[i]Originally posted by TheShowDawg[/i]@Jan 20 2005, 01:52 AM
[b] Normmm. Huggins and Pitino both say we have the best talent in the league? Are they blowing smoke? [/b]
I think you could argue that they're better at every starting position, except maybe Eddie. I do think Huggie is blowing smoke and I'm not sure Lutz would say we have better talent than Cincy does.
My take:
Hicks > Iti
Maxiell > Withers
Kirkland = Basden
Williams = Plavich
Muhammed > Baldwin
White > Nance
Bright > Goldwire
Iti posterizing Maxine not long after Maxine posterized Withers. That seemed to briefly take some steam out of him when Iti almost knocked out the baseline camera man. Iti is getting better at defending shots going up in the lane, but he has to learn to get rebounding position quickly after he misses an attempt.
Plavich played very well against a much bigger defender. He got one three taken away from him because of an illegal screen on Withers. He would have hit it anyway, because the defender wasnât going to get there on time. As JCL said, he was one of the few players playing with confidence last night. He was shooting 50% from three until the end, when he started jacking up 3âs out of desparation. Despite what ANYBODY says, heâs our best offensive option.
Goldwire did not back down. Sure he made some mistakes, but he schooled holy war a couple of times. He was getting hand-checked and chest-bumped every time he started to drive, but didnât quit.
The refs made one or two good calls. Thatâs up from our usual trips to Cincy.
[i]Originally posted by X-49er[/i]@Jan 20 2005, 10:34 AM
[b] The positives from last night's game:
Iti posterizing Maxine not long after Maxine posterized Withers. That seemed to briefly take some steam out of him when Iti almost knocked out the baseline camera man. Iti is getting better at defending shots going up in the lane, but he has to learn to get rebounding position quickly after he misses an attempt.
Plavich played very well against a much bigger defender. He got one three taken away from him because of an illegal screen on Withers. He would have hit it anyway, because the defender wasnât going to get there on time. As JCL said, he was one of the few players playing with confidence last night. He was shooting 50% from three until the end, when he started jacking up 3âs out of desparation. Despite what ANYBODY says, heâs our best offensive option.
Goldwire did not back down. Sure he made some mistakes, but he schooled holy war a couple of times. He was getting hand-checked and chest-bumped every time he started to drive, but didnât quit.
The refs made one or two good calls. Thatâs up from our usual trips to Cincy. [/b]
Great comments X. I forgot about that Iti v Max exchange. In hindsight, donât think I was giving Lee enough credit either.
[i]Originally posted by ATL_Niner[/i]@Jan 19 2005, 09:22 PM
[b] Fair enough jcl, but I object to one thing you said and that's the better than Cincy part. Absolutely not. They kicked our ass in the 2nd half, Mitch or no Mitch.
I sure as hell hope we show up vs. Cincy in Feb. I donât want to drive up to Charlotte for nothing⌠[/b]
I donât know if I agree with that, ATL - I like our chances with Mitch. With Mitch in the game we have our best rebounder back at the 3 (instead of the 1), Our 6th man who is a beanpole is not starting in the post against Cinci and we have somebody at the 1 who can;
a) beat a press
b) pass out of a double-team
c) gets the rest of the team involved in the offense
d) makes our team not a purely half-court team
We scored 5 points in the first 6 minutes of the second half (and only 12 points in the first 10 minutes) - we donât have that type of drought with Mitch in the game.
Cinci kicked us (hard) when we were down. The outcome will not be the same in Halton.
There actually was a BIG positive mentioned by the announcers last night, but seems to be lost by everyone here after the massacre. Frashilla said that we were the second most winningest team in the HISTORY of conference USA. Behind only Cincy. I would say that is a pretty big positive to hang our hat on. Hopefully that is what most people will remember about the game.
Hopefully this loss shows the team how much better we have to play. We sort of squeeked by in the 1st half but the 2nd half clearly showed that wasnât gonna cut it. We need 40 mins of hard play from here on out, fellas.
Mitch should understand just how important he is to the team. Hopefully that will give him even more confidence.
Leemire got some quality PT. Not that he played all that well, but he got to know what a big time game against a team that wonât quit and likes to play physical is like. His first half stunk, but I liked his aggressiveness in the 2nd, especially the couple times where he just drove right to the basket.
We should be fired up for the Marquette game. Hopefully they got all that âTop 25â crap out of their heads and are ready to play, a la after the Rutgers loss.
It was a reality check. Sort of covered that already, but sometimes you need a loss to get your @$$ in gear. And since this wasnât a bad loss, we can absorb it and should use it to get better.
Lastly, I got to see our team for only the 2nd time. Wooo hoo! Too bad we stunk it up.
Gordon played well, and wasnât injured.
Our strength coach wonât leave for the NBA next year.
Lutz didnât lose any friends in cincinnati.
The 9ers can still sneak up on the good teams.
Our free throws didnt beat us.
It wasnât the only game on TV.
[i]Originally posted by gamer[/i]@Jan 20 2005, 02:04 PM
[b] Gordon played well, and wasn't injured.
Our strength coach won't leave for the NBA next year.
Lutz didn't lose any friends in cincinnati.
The 9ers can still sneak up on the good teams.
Our free throws didnt beat us.
It wasn't the only game on TV. [/b]
[i]Originally posted by Powerbait[/i]@Jan 20 2005, 04:34 PM
[b] Even the Cincy fans around us thought we looked like a better team as far as talent and athelticism, but we didn't execute and we didn't play defense at all. [/b]
I can second that, and many fans talked to us about how good they thought the 49ers (still) are.
[b] We missed Mitch a lot more than I could have ever imagined. I think he's doing an outstanding job this year, because more often than not we're not talking about him. That, to me, means he just runs the offense, plays D and doesn't try to take on too much or make too many huge mistakes. He doesn't have a lot of experience running our offense, and he is doing a fantastic job. He plays that game, you can easily shave off 15-20 points of that margin. His assists, points and defensive pressure opens up our game a lot more than even I realized.[/b]
Also, if Mitch plays, Eddie goes back to his natural position for the entire game where he would have been a great help keeping them off the offensive glass, as he and Nance are the only two that were boxing out.