A couple of comments about the MBB Purdue game


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Posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on January 22, 2026 at 10:57:51

I've watched the the whole game now.

Things I didn't see: Interminable weaves. A center doing the basket-3pt line-basket shuttle on both offense and defense.

What I did see: I'm not sure. I don't know what offense we ran other than get the ball in Dent's (or occasionally Trent's) hand and let them get past the perimeter, either by beating a guy or by dribbling into undefended space. Great things happened once Dent or Trent broke a line (as they say in soccer).

On defense, the announcers called it a match-up zone. Ok. I'll go with that. But, I couldn't figure out what we were doing. That's ok, I don't have to know. It worked.

Mick has made major adjustments this season. Full credit to him.

As for X, I've been positing that he'd be a 6'11" 3 on both O and D. What do they call it in the Scientific Method when you posit something, it's tested, and the posit is wrong? That applies to my posit. Again, I can't figure out what X was playing. On D, from what I could tell, his positioning was split pretty evenly between the three levels. He defended on the perimeter (and did a creditable job), a lot. As I said in another post, his first step is slow, but he's fast enough to recover and harass a guy, so that help can arrive. Usually. And, sometimes he just shuts a guy down. He handled Smith a few times. On O, he was probably positioned deep more than anywhere else. But, he popped out to the perimeter a lot. I guess that's not uncommon for a 4.

It seems like on D, we're almost positionless. And, on O, we're almost a PG, with 4 positionless guys. There is a lot of movement on both ends.

This is relatively new. We should improve at this, whatever "this" is, as the 2nd half of the season progresses.

I know someone can explain to me what we're actually doing on O and D. I welcome it.




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