Thanks to the generosity of one of our posters, my basketball crazy ex-player and coach daughter and I were able to watch the game from great seats near half court. I've read the other reports and thoughts, and I agree with most all of them. Here are my thoughts.
First Coaching:
I was not surprised that Gotlieb would have his team play hard, nor that he would know the game. I was impressed with the fundamental skill of his team, especially in the first half before they got tired. Kudos to him and his kids. I was against him having a radio show at Joes before the game, but he was very complimentary of Coach Lutz, and of course GIA.
We have a COACH! After a long time of watching pretty bad basketball, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. He was intentional in everything he did and said. He was holding every single player accountable for every single detail. He immediately pulled and ripped every player who screwed up by lack of effort (very little of that) or dumb mistakes. He pulled and taught every player who were in the wrong spot or missed the right opportunity, etc. He pointed and talked and coached each one and then sent them to the assistants to continue the lesson.
If you only watched on tv you missed a lot, because he was excellent. He did all this while exuding a calmness and assurance that he knew what he was doing and he was the boss. I don't mean to imply his butt chewings were calm because he got after them, but he immediately returned to that calm intentional attitude of watching every move everyone made on the floor.
I told my daughter that Gotlieb spent too much time focusing on the refs (more on them later), and less on teaching, whereas Lutz spent more time teaching and little complaining, at least openly. He may have said plenty as they would run by.
Players:
The kid from Langston, Roy, can flat shoot the ball from outside. He is tall and left handed, which is somewhat awkward to guard as you don't see many of them. His shot was silky smooth and I thought he would never miss. The Hall kid for them had an excellent first half but he slowed down in the second half.
For us, I was really pleased with BT on the offensive end after he settled down. It took a couple of minutes, but he looked good. He is still a step slow on defense and he overcompensates by overplaying the passing lane and getting beat on the back door. He will get better at it because he is being held accountable for it.
I know some had questioned Ousmane a little, but I thought he did a good job overall. I was shocked he hit his free throws because he has not been very good in the past. He didn't finish a few times because he had poor footwork under the goal and didn't go up strong. Again, he will get better. He played pretty good defense if he was able to guard someone in the lane. They were small, Hall is only 6'6", and therefore Gotlieb ran the motion offense all night. Hall could really shoot the 3 so Ousmane had to go out on him, and he just wasn't agile nor quick enough to stay up with him if Hall cut back door.
Brantley and Dean can fly, but they got to going a little too fast at times and dribbled into trouble, as was noted by another poster. Again, they will have plenty of opportunity to get that coached out of them.
Devo got out of control at times, but he is tenacious on the defensive end, and he can shoot if he gets his feet set.
Chi Chi and Devo both wanted to complain about fouls but coaches stopped them both and made sure they would question calls, not players.
Chi Chi got an earful all night as he made quite a few mistakes, but he also played with great energy and hustle.
Suemnick was not very good in the first half, but he settled down and played better late. He is listed at 6'8", but he doesn't look or play that big.
Overall, loved the attitude and hustle of the team. Defense wasn't great the first half as they didn't get quite far enough out on shooters and Green Bay was crazy hot the first 10 minutes.
I'm certain we will continue to play motion offense because we aren't very big inside, but I also would be we get several new sets and options in it as we get closer to conference. We really didn't do anything very exotic last night. We were very vanilla on out of bounds plays under the goal, but we also hardly had any.
Our pace and tenacity started wearing on them late in the first half. It ramped up in the second when we built the 20 point lead. Their shots quit falling with such regularity because they had lost their legs. As with any sport, when the legs go, you lose strength, balance, and technique. Not to be overlooked, when players get tired, they also make more mental mistakes. They start throwing the ball away, etc. It really showed until about the 5 minute mark. Then we got really sloppy and gave them some easy buckets while we were having some very bad possessions, turnovers and quick, bad shots. We should have beaten them by over 20 pretty easily.
I think we are pretty athletic, just not very big inside. I fully expect to see a much more polished team by conference.
Someone said something about our help defense. The 5 out motion offense is hard to give help with if they have outside shooters all over the floor. Green Bay had that so we had to be cognizant of not helping too much. The main problem was we just overplayed the passing lane too hard and when we got beat it was on the baseline. That is even harder to help because you get no help from someone dropping from out front. Their kids finally started missing and according to Lutz's post game, he made some adjustments at half time.
Refs: They were really uneven if not downright bad. Really tik tak outside but let them kill each other in the lane. That was part of the reason Ousmane looked bad under the goal. They were hammering him on the put backs with no calls.
