Jordan Hamilton: Back in Business

Well isn’t that great. Jordan starts the 2nd half with a forced miss, a foul & a technical all in the same play.

Have a seat Hamilton.

what happened? My ESPN feed just came on

That was a flop.

The lineup in right now — Joseph, Brown, Hamilton, Johnson and Thompson is the one I would really like to see get major minutes.

How did Hamilton get a T?

ut_bkc

Not sure but his body language indicated he said something he shouldn’t of.

If Tristin could hit 60% of his free throws we would be a #1 seed.

Yes, on JHam. I still must watch online, so I didn’t see anything particularly physical. A misguided comment would make more sense.

Who do you want to win the Missouri vs. A&M game? I think I would rather play the Ags, since it’s homecourt for Missouri.

Hook ’em!

He comes, he goes, unfortunately. If (when?) UT faces off against a Big East team that gets real physical with JH, he might explode.

Gonna have to rewatch this one. Smith elementary second grade presented “Bugs” tonight.

How did we look?

OU was totally outclassed and we were barely challenged with the same disturbing habit of getting out to a big lead — 22 or 24 at half — and then easing out of the offensive sets and cruising on the defensive end to let ’em sneak back to within 13-15. Rinse. Repeat.

JH outstanding first half, J’Covan very solid, TT on the light switch (off/on), GJ solid but uninspired . . . really just a game in which OU was NOT going to win. They knew it; we knew it.

Trips: It wasn’t like Nebraska or Colorado in that our defensive effort didn’t collapse. We did get lackadasical and our spacing shrunk for a while in the 2nd half.

But we didn’t go totally braindead.

It also appears that Barnes is acknowleding that we won’t go very deep in the tournament if Balbay is playing major minutes. As I said earlier, when OU cut it to 13 Barnes put out a lineup of:

Joseph, Brown, Hamilton, Johnson and Thompson. I was very very happy with this turn of events.

IT was a lackluster 2nd half but like it has been said. They maintained their defense and found offense in spurts.

One difference, in the 1st half JH posted up smaller, quicker defender but in the 2nd half I saw him struggle some outside on the with the same defender. At times he would go work the ball down low and have success. He needs to do that more consistently or Barnes needs to allow him.

meh.
wake me up when the real tournament starts. We still don’t have our A game back.

was strange in the opening minutes watching Balbay passup outside shot after outside shot.

Wow, great weapon to be able to put Gary Johnson on the other team’s best scorer. Gary’s usually a fourth or fifth option on offense so the role is perfect for him. Rewatching now and good stuff so far. Not the same without Bob in Houston screaming for Barnes to run the Picket Fence!! though.

Jai Lucas sighting? A bomb and a lil coast to coast. Also, could have sworn I saw Jordan Hamilton bump a cutter in the first five minutes. We look good.

Just saw what I might consider the worst goal tending call I’ve seen. Anyone remember that play?

Trips, another near-knockout first half and a indifferent second half. As srr noted, they did hit the gas when OU cut it to 10.

I was oddly encouraged.

Haha. Somehow, I was too, BiH. Maybe it was because I was comparing the Big East tournament games as I watched. Those teams all seem to have “Identity” on both ends of the floor. I watch the Horns and I still have to ask, “What the hell is their identity?”

They’ve elevated their play from that abysmal stretch spanning Nebraska and Colorado, but after watching an entire season and just now seeing extended minutes with Brown, Joseph, Thompson, Johnson and Hamilton — clearly the five that will have to play for an EE run — that identity is . . . what?

Berger, I saw remember that one and it seemed questionable to me at the time. Sometimes I feel like TT gets penalized for getting up so damn high.

"What the hell is their identity?"

I’m not really sure this is a problem. Their defense is their identity.

We’ve got threats all over the floor on offense. If JH, J’CB, and CoJo are hitting their shots at a respectable clip, the team dominates. However you want to identify that identity… I’ll take it.

Bring on the Ags and root for KU.

Hamilton was only 2 of 9 from the field in the second half. He got lots of easy shots because he was driving well, Barnes was running Jordan on short curls that got Jordan the ball in the paint, and Jordan posted up some. The problem was that Jordan missed most of these easy shots. You could tell from Jordan’s body language that he was upset with himself.

Jordan needs to improve his mental toughness and not get down on himself when the shots are not dropping. He can still drive and dish or draw a foul.

The biggest reason that Jordan was missing the short shots in the 2nd half is that he was hurrying too much. Presumably he was worried about getting his shot blocked inside (that’s where a jump hook reduces the probability of getting your shot blocked).
 
Jordan grabbed 3 offensive rebounds, which is very good for him. I’d like to see Jordan tipping more offensive rebounds: he has great hands and skill and by tipping he drastically reduces the chance of his shot getting blocked.

I hope future recruits do not have the emotional makeup of a lace doilie. Good grief

Yeah, Thompson, Balbay, Johnson, Hamilton and Joseph are real crybabies…get a clue!

