Peggy Po's
Foster played well. He does not have enough touches and does not have enough plays run for him. oscar needs to start calling more set plays for Marcus. I counted 4 with a return of 9 points. He looked engaged for the most part, and went on a nice little stretch where he got hot, but we do not do enough to get him the ball. I hope he starts next game because Marcus looks motivated to me. This team needs him and I hope that we move forward with him as a guy getting 35 minutes a game and starting. Going back to the well for a 3rd straight game would be a mistake and a horrible miscalculation. The coaches need to give a little on this and assume that the message has been received. Considering how quickly everyone declared the end of the Marcus Foster era it was great to see that his demise may have been overestimated.
Wes is playing better and with more confidence.
Nino balled out he is playing his heart out for this team. I love him. He has done more than should have ever been asked of him and has brought effort, hustle and scrappiness to every possession. Good for him. He is my second favorite player.
Hurt/Bolden I liked the Defense/Offense sub pattern toward the end of the first half and they both put some quality minutes in with Bolden making a couple nice plays on defense and Hurt playing some nice minutes and getting to the line.
Edwards is starting to get within the speed of the gameNancy Neg'soscar I will try to keep this to what I see with my own eyes and not speculate as there has been plenty of that over the past few weeks. On the court oscar struggles to communicate with the players. He has so much nervous energy and is constantly yelling random crap and in the guys ears that I think they tune him out. That is my theory.
What I can know for sure is that our team is chronically unprepared for assignments out of free throws and timeouts. We are chronically unprepared for end of game situations, particularly situations that involve pressure on the ball. I am not talking about novel plays that are being thrown at us.
I am talking about a team that just went full court all out double the ball pressure and three guys turning and running back down in to the front court. I am talking about a full on panic at the end of the game by oscar and the team about who is supposed to be positioned where and what the assignments are after the free throws. It is bad.
A lot is made about how badly oscar has communicated in the media, the press conference when he first was announced, his goofy pre-game and halftime speeches. None of those really struck me as things that potentially made a big impact on the team either way. But I think there is a lot of evidence that his ineffective communication in-game is hurting this team.
Jevon and Nigel were sitting on the bench in crunch time with the other team putting on full court pressure. It is hard to think of a bigger indictment of our backcourt that oscar finally turned to Marcus and Wes. I will also note that they didn't turn the ball over during that sequence. I would much rather go with Marcus/Wes/Justin to start.
Gip is lost I think him getting yanked from games is not helping and our consistent inability to get him quality looks is hurting. But he screwed up two handoffs. TWICE we had turnovers off bad handoffs! He still panics when a double comes.
Our offense is bad There should be a sense of urgency to fix this. It is terrible. The turnovers are bad enough, but our motion does not create good looks. 4 out/Princeton with Hurt at the free throw line would be interesting to see. Running Foster off screens would be more fun to watch. oscar could call set plays all game and it would be better/more interesting. The motion is broken. Irreparably.
Rebounding and defense were better but still badOfficiating lots of little pushes on drives called both ways, very choppy and uneven. It was poorly officiated both ways. Gary Maxwell was the problem but Gerry Pollard was not at his best either and he thinks he's God's gift to officiating so was equally annoying.
