Memphis Game

[jayhawk]

If you are gonna say Ryan's success was because of recruiting then you cant judge Jeter until he gets his guys that he recruited in there.

[BBFran]

Ryan had none of his own players until his second year.

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think UWM has the athletes to run with Memphis. Not a chance. There is an enormous gap in talent between Memphis and UWM. The only chance we DID have to stay in this game was to value the ball and outscore them at the line. We didn't get it done.

It will come.

[uwmsccr09]

Well pretty much everything that I wanted to say has already been said.

The biggest surprise of the night for me was Avery Smith. He shot 2-11 which sucked, but at the same time he didn't hesitate at all to take on as many of 3 of their guards at a time going to the basket. I can't wait to see this guy's game develop.

[germanathens]

Pearl vs. "Majors" in Years 1-2

Bruce Year 1:
Sun 11/19/2000 Iowa Iowa City, Iowa L, 83-79
Fri 11/30/2001 Iowa St Ames, IA (Tribune Cyclone Challenge) L, 71-62
Wed 12/06/2000 Illinois Champaign, Ill. L, 85-44
(www.firebrucepearl.com).
Sat 12/08/2001 Virginia Tech Louisville, KY (Jim Thorpe Classic) W, 80-78 ;D
Sat 12/16/2000 Wisconsin Madison, Wis. L, 55-47
*It was at this game when we realized something special was in the making....in DECEMBER OF HIS FIRST SEASON! We still lost.


Bruce Year 2:
Sat 11/23/2002 Wisconsin Madison, Wis. L, 83-72
Sat 12/28/2002 Georgia Athens, Ga. L, 89-69
(www.fortheloveofgodfirebruce.com).
Thu 03/20/2003 Notre Dame (NCAA Tournament) Indianapolis, Ind. L, 70-69

Give Jeter some time.

[Panther 106]

I totally agree about Avery, He put a sick move on a guy and blew past him at the baseline for a score. He has some real potential!

[fan]

bbfran said:

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think UWM has the athletes to run with Memphis. Not a chance. There is an enormous gap in talent between Memphis and UWM.

BBFran I normally value your opinion and find you to be one of the most accurate posters available on any site. In this instance however I strongly disagree with your call. In fact I think your post strongly disagrees with its own call.

If we had the talent/size to beat these guys then we beat them in a halfcourt set. While it is true that they are also fast and can run with us, we get a chance to win by playing to our own strength. Why would we try to play to our weakness against a bigger more talented team? If Jeter recruits players who play better in a halfcourt set then we play the halfcourt but this team will struggle.

Realize though that I'm not asking for us to push it and take a bad shot or to push it every time for that matter. Time and again we had players flying off rebounds and ahead of their men by 10-20 steps. Our guards walked the ball up the court.

My request for a press was not actually that. I don't think we can or should press. I didn't really care for it when even Bruce ran it against superior teams. My gripe is that our players are in position to press everytime and never do. Why? They aren't trapping. They aren't doing anything.

To the Boo Davis explanation-Boo outplayed Avery when he did play. Boo is a better shooter than Avery and if you needed to, take out Pancratz for Boo for Pete's sake. It is true that Avery will be one of our best players but Boo needs to play.

Do our players have any limits on shot selection? If I see Mccoy throw up another three ball, I'll throw a chair.

[Hack]

uwm6thman said:

www.firerobjeter.com coming your way soon

Just plain f***ing stupid. Let me know when you have the site up and running ... I'm sure you'll be the only registered member for a long, long time.

[fan]

Considering the way our fans react to losses Hack, (last year included) I wouldn't put the site's popularity down.

After the UW loss many posters wrote off the season.

[BBFran]

Well, I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, exactly. We clearly DON'T have the athletic ability to stay with Memphis in a running game. That's how they pulled away. Forcing our game uptempo, as badly as we were shooting and securing the ball, would have exacerbated that. When we did push the ball all we got for our efforts was the ball blocked right down our throat. Memphis's catchup speed just wouldn't allow us to get an uncontested layup, even when we pushed.

So in that situation you equalize by trying to put the other team in an uncomfortable position where they have to foul. We did it pretty well for a while; that's when we got the lead to single digits. Unfortunately, a few missed shots and turnovers later, Memphis broke us. But the plan was sound.

Look, any offense looks ugly until the players are comfortable in it. The swing is actually well suited to the players on this team. Ed McCants was extremely important to Bruce's style. (And before him, Clay Tucker.) Unfortunately, he's gone.

