TexasDeac10
Alphonso Smith
Man TX is on the rag all day.
Does he need to get laid"
Or should he start drinking better booze?
Better booze. Please, god, better booze.
Man TX is on the rag all day.
Does he need to get laid"
Or should he start drinking better booze?
By far our biggest need in practice is inbounds passing. We may be the worst team I've ever seen at it.
Practice this.
Our inbounding was horrible under both Skip and Dino, so it's certainly not a new phenomenon. For the past 11 years, our go-to inbounds play under our own basket has been the dangerous soft lob to a guy moving away from the basket near the sideline.
Pretty sure inbounding was one thing most people agree Dino's teams did very well...
Our inbounding was horrible under both Skip and Dino, so it's certainly not a new phenomenon. For the past 11 years, our go-to inbounds play under our own basket has been the dangerous soft lob to a guy moving away from the basket near the sideline.
Uhh... no, it wasn't. Both Skip and Dino were good on inbounds-sets. [Redacted] isn't awful, but he's not on either Skip or Dino's level in this area.
No way. I think we had one good baseline inbounds play in their combined tenures as coach (obviously it's was a memorable one). There was also another time LD threw the ball against the defender's back and dunked it, although I wouldn't call that a play. Under Skip, the goal wasn't to score, it was to get the ball inbounds. The lob to the big man just past the free throw line (typically Big E) was the most common.
Under Bzz we've been trying to run so-called scoring plays from the baseline, but are failing. Nikita's the only guy who sets solid screens.
Skip had a few great inbounds plays, especially earlier in his time at Wake. Towards the end it seemed like all we did was lob it to a big at the foul line extended area.
So, the consensus seems to be that Bzz is an amazing X's and O's coach, as long as those X's and O's don't include inbounds plays, rebounding, or transition offense.
Similarly, if you listened to any of the interviews with the players and coaches or watched the VT game, then you'll see and know that rebounding was stressed in practices and better executed during the game. The result? We outrebounded a superior rebounding team. In what was does that infer that Bz doesn't know his Xs and Os?
I'm willing to wait-and-see with our transition offense... But, I haven't seen anything that suggests that Bz doesn't know Xs or Os.
The team worked their butts off on rebounding drills for three days prior to the VPI game and it showed. That emphasis plus the zone strategy resulted in shocking rebounding numbers. It was a combination of proper practice clips and good game planning.
The problem with our team is that when Bz talks about what they should do without physical reps in practice, they dont get it and translate the concepts into game execution. They need the actual reps. Similarly, if they havent emphasized a concept recently, it tends to fall from focus.
If this sounds like he is dealing with a bunch of kids, he is. He talks about it being a big boys league, but he is still dealing with a bunch of 18-21 year olds who had varying degrees of quality basketball prep coming into this level. It makes a difference. When they dont play well, he pulls the young card. He needs to prepare them every game with that in mind, and the results will be more like VPI and less like Wofford.
The team worked their butts off on rebounding drills for three days prior to the VPI game and it showed. That emphasis plus the zone strategy resulted in shocking rebounding numbers. It was a combination of proper practice clips and good game planning.
The problem with our team is that when Bz talks about what they should do without physical reps in practice, they dont get it and translate the concepts into game execution. They need the actual reps. Similarly, if they havent emphasized a concept recently, it tends to fall from focus.
If this sounds like he is dealing with a bunch of kids, he is. He talks about it being a big boys league, but he is still dealing with a bunch of 18-21 year olds who had varying degrees of quality basketball prep coming into this level. It makes a difference. When they dont play well, he pulls the young card. He needs to prepare them every game with that in mind, and the results will be more like VPI and less like Wofford.
I think this is spot on, but my question is, what do you do about it? There are limited hours in a week that you can practice. If the players need constant reps in order to learn and retain a single concept, that doesn't bode well... we'll just run out of time to learn and practice, no?
I read the title to this thread and wondered how could someone determine what is #1 among all of the problems that are evident.