My take on why we are where we are this year even putting coaching aside for a moment (although you will see coaching in all of this). This is by no means an exhaustive list but, in my opinion, these are the biggest issues that I'm seeing:
- We have a great deal of our inside scoring tied up in DJ Johnson and opponents have decided to work to take that away without consequence (meaning we haven't countered)
- The balance of our inside scoring is inconsistent at best or underdeveloped either from a skill perspective or in Wades case psychologically or something in that ballpark. So either we get it from DJ or it reverts to the guards
- Our guards have little court awareness unless they're in the open court. Sneed feeds the post. Ervin feeds the post. Wade feeds the post. Those 3 guys are frequently on the bench. When they are on the bench, Wes Barry and Kam will attempt to feed the post but if after one attempt it's covered up, they give up resulting in DJ eventually giving up. At least half the time (if you watch closely) after the initial attempt to go inside fails because of a collapsing defense (so we begin to swing the ball), the defense relaxes and it opens up again and I know DJ knows it but no guard is looking at him the rest of that possession
- When DJ DOES get the ball and gets the double team, he doesn't look weakside, no one is cutting from weakside, and his vision is partially cutoff due to his size It's why Dean is better off being in the low post in THOSE situations than DJ because he has better court vision
- No one wants to admit it but we lost our PG this year. Kamau should be developing as a PG. He can be one of the best in the league. BUT he's had to become our SG because, frankly he's a better shooter than Barry. Someone needs to tell Barry that on occasion.
- Ervin was a recruiting mistake. I love the guy. He has DJ energy and he is interested in feeding the post. He's a perceptive offensive rebounder. But he is unguarded on the perimeter and for good reason and he's not a very good passer . Because of this we have zero depth at PG because when Kamau goes to the 2, Jamie Dixon tells his guys to lay off of Ervin
- Brown is a ridiculous defender and is fantastic in the open court. He has zero interest in feeding the post or in learning how to feed the post. Offensively, at times, he seems more interested in getting his
- Wes has the skill set of a player with league potential but his teammates watch him too much. I actually think Wes could be an option at the 1 if his teammates learned how to play off of his moves. When DJ and Dean do that, we tend to score and Baylor and now TCU and soon to be KU will respond with a zone. Which leads me to our next issue
- Our zone offense absolutely sucks. The only players who have shown a clue are #1 Wade. #2 Sneed , and at times but much more rarely Kamau. We don't stretch the defense with an emphasis of getting inside. YOU HAVE TO GET INSIDE. And you can't get inside with a TCU collapsing zone unless you stretch it out and don't let it collapse. Only Sneed did that last night. That's Brown Wade and Stokes job. Not enough ball movement and not enough dribble penetration and not enough weakside cutters off of dribble penetration
- We play not to lose late in games. This is a huge problem given we don't do everything else right which means that our games are, consequently, close. I don't know what the exact percentages are but playing not to lose will result in losses more than 50% of the time.
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