It will take a little while and it will make us all wish (for a while) that we still had Ed and James and Bruce and were still playing a different way. But I also expect that you will see a lot of familiar stuff (pressing and disciplined breakouts) when we're playing teams that don't have Memphis's talent. That starts on Monday.

S for Boo Davis, he wasn't shooting well, but I tend to think he needs to play more, too. Look, it's Rob's first game and he doesn't have all the answers yet either about who to play and in what combinations. But if you went back to last year you'd find that Bruce substituted just as much.

Again, my bottom line is that we didn't lose this game because of coaching. Memphis is the kind of team we might have a chance against at year's end once we are rolling. But in game 1? Forget it.

[aknowsense]

Watching game on livestat sucked; I never did check to see just how many turnovers we ended up with. This was just a sloppy game that I don't think we were ready for. It was against the 12th ranked team in the nation but I would've liked to see a little better performance. Just improve and be thankful we aren't UWGB who had to get rolled 2 nights in a row.

[ArtVandelay]

I'm very disappointed we lost this game. This was a big chance for us to take a step forward as a program, but honestly we aren't ready to be able to beat this type of team. If those freshman and sophomores from Memphis stick around they are going to get themselves deep into the NCAA Tournament. I couldn't believe the size and speed of Memphis. The only reason we stuck around was Joah Tucker and the fact that Memphis is very undisciplined as a team at this point...

The season just started and I don't think this loss falls on the shoulders of Rob Jeter at all. Franny is right on with his comments about us not valuing our prossessions and turning the ball over. We got blown out of the water, but just remember we were within 10 points in the second half against a far superior team, live and learn...

My only gripe with RJ was his substitution patterns. Wimmer and Bendall shouldn't have stepped foot on the floor when we were within striking distance of Memphis. I think we are looking good for Horizon League play, but we aren't in the same class as a top 25 team...

I guess I don't understand this hate towards a more controlled tempo of play. Did running up and down the court work for us last year? Yes, but this isn't last year. Ed McCants is gone, Bruce Pearl is gone live with it. I watch a Wisconsin basketball game and love it just as much as an up-tempo game that UWM would have played last year. This isn't Dick Bennett ball where you would score 40-50 points and get a win. The swing can and will get it done, UW averaged over 70 points a game with this incredibly slow and horrible to watch offense. Just give UWM and RJ until at least conference play starts before you ask for his head.

RJ Apologist since 11/15/05
Art Vandelay

[DunneDeal]

Give it some time...we will get better...they are No. 12 for a reason.

Poor Shooting and Too many Blocks! I swear it hurt to look at our guys getting swatted like that.

We will be okay, its an eye opener for sure.

[fan]

2-14 3-pt shooting. Find a swing offense where there is no legitimate 3 pt threat on the team. Boo is marginal in this respect and he was on the bench.

No we didn't lose the game from coaching. I couldn't agree more. At the same time I feel Jeter did not coach a good game nor did he properly prepare his players to play one. We aren't going to beat a top 25 team on talent alone (possibly ever). For Mid-Majors its gotta be done with gimmicks and 3-balls. Thats how its been done by previous Mid-Majors, thats how its going to be done by current Mid-Majors and thats how it will be done by future Mid-Majors. We can play straight up all you want against the conference and the Upper Iowa's.

As has been said before, this is the first game. This is Jeter's 1st head coaching job. He will learn as will we. I just don't want this season to turn into a teething ring. There are too many seniors and too much talent to let it be a building block. Jeter did not step into an easy situation. It was nice to see him "talking" or "gawking" with the refs. He might have some fire after all.

Bendall and Tigert posting up is how the swing scores points. Get used to seeing the struggles of our mediocre posts. Although, Tigert will not miss that many again.

Also let it be known that I like this offense. I know it much better without a shot clock though.

[aknowsense]

Shoot 22%; turn the ball over 19 times; create 4 steals and you will lose 95% of the time.

Not ready.

[ArtVandelay]

How about Mike Bendall getting swatted? Wow that really hurt to watch...

While running down the court and driving the lane was affective towards the end of the game our best chance came after Memphis' first run when they got up by 20 or so. When we slowed down the tempo of play we really started to catch up to them, and looked like we were going to make it a close game just after half. Then everything went straight to hell and we were running up and down the court letting McCoy jack up 3's and getting blocked on every imaginable shot. 11 of our shots were blocked....

Lets look at some positives here... Joah Tucker is very good, We rebounded well against a team that was much bigger than us, free throw shooting was pretty good, Avery reminds me a lot of a very young and unpolished Devin Harris...

Besides that..