Texas vs. Oakland Post Mortem

Brown only B+?

Two quick comments. I thought Lucas did all right on Hamilton. He’s come a long way from not being able to guard anyone last year.

And Wangmene absolutely got hosed on his first two fouls against Benson.

this post alone is evidence to Trips’ keen analysis.
More please.

Brown only B+?

If he’d gone to get the ball from Johnson, that would have been worth at least one tick. I thought he should have gone to get it from Joseph, too.

Brown is high beta, intragame.

He had some casual ball handling and passing and some plays where he went down dead ends with no plan. Hence, the grade. But without him, we don’t win. He tightens up some of that other stuff and we’re a very difficult out.

Will Hudson murdered Gary on the boards. He had 14 points, 10 boards (6 of them offensive), on 6 of 9 shooting. Their Hamilton was good, but I thought Hudson kept them in the game throughout. Barnes stressed in the post game how important they thought keeping Hudson off of the offensive boards was in their preparation. GJ didn’t execute. Barnes needs to figure out what the opportunity cost of more minutes for Wangmene means if GJ is going to play like this.
 
I thought JCB was fantastic at the free throw line and had some nice moments, but the B+ is defensible if you consider the number of times he got into the lane without a plan and he needs to make it clear to his teammates that he is our end-of-game finisher. He has to go take that ball from Johnson.
 
He and Jordan continue to hold all of our tournament upside and I thought JCB came up big under the bright lights.

Can’t disagree with your analysis Trips save for the last. B+ for Barnes is a touch high given:

1) His end-game decision to allow the Horns to go into the proverbial offensive shell; and,

2) His reluctance to recognize GJ’s inept play and give Wangmene more minutes.

Yes, survive and advance is what matters, but, damn, I’d like to see Barnes make better adjustments based on what the opponent is doing and how his players are performing.

Agree with AKHorn. Barnes is still a loss waiting to happen. I know there are issues about execution by the players, but late game collapses have just happened enough to make me think that Barnes can’t figure out which buttons to press for his team. Or, rather, he presses the wrong buttons at the end of the season.

I haven’t enjoyed watching a Texas player in the way I love TT in years. What an amazing kid. Next year with Kabongo will be fun to watch. Big time. I’d be surprised if we beat Arizona, making our seed unfortunately accurate.

Sad to say, Arizona is going to be bend Texas over and savage them. Our dimwitted coach is worth ~7 points for the Wildcats; our players’ overall wretched basketball IQ is probably worth the same. Then Hamilton and Thompson will bolt, meaning at least a 2-year wait until we get back to the second weekend of the tourney.

Happy Motherfucking Equinox!

Nitpicking but I probably would have scored Brown an A and Lucas a B+. Brown made mistakes but he heavily influenced this game to be a win. Lucas gave some important minutes but don’t think he affected the game as positively as Brown. Both had good games though.

GJ biggest problem was keeping Woodson off the boards. One of the announcers said that Woodson’s Off rebounds was what was keeping OU in the game. I agree. Didn’t realize he only had 2 total. That is bad. He also forced several passes which led to fast breaks. I don’t fault him for taking the ball against the press that time. It was the right decision to get the ball across the half court line. The big mistake was that he shouldn’t have kept dribbling. He should have crossed the line gone as far towards the basket as possible before a defender came to him and then picked the ball up. Then he could have protected the ball against the guards and found a ball handler.

To simply back up others, JCB gets the B+ for me because of his free throws - otherwise lower-a lot lower.

Oakland was in position to make the late run because J’Covan was out of control on a several drives. I got the impression that was going to the rim no matter what, and he was assuming that he would pick up a foul. He was wrong several times and found himself too far under the basket with no place to go.

He gave out a yelp, looked around at the refs, and IMO when he didn’t get the call, he pouted by being lackadasical and disinterested in what kind of trouble his treammates were in.

Kid drives you nuts with his emotional ying-yang, and then turns a play that makes you go, “oh right, that’s why Barnes puts up with him.”

JMR — go somewhere else — please.