One reason for the sloppy second half was that TT and Joseph each only played 28 minutes each. Barnes took his foot off the gas when we went way up in the first and I think the giuys mentally did that in the second half in response. Lucas logged 23 minutes.

We are projected by Bracketology as a #2 if we don’t piss another drop during this worthless excercise, we won’t get a #1 even if we win the damned thing and there is no way we are worse than a #3. There is no discernible difference between those two seedings.

The lull in the second half was not due to fatigue or bad coaching as in the last few regular season games. We knew we could beat OU because they were badly overmatched and it showed for the first ten minutes of the second half. Hamilton stated before the game that he feels like he now has his legs back, and his scoring reflected it. We go as far as he takes us.

I’d still like to see Brown play at least as many if not more minutes than doge from here on out. He seems to have his haed on straight for the time being. You won’t see Lucas much if at all after the first round game in The Dance. If you do, it’ll be for a positive reason.

KB: I didn’t think it was goaltending either. I don’t think the ref expected him to get it.

AKHorn: They certainly don’t have an offensive identity. They should be pounding it to Thompson and pitching it to Hamilton. But I saw Thompson (!!) throw two entry passes to guards last night. (They probably were better than passes he gets, but I digress.)

Sometimes I watch a first half like that and I wonder if the other team thinks, “How did this happen?” OU never led in three games this year. FWIW, A&M hasn’t led against Texas this year.

I think the difference between a 2 and a 3 is important for Texas as there is no way they keep you in San Antonio as a 3. Well there is a way because they are stupid but that would be extraordinarily unfair to the 2 seed…

While it’s unlikely we’ll get to SA either way, they’d be more likely to put us there as a 3 than they would as a 2, particularly since KU has that #1 locked down. The Committee isn’t going to take a dump like that on a program like Kansas, nor should they.

Again, there is very little difference for us between a 2 and a 3 at this point, IMO.

Texasengr: I think it’s pretty clear they have a defensive identity. But when you go into March Madness without an offensive identity, you have a problem if you expect to make a deep run. Who takes the shot that has to be taken when you’re teetering of the edge of elimination? If you have don’t know at this stage of the season, you’re in a bind. Teetering on the edge doesn’t necessarily mean within the last 10 seconds. In that scenario, it’s gotta be JH . . . or maybe a spot-up by J’CB. Has that been established?

BiH: I don’t think they do, either. Totally agree they should be pounding it inside to TT with kick-out awareness to JH or J’CB . . . until foul shooting late becomes uber-critical. At that point, TT has to become a go-to-the-board beast (which he has been) before opponents can foul. Hah. Simple, huh? Nothing to this scheming thing.

Yes, coaching is so easy, even bloggers can do it.

How is it dumping on the 2 seed if we’re a 3, but not dumping on the 1 seed if we’re a 2?

“Hamilton stated before the game that he feels like he now has his legs back, and his scoring reflected it. We go as far as he takes us.”

IIRC, Hamilton was covered mostly by Cade Davis in the first half vs OU and pretty much ate up Cade Davis. IIRC, in the second half Jordan was mostly not covered by Cade Davis and he performed much worse (i.e. 2 for 9, got really frustrated (including getting a technical)). Of course, maybe his performance also deteriorated because of fatigue but he was missing real short shots (i.e. fatigue was not a factor in missing the short shots).

This team has plenty of scorers and can win when Jordan is not hitting his shot if Jordan shoots less and the other good offensive players shoot more. A big predictor of how well Jordan is going to do is the quality of the defender assigned to Jordan and the defensive coaching ability of the opposing coach. Jordan can be limited (put a good defender on him, force him to put the ball on the floor and force him to drive to his left) and when he is limited, the horns need to recognize and go to plan B (i.e. run more offense through Tristan, Brown, Gary, and Cory). The great thing about doing that is that it will create more easy shots for Jordan as the opponent’s defense is forced to allocate more defensive resources to defending the other horns.

“Who takes the shot that has to be taken when you’re teetering of the edge of elimination?”

Depends on the matchups, who is hot, how many points you need, and the foul shot capability. In general, I like Brown taking the last shot because is the most confident player in the clutch.

Although Barnes clearly was irritated when Brown fumbled the handoff to Hamilton at Lincoln and wound up taking the shot.

@nordberg:
As i thought i stated, I don’t think they’ll put us in the SW either way, just saying that it would be a slightly smaller dump on KU putting us there as a 3, in the extremely unlikely event it happens. My original point was and still is that we are as well off as a 3 as we are as a 2, which is moot since we locked down a 2 tonight, most likely in the SE.

Good job tonight again by Hamilton and by the offense as a whole for continuing to get the ball inside to TT all game long. When he’s handling a lot, we do good things on offense. Also, ten offensive boards is mind boggling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a motor on a Longhorn player that even comes close to his.