.
Andrews' game has fallen apart. He peaked last year when he had to carry a bad team of lots of baby players, new to college, new to American ball, but it's fallen apart.
As I said below. you look at the women's team with Betts in the paint - all the other four players can smother their opposition all over the court. Same with Michigan - with either Golden or Wolf in the middle, much less both at the same time!, it frees all the others to defend hard on the perimeter and their stats show how successfully they've done that.
For us, we have to focus on giving support inside always which limits our effectiveness guarding outside. Donaldson went nuts yesterday, shooting well behind the line while things still seemed up for grabs. But we haven't done great defending the perimeter since we got past playing former Pac-12 teams and started to meet the heart of Big 10 basketball reality.
When I listen to Mick post-games, it always seems to me he's talking to his players. In the radio postgame shows he's also talking with friends - Tracy Murray especially. (BTW it was nice that Scotty Pippen and others came over to greet Tracy last night after the game.) Anyway, Murray was saying during the game what Mick said afterwards - we were just too soft.
Bottom line - we don't have what we need in the middle. Yes, Mick recruited the players and they're great kids but whether due to lack of necessary funds or of recognition that he needs to build something different than he has had before, it's not there. Our one chance is to play defense as hard and as tough as we did during our 18-4 run from late first half into early second half.
Don't know if that is sustainable. (When we got our 4 point lead, Josh Lewin exclaimed about it but Tracy Murray was already worrying that that level of energy and exertion is really really hard to sustain. "I've seen it too many times," he said.)
But that's reality. The team ran head long into it last night - what isn't enough, what can actually work, and just how tough it is to mount and sustain that sort of effort.
We can hope to break through on the outside shots - we did make 42% of them just a month ago - but that's a desperation approach. Because if that's what you focus on, when it falters - and it always falters time to time (ask Tennessee) - you have nothing basic to fall back on.
I hope Mara continues to grow stronger and more solid and we land a really big big man also for next year. (I hope also that DA recovers his game - great kid (and also that I win the lottery but that's a different subject) But what we have now is what we have.
They are going to have to grow a LOT tougher to get through this year. A lot has been noted - including by Cronin - that they didn't come from winning upper level programs. They have to learn how to do all that. Well, to survive in the B1G without a true rim protector (sorry but Mara cannot protect the rim if he is unable to hold his position and is always boxed out and watching the action from behind the opponents) our only hope is to get tough enough to really enforce the kind of defense we've seen Cronin teams play before.
But, as those teams had Jaime Jaquez and Tyler Campbell to rally behind and this team does not, could well be a long year indeed - better than last year but more frustrating as we had all hoped for a lot better