Kid drives you nuts with his emotional ying-yang, and then turns a play that makes you go, "oh right, that’s why Barnes puts up with him."

really don’t think you have a clue about the relationship between Barnes and J’Covan.

There were plenty of Horns who had some brain farts late in the game – - Gary taking the ball up court; Cory doing a crossover with his defender on top of him, etc. But that happens with college kids.

Without Brown’s assertive play Friday, the team is back in Austin watching the tournament on TV.

“Oakland was in position to make the late run because J’Covan was out of control on a several drives. I got the impression that was going to the rim no matter what, and he was assuming that he would pick up a foul. He was wrong several times and found himself too far under the basket with no place to go.”

This.

J Nunn – you are right. So is Steve. That’s the J’Conundrum.

Aside from Derrick Williams (and even he had a 10 minute stretch of huh?), Arizona wasn’t terribly impressive. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

I liked seeing Jordan and J’Covan in attack mode. There was a confidence that had been missing during our end of regular season struggle.

Arizona isn’t going to bend anybody over unless they have some revelation on team defense or shoot 14 of 22 from behind the arc.
 
I still like our chances against the Wildcats.

I’m going to disagree a little with the “out of control” J’Covan drives. I’ve been calling for more drives to the basket, but J’Covan or anyone else, because it creates more spacing, plus you might get the refs actually calling a foul when you get clotheslined.

Some of JCB’s drives were not things of beauty, but I see them as a progression to a much better player. Hopefully, he’ll get more respect from the refs and he’ll learn to dish it more often when the defense collapses. Additionally, his teammates will position themselves better when he makes those drives, i.e. either create a driving lane or step back from the paint and get ready for a pass.

Next year’s back court of Corey Joseph, J’Covan Brown and Myck Kabongo gives me a warm, basketball fuzzy. Not sure what to expect from Julien and Sheldon, but that 3 guard rotation of CJ, JCB and MK, going to frighten a lot of teams.

meant to type "more drives to the basket by J’Covan or anyone else,

Texoz -
 
We want J’Covan driving. We also want J’Covan driving with a plan. Driving directly underneath the basket when Oakland’s D doesn’t collapse from the 3 point line ain’t a good basketball read.
 
12 for 12 from the free throw line covers a multitude of sins though.

Here’s the Arizona stat that jumped out at me… except for Williams, no one averages 10 ppg.

Then it was how close the U of A three-point percentage allowed is to Texas’s.

attack the basket offensively with Joseph who IMO has better handles than Balbay and is more of a threat scoring and get Williams to sit asap. I haven’t been real impressed with Zona’s defense and don’t want to fall to yet another Pac10 team. Another concern is the final 5 minute meltdown where the Horns seem to scramble independently in all directions. If the Horns can control the boards and keep their turnovers down, they should win this pretty easily. If not, it’s going to be difficult to be psyched about any Barnes team regardless of who runs the guard, center and forward positions.

I’m not going to putting all of my eggs in the basket of J’Covan coming off the bench to win this for the Horns. If he were consistent, he’d be starting most any and every time because the guy has all the tools. And yeah, we would have lost the last game without him so the thought goes, if he goes cold do the Horns fold? I really want to see Mr. Joseph go off.

“Arizona isn’t going to bend anybody over unless they have some revelation on team defense or shoot 14 of 22 from behind the arc.

I still like our chances against the Wildcats."

agreed.

Maybe Barnes’ putting Johnson on Williams is a clear indicator he’s going to go to Alexi early and often if GJ doesn’t go back to being what he was during the regular season for us, which was a very good player and leader who understood his role instead of a guy who seems to have suddenly decided he is a star player who has to way more than is really necessary for us to win.

Arizona is a team that looks very beatable. They are careless with the ball and let me know when Williams plays defense on a regular basis. The real question should not be who will we use to defend him, but who does Arizona have that can even slow down Tristan Thompson? I think no one.

I’d also like to echo srr50’s sentiment on JMR. What a demented douchebag!

Frank -
 
That’s the right read on it, in my estimation. We will throw a lot of bodies at Derrick.