Players the Game - Houston

[Jeff]

Ouch. That was a beat down. Not really much more to be said other than Houston is a really good team.

[Kool-ade Flyer]

Isaac Jack (with a little tongue in cheek. But ouch!

[UncleFester]

Elvis for Houston.
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[ud2]

The ESPN2 announcers said that only 2 players have transferred out of Houston in the last 8 or 9 years, wow

[Flyer 86]

Originally Posted by UncleFester Elvis for Houston. Posted via Mobile Device

Guy is shooting 22% on the Year.
Effin brutal.

[maddog07]

Who cares.

I went with Zimi. Glad to see him as a contributor. Great kid. Played within himself.
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[Kevinob15]

Originally Posted by UncleFester Elvis for Houston. Posted via Mobile Device

If Malachi didn’t score but had 9 assists and zero turnovers this board would be anointing him the next John Stockton. His role has changed and i’d say he’s handling it about as good as you can ask for. Lots of assists and minimal turnovers. Gonna need to lean on some of the other guys to pick up the scoring. Cheeks and Brea were much more anonymous than Elvis tonight.
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[T-Bone 84]

Originally Posted by maddog07 Who cares. I went with Zimi. Glad to see him as a contributor. Great kid. Played within himself. Posted via Mobile Device

I agree. If the vote was based on how far “above the mean” the guy played, it would have to be Zimi (of course, the bar has been set very low). But he really has seemed like a great kid, whom I’ve been wanting to see succeed. If he can build on this for the rest of the season, then he can definitely help us win some games and close out his career here on a positive note.

Given the 2 choices above, I picked Deuce because his stat line was more full, with Assists and Free Throws to go with the overall Points and Boards.
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[Hyde Park Flyer]

Santos…again. He singularly kept the boys in the game through the first half. How does a 6’11” prospect continually get pushed from the paint? There were at least 2 times where he tried to drive the ball to the basket and was steered out of the lane. Houston knew at that point that he couldn’t stand up to the physical play. Very disappointing.

On the bright side, we didn’t completely wilt to a team that’s imposing enough to play in the final game. Houston is tough.
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[Hyde Park Flyer]

Originally Posted by Kevinob15 If Malachi didn’t score but had 9 assists and zero turnovers this board would be anointing him the next John Stockton. His role has changed and i’d say he’s handling it about as good as you can ask for. Lots of assists and minimal turnovers. Gonna need to lean on some of the other guys to pick up the scoring. Cheeks and Brea were much more anonymous than Elvis tonight. Posted via Mobile Device

He’s shooting 18.9% from the field. That’s not acceptable. It’s not as if his poor shooting is only because of playing pg. Over 75% of his time is spent as the 2 guard.
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[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Hyde Park Flyer He’s shooting 18.9% from the field. That’s not acceptable. It’s not as if his poor shooting is only because of playing pg. Over 75% of his time is spent as the 2 guard. Posted via Mobile Device

re: Elvis. His shooting % has regressed each year. He still relentlessly dribbles the ball around the perimeter.

Granted it was only the final 1:30 of the game, but did anyone else notice the ball movement when the walk on's came in?

[steverino015]

He needs to shoot better 4sure.... if he would make his shots, he
would be a rock solid contributor for us. after last night, he is now
3rd in the nation in assist/turnover ratio, 12.5

https://www.ncaa.com/stats/basketbal...individual/473

[frisco flyer]

Elvis seems to go through a shooting funk every year. Consistency is not his middle name. He’ll come out of it eventually, but it sure is painful to watch him struggle right now.

[Kevinob15]

Cheeks, Bennet, and Brea went a combined 2-16 from the field, 4 assists, and 4 turnovers
Just saying Elvis brought a lot more to the table last night than these 3. The best thing you can do when you’re not shooting well is contribute in other ways. He’s still creating a lot of offense for us.
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[Hyde Park Flyer]

The problem is that Elvis’ shooting has been poor so far this year. He’s shooting 18.9%, Bennett is 29.3%, Brea is 42.4%, and Cheeks is 46.7%. His best shooting game is 3 for 9. This is a serious problem. The vast majority of his minutes is as the 2 guard. We need far more out of the 2.
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[steve]

Originally Posted by Kevinob15 Cheeks, Bennet, and Brea went a combined 2-16 from the field, 4 assists, and 4 turnovers Just saying Elvis brought a lot more to the table last night than these 3. The best thing you can do when you’re not shooting well is contribute in other ways. He’s still creating a lot of offense for us. Posted via Mobile Device

Cheeks is a scorer and they need to find a way to run him off some screens and get him shots. No way in hell a guy that can score/shoot with his body can't get more shots.I know that is not AG's offense so I'm wondering why Cheeks transferred to UD.

[FLYER5]

Isaac Jack belonged in that type game and he showed it. But Santos has been just fantastic. Brea is twice as good as Elvis, I've said it before. He handled the point ok but he couldn't buy a hoop. Say what you will, but unless Javon was under the weather he didn't belong in that game. His heart is huge and I really like him in the A10, but he needs to clean up his game. This is not Merrimack. I'm kind of hard on a couple players but I think it's warranted. I'm really encouraged by how Brea has become more physical. I hope he continues to work on his man defense. Brea always belongs in that atmosphere in my opinion.

[pmcmullen]

Santos, easily.

There is no way I could vote for Holmes after watching him get his lunch money stolen all game long. Literally, pushed around like a dry leaf by a leaf blower. He better hit the gym hard if he wants a shot in the NBA. Love the kid, but he's still far from ready.

And Cheeks? He was a complete non-factor last night. I thought of anyone, he may be one with the strength to play with Houston. He didn't.

I never expect much out of Elvis and just accept the occasional game when he's hot as a nice surprise.

