Forbes needs the equivalent of a ‘Get-back coach’ like Venables had at Clemson for when things start to unravel or when there’s a change in momentum. As soon as we get a big lead and start to get sloppy, or begin to get careless in general irrespective of a lead or not, someone should have authority to scream at Forbes to slow things down, call a TO, and/or sub out a player for someone else who might be more under control, etc. I volunteer myself as tribute.
We finished the first half yesterday in one of the most disappointing ways I’ve seen yet. We had VT on the ropes, up 15 with 6:22 left to play and we went all gas, no brakes and let them claw back some of the momentum that was ours to lose. We also had six straight missed shots, three of which were threes, three TOs, and only two FT attempts over this stretch. We were in the bonus, VT went on a 8-0 run and it took us until the 1:51 mark to call a TO at which point VT had cut the lead to 7. Instead of slowing things down, limiting possessions and running set plays to take advantage of size mismatches in the paint or being in the bonus for FTs, and most importantly…realizing that we just hit nine of our last ten 3 pt. attempts, we instead close out the half running and gunning going 3-11 from the field with a non-existent play to end the first 20 mins. This in a nutshell encapsulates the biggest weakness that Forbes has, IMHO.
We play out of control when we need to rein it in, and get aggressive again after we have dug a hole too deep to climb out of. It’s very fixable. It’s also damn disappointing that we haven’t fixed it yet.
