• The KillerFrogs

Frogs v OSU - ESPN+

CountryFrog

Active Member
I tend to agree. There was about a 2 minute stretch in the second half where you could see CJD dramatically telling the players to move, move, move on offense and yet they just kind of milled around while a guard dribbled a ball up top. Either the "will" is not there with some of these players or they just don't have basketball savvy. I tend to think of it as the latter. I just don't see a savvy basketball player on the court for us and definitely not one that appears to be a leader. I admit that I didn't see a whole lot of CJD's games at Pitt but I did generally thought of them as hard-nosed physical teams...could easily be wrong on this though. I just wonder if we have a fit with the style CJD wants to play.
The types of teams Dixon has had at TCU have been pretty much polar opposites of his Pitt teams. College basketball is a little different game than it was 10 years ago and certainly this is a totally different program and recruiting base but it is a little odd nonetheless.
 

Eight

Member
From a pure entertainment aspect, most of our games are pretty tough to watch regardless of the final outcome.

Then again, that's college basketball in general for the most part.

watched the second half of uw - arizonia this past weekend and holy crap was the offensive execution n the last 5 minutes of that game total trash.

there seems to be this inverse relationship between the amount of individual offensive skills on a roster and the ability to execute a half court offense in today's college game
 

TRF51

Active Member
We did also win 4 games amidst all the beatings you spoke of.

The fact is we only have one guy who is a consistent scoring threat and all of our opponents know it. Which means if other guys aren't making some 3s then we become very easy to defend. I don't know what offensive philosophy can overcome that in a sport that's all about making shots.

Now if you want to blame the coach for this year's roster being highly flawed then that seems like a better argument to make.

The talent in this team is 100% him. I think the talent on this team is much better then what we are seeing. Kevin is a stud, Bane is a stud, RJ is a good player who probably thinks he is better than what he is. The freshman have talent. We should win against the team we played. My problem is we start doing something well then we go away from it. That second half against Tech we were a different team, our offense looks very different, we made cuts we don’t usually make and we were not shooting a bunch of 3s. I want to see that team.
 

Wexahu

Full Member
I tend to agree. There was about a 2 minute stretch in the second half where you could see CJD dramatically telling the players to move, move, move on offense and yet they just kind of milled around while a guard dribbled a ball up top. Either the "will" is not there with some of these players or they just don't have basketball savvy. I tend to think of it as the latter. I just don't see a savvy basketball player on the court for us and definitely not one that appears to be a leader. I admit that I didn't see a whole lot of CJD's games at Pitt but I did generally thought of them as hard-nosed physical teams...could easily be wrong on this though. I just wonder if we have a fit with the style CJD wants to play.

Don’t know what the problem is but far too often we do not look like a well-coached team at all. If I had to guess I’d say that the guy is not easy to play for, for a number of reasons. I’ve seen enough that I’m convinced we’d be better off going in a different direction. If we’re willing to pay $3M+ for a basketball coach we should be able to get a good one.

It’s really hard to get excited about the direction of the program right now.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
The talent in this team is 100% him. I think the talent on this team is much better then what we are seeing. Kevin is a stud, Bane is a stud, RJ is a good player who probably thinks he is better than what he is. The freshman have talent. We should win against the team we played. My problem is we start doing something well then we go away from it. That second half against Tech we were a different team, our offense looks very different, we made cuts we don’t usually make and we were not shooting a bunch of 3s. I want to see that team.

KS is very limited in his studdiness. Bane is too often a disappearing stud. I'm not seeing the talent that some apparently are seeing. I'm seeing a lot of athletes who just don't seem to be ballplayers. Maybe a few can grow into it but I'm not seeing it presently.
 

TRF51

Active Member
Don’t know what the problem is but far too often we do not look like a well-coached team at all. If I had to guess I’d say that the guy is not easy to play for, for a number of reasons. I’ve seen enough that I’m convinced we’d be better off going in a different direction. If we’re willing to pay $3M+ for a basketball coach we should be able to get a good one.

It’s really hard to get excited about the direction of the program right now.

I am glad I am not the only one who feels that way. Some will say but we always have sucked and we were decent for a year or two so we should all be happy with that. The amount of money we put into the program we should expect more.
 

DickBumpastache

Active Member
The offense is really tanking. If we play against a zone we're basically incapable of getting the ball to Samuel. And frankly I'm surprised teams don't pull a hack-a-Shaq on Samuel, given that he's shooting 36% on FTs this year.

Our 2 most highly-touted freshmen are basically unplayable. The other one (Farabello) is finally starting to score but did not log an assist in 33 minutes tonight. The transfers are not capable of playing high-volume P5 minutes. We've got 2.5 guys who would be in the rotation on high-caliber teams: Samuel, Bane, and Nembhard when he's not chucking.

At this point I am just hoping that we can hang on to the guys we do have and hope they improve. Another mass exodus would basically spell the end of Dixon's time here IMO.
 

Wog68

Active Member
It has been said here that we are unwatchable. Totally agree. Will be watching Gonzaga from here on out as Mark Few knows how to recruit and coach.
 

CountryFrog

Active Member
KS is very limited in his studdiness. Bane is too often a disappearing stud. I'm not seeing the talent that some apparently are seeing. I'm seeing a lot of athletes who just don't seem to be ballplayers. Maybe a few can grow into it but I'm not seeing it presently.
I think some are harder on Bane than deserved given he's the ONLY scoring threat on our team most games and every defense knows it. But certainly there's some truth to the fact that he's not as aggressive as he needs to be.

