This. Our half court offense isn’t much better than it was under Ray.
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I like Howland a lot and I am doing my best with him.
Shots fall, and then they don't. Sometimes you get calls and sometimes you don't. Sometimes the other team has a good game plan for you. This team is very young and is going to be inconsistent with those things. But my one beef is with undisciplined play. We give the ball away way too much with unforced turnovers, and we have what has to be the crappiest shot selection of any team in the conference. Now, it's not always the case...and the Vandy game is an example where the team took care of the ball better and made some shots. But the things that always travel, whether you're hitting shots or not: Defense, effort, and discipline. We play good defense. We give inconsistent effort and even less consistent discipline. Those things are easy fixes for a coach and that is my only frustration with Howland.
Yelling and screaming all the time doesn’t make a good coach. It gets you attention and gets you noticed and on camera but it doesn’t make you a good coach. There are good coaches that do it, and there are terrible coaches that do it. All in all yelling and screaming is more effective if you don’t do it much. What you absolutely DON’T want is a coach acting out of his character. Acting jobs don’t work. Players see through that every time.
The only way this team is effective offensively is when we attack the rim. When we get lazy, and start jacking 3?s after 2-3 passes we are done. We are also a lazy passing team, and that doesn?t mesh well for a poor perimeter shooting team. I posted after the OM game that I had seen enough, because I hated the way we played the last 3 minutes. It was just poor IQ b-ball, and that drives me crazy. Anyway, hopefully this team matured as the season continues.
Let's circle this conversation back to the original point...
I certainly don't disagree with many of the comments or criticisms of how the team has played at various times this season so far. The reality is that Howland doesn't either. If you listen to his pressers, post game discussions with Richard Williams, Dawgtalk or even his on court coaching, you would know that he is focused on the issues that face this team. He constantly points out the poor/lazy passing, poor or no off ball movement, poor shot selection, not working the ball inside, poor timing and lack of patience on ball rotation to break down zones and the consequences of each of them. He also points out and contrasts the results when we do those things effectively.
I get as pissed as anybody when we get lazy and decide to take a few plays off that lead to losses like Ole Miss and Auburn, but it is salt in a wound when I have to listen to crap like "has Howland ever seen a 1-3-1 zone" or "Howland is too old" or "Howland don't care" or "the game has passed him by" or "we suck" or "Stansbury woulda..." and all the other nonsense that frequents discussion(if you can call it that) of our basketball program. To me, it's like taking a dump on the floor of your own kitchen. I'm not na?ve about the reality that it is de rigueur in the cyber world to be an anonymous choreographer of crapola, but please pardon me when I point out that crap for what it is...
disagree totally. We had Holman in the paint and got the ball inside to him in the halfcourt where he shined. He also made some good passes out of it as well. Holman knows where the ball needs to go when doubled in there or if he cant get a shot. He and Ado need to split time at the 5 from here moving forward.
My issue is this. Teaching guys to throw crisp passes isn't hard. It is harder to teach them where to pass if they haven't been taught before and/or have a low natural basketball IQ.
But he has a deep roster and thus can use the bench to teach these things. We played a patsy non-conference schedule and i would have loved to have seem him sit guys for lazy passes and call that out in the presser when asked when guys sit. My problem is there has been zero improvement in this all year. We throw passes softer than any other team I see and our off the ball "cut" are way slower and our pick setting and use of picks is still awful.
My main problem isn't necessarily that we're bad at things. It's that most of these guys have been bad at these things for 2 years with absolutely no improvement. So while you may complain about it all day in a presser, doesn't seem like much time is spent on practicing it.
A lot of the discontent is done by design. I have tried to tell Bulldogs on here and other sites that OM has a “planned” attack to spread rumors and discontent because they see MSU has more potential than they have. That is a real threat and they take counter espionage very serious. This should be a Bulldog site only and get rid of the discontent. I don’t mean varying opinions should not be heard. I mean negative demeaning, disrupting posts should be dealt with.
I'll give Howland credit, we've been solid against bad competition all year. Well, except we lost to a bad OM team.
Is there a link for Dawgtalk?
You mean that "bad" OM team that handed Florida it's first SEC loss of the season and missed beating an aTm team by one shot(that hit the bottom of the rim and popped out) on the road. A team(aTm) that most pundits say will make a deep run in the tourney. The same bad OM team that hasn't lost a SEC game at home yet this year?
You are right that we should have won that game, but we didn't lose it because Howland didn't know they would play a 1-3-1 zone or that he doesn't know what a team has to do to score against that zone.