No Sense Screaming Now
While Stan Heath is pondering ways to rearrange his lineup, the writers this week seem to have his court-side demeanor on their minds. Harry King provides his analysis today of the situation while reaching no conclusion. Wally Hall was writing about the same thing on Monday.
I'm not sure this is so hard. These guys seem to lose track of how to play the style of basketball this team needs to play to win. Wally is just wrong in saying Steven Hill's second foul wasn't a mental mistake. A seven foot tall guy fouling a guy 6-10 and 18 feet from the basket is just stupid. That foul made the difference in Hill playing more minutes and being more effective in the second half. Maybe that didn't make two points difference, but...
Losing four games by 12 points, while losing big leads in each game, comes down to mental mistakes. Also, I'll bring up a point I mentioned earlier -- I don't think these guys are in the shape they need to be in to play a whole game with the level of aggressiveness on defense they need. Hill and Townes looked tired to me. Kentucky pushed the tempo of the game to a point beyond a seven man rotation. Give them credit.
Win the paint. Hold the other team under 65 points. Control the tempo of the game. Simple to say...obviously beyond this team to do on a regular basis.
They had issues with this in December just like they are having now. Make a good run, get a good lead, then either let down or play rat ball stupid. It was rat ball stupid they displayed in the first five minutes of the second half at Kentucky. One run and an early double digit lead does not a whole game make. The time to be screaming was in December. I'm afraid now it is too late.
posted by Anonymous @ 1:53 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Allen, I haven't seen the obvious connection with Heath and his players like we've seen over the years with HDN.
I can remember the first football game in the expanded Razorback Stadium against Tennessee in 2001. The crowd was rocking. (A heavy thunderstorm before the game had gotten people stirred up pretty good.) And then Houston came out and laid an egg with his playcalling and overall conservatism. We lose 13-3 in a completely wasted opportunity for the coach and the program.
With Stan, I thought earlier in the season that his rigid substitution pattern contributed to some of our offensive droughts.
But with the Kentucky game, I couldn't find that kind of correlation between Heath's coaching and our collapse. Did he make mistakes during the game? Sure. But in the end, the players choked that one pretty much on their own.
So my position comes down to this...who's job is it to instill that toughness and "killer instinct" into our players? The answer, of course, is the head coach.
Like my brother said at halftime of the Kentucky game, "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if Nolan was in that locker room right now." I agreed, "Yeah...he'd make sure they kept their foot stomped down on the gas pedal, wouldn't he?"
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