You're absolutely right on the rest of it. Samuel has improved but is still incredibly limited if he gets the ball more than 4 feet from the basket. The thought that some people have that he's a guy we can consistently run our offense through is very far fetched imo. Then you have RJ who is capable of scoring 30 but even more capable of going 4-15 with 4 turnovers.

At least those 3 are capable though and KS and RJ both are better than last year which gives you hope for the future. Outside of those 3 I also just see athletes who aren't great basketball players. Farabello has shown some promise but not enough to make a significant difference to this point.

We can all point the finger at Dixon for the many recruiting misses and defections that led us here as has been done ad nauseam already but you also have to give SOME level of credit to the coaches and players for figuring out how to win 4 of these first 9 B12 games despite the incredibly flawed makeup of this year's team.
 

Eight

Member
I think some are harder on Bane than deserved given he's the ONLY scoring threat on our team most games and every defense knows it. But certainly there's some truth to the fact that he's not as aggressive as he needs to be.

You're absolutely right on the rest of it. Samuel has improved but is still incredibly limited if he gets the ball more than 4 feet from the basket. The thought that some people have that he's a guy we can consistently run our offense through is very far fetched imo. Then you have RJ who is capable of scoring 30 but even more capable of going 4-15 with 4 turnovers.

At least those 3 are capable though and KS and RJ both are better than last year which gives you hope for the future. Outside of those 3 I also just see athletes who aren't great basketball players. Farabello has shown some promise but not enough to make a significant difference to this point.

We can all point the finger at Dixon for the many recruiting misses and defections that led us here as has been done ad nauseam already but you also have to give SOME level of credit to the coaches and players for figuring out how to win 4 of these first 9 B12 games despite the incredibly flawed makeup of this year's team.

agree that kevin is limited in his shooting range, but when you get him the ball in the right areas he can be very effective and i would rather see the frogs work to get the ball to kevin down low and force teams to respond to that than the screen high, try to drive in isolation and kick out to a stationary shooter which just isn't getting it done for the frogs.

skip accused my of cherry picking stats using the conference play numbers, but for me those are the telling numbers. these are the teams who know what you are going to run on offense, the scouting is more thorough than lamar or uc irvine and the game prep is more intense along with the level of competition.

frogs averaged 73 points a game in their 13 non-conference games and that number falls to 59 points a game in conference play.

this isn't a matter of a few players in a shooting slump, they need to maximize what they can get out of their knowns and hope some of these younger players start to play better though again i am supposed to be happy with the freshmen.
 
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CountryFrog

Active Member
agree that kevin is limited in his shooting range, but when you get him the ball in the right areas he can be very effective and i would rather see the frogs work to get the ball to kevin down low and force teams to respond to that than the screen high, try to drive in isolation and kick out to a stationary shooter which just isn't getting it done for the frogs.

skip accused my of cherry picking stats using the conference play numbers, but for me those are the telling numbers. these are the teams who know what you are going to run on offense, the scouting is more thorough than lamar or uc irvine and the game prep is more intense along with the level of competition.

frogs averaged 73 points a game in their 13 non-conference games and that number falls to 59 points a game in conference play.

this isn't a matter of a few players in a shooting slump, they need to maximize what they can get out of their knowns and hope some of these younger players start to play better though again i am supposed to be happy with the freshmen.
The tough part with Samuel is that if you're simply making the argument that he's better than many of the other options then that's probably true. I can't say that we have a bunch of terrific options that outshine throwing the ball into Kevin.

The other side of that is that I don't think a single opponent would have a problem with seeing us throw it into the post to KS 20 times per game because he's still not efficient enough with his post game or good enough from the FT line where we can consistently win doing that. There are games where KS has given us nothing on offense and we won and others where he scored 15+ but the offense as a whole still struggled mightily overall. So I just don't see his offensive production as a connection to winning.

That's the problem with the offense in general I think. After Bane, there are no good options that we can count on every night so we kind of just have to go into each game hoping that we can hit some 3s and be good enough on defense to be able to win.
 

Wexahu

Full Member
The tough part with Samuel is that if you're simply making the argument that he's better than many of the other options then that's probably true. I can't say that we have a bunch of terrific options that outshine throwing the ball into Kevin.

The other side of that is that I don't think a single opponent would have a problem with seeing us throw it into the post to KS 20 times per game because he's still not efficient enough with his post game or good enough from the FT line where we can consistently win doing that. There are games where KS has given us nothing on offense and we won and others where he scored 15+ but the offense as a whole still struggled mightily overall. So I just don't see his offensive production as a connection to winning.

That's the problem with the offense in general I think. After Bane, there are no good options that we can count on every night so we kind of just have to go into each game hoping that we can hit some 3s and be good enough on defense to be able to win.

This about nails it IMO. The bottom line is when you only have 2-3 threats offensively it's going to be really hard to score on any kind of consistent basis. And even with the scorers we do have, RJ is WAY too inconsistent and turnover prone, Bane can't beat anyone off the dribble in the half court, and Samuel just isn't quite good enough and can't make free throws. Nobody really does anything to really create good shots for either themselves or their teammates, it's mostly just looks like an offense without a purpose or plan.
 
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