I like Javon, but man he takes some very ill-advised 3's. And I know those were two fantastic guards, but they ate him alive. Eflite defense? Not against them.

Brea is another. He's an upperclassmen, and when he can't stand back and bomb threes, he's essentially ineffective. Last night was never and will never be the kind of game he's valuable in. Too physical, which he is not - despite pushing around with STJ players the previous game.

Nothing shined last night. But hey, we did a lot better in this year's tourney than last. Any time we can rush Pitino a loss, I'll take it.

[Flyers98]

I hate to say this but that game reminded me of FBS playoffs past, when Notre Dame would sneak in to the playoff and then get rocked 40-14 by team that just out classed them physically, (Ohio State or Alabama).

It is different in basketball and by the end of the year, UD may well compete favorably with Houston, but 10 minutes into that game, it was clear that if Houston didn't beat itself, they were going to win. The rebound margin as a bit misleading to me. How many misses did we get a hand or hands on only to see the ball ultimately controlled by Houston. When a ball hit their hands it stuck, we fumbled and flailed.

I think this team has the talent to be where we want to be at the end of the season, but last night was an early reality check. They need to get a lot tougher if they are going to compete with the Houstons of the world.

[Fudd]

Over my years as a UD fan, I've come to the conclusion that you can't really be very consistently successful against the top 20 without some team physicality. I think the 2019-2020 Obi team was something of an exception to that rule, because, even though Obi was not a banger, he had serious inside game with the lobs and dunks. That combined with good passing and good outside shooting made us exceptionally difficult to defend. But a big-man banger or two on that team would have made us a serious national championship contender that year, IMO.

Houston wins due to their physical presence combined with serious basketball talent, especially among their guards. They have exceptional physical presence, and it is mostly under control, not just blatant fouling and aggression.

If our guards hit some of the open threes we had in that game, it would have been much more competitive. I just felt those guys were disrupted by the speed and physicality of Houston, as was the team.

I'm really interested in watching the game over a few times to see how we got so hammered on the defensive glass. I felt like our guards were having a hard time hanging with the Houston driving guards, were out of position, and needed help from a big. The big would slide over to help on the shot, and on the miss, our big was not available to box his own man out. On top of that, we lost almost every body contact battle for position.

Other than very poor perimeter shooting, I was not that disappointed in the performance of our team. I felt we were just up against a darn good team having a pretty good night.

I was rather pleased with Jack. He played well when he was on the floor. Maybe we could have used more of that? I'm not sure if a Holmes, Santos, Jack line-up works, but it might be interesting against another physical opponent.

Santos had a coming out party in Charleston. I now consider him a blue-chipper for the team going forward.

[Figgie123]

Since this is a bit of a post-game thread, here was an interesting stat...

The starting lineup (Holmes, Elvis, Bennett, Santos and Cheeks) played 11 minutes and 10 seconds together on the court, basically 1/4 of the tame. During that time, we were a -14 on the scoreboard. The final score of the game was a 14 pt deficit.

--Figgie

[jack72]

Unlike our guards, Santos and Holmes competed well against very big physical guys. We only had 10 rebounds to their big guys 18, but for points we had 38 to their 15.

[Flyers98]

Originally Posted by jack72 Unlike our guards, Santos and Holmes competed well against very big physical guys. We only had 10 rebounds to their big guys 18, but for points we had 38 to their 15.

It is too bad college basketball is a guard driven game, I think a lot more than the NBA. Watch in March how of the teams that advance don't have great guard play, it won't be many.

As has been said by others, we won't see that again this year, until hopefully the NCAA tourney, but if our goals are what we say they are, we better learn to play physical when we need to.

[frisco flyer]

Jack was not bothered by their physicality one bit. I wish AG would’ve given him more PT, even alongside Holmes.

[longtimefan67]

Originally Posted by frisco flyer Jack was not bothered by their physicality one bit. I wish AG would’ve given him more PT, even alongside Holmes.

I agree, 100%- I even suggested a lineup in the middle of the game thread that had Jack in there with Santos and Holmes, adding Brea and cheeks to the mix to make it rounded out 5. I think that could’ve offset Houston’s physicality. I love what Santos brings to this team, but he’s getting a direct benefit from DaRon facing all these double teams. Either way he’s successfully taking advantage of it. I think the reason why it appeared DH got pushed around so much was that he had two physical guys on him all night that DID push him around. I’ll also throw out that I thought the referees did a fairly poor job-I do that every game because I don’t like refs, except Rollo of course who’s always right…
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[Flyers98]

Originally Posted by longtimefan67 I agree, 100%- I even suggested a lineup in the middle of the game thread that had Jack in there with Santos and Holmes, adding Brea and cheeks to the mix to make it rounded out 5. I think that could’ve offset Houston’s physicality. I love what Santos brings to this team, but he’s getting a direct benefit from DaRon facing all these double teams. Either way he’s successfully taking advantage of it. I think the reason why it appeared DH got pushed around so much was that he had two physical guys on him all night that DID push him around. I’ll also throw out that I thought the referees did a fairly poor job-I do that every game because I don’t like refs, except Rollo of course who’s always right… Posted via Mobile Device

I do think that game was poorly officiated. Not sure it would have made a difference. It has to be tough to officiate a Houston game. They are going to play the way they play and you can't call a foul on every play.

[Fudd]

Originally Posted by Flyers98 I do think that game was poorly officiated. Not sure it would have made a difference. It has to be tough to officiate a Houston game. They are going to play the way they play and you can't call a foul on every play.

For the most part, I was Ok with the officiating. But there were a few plays where you step back and ask, "How is that not a foul?". Two that come to mind were Santos being knocked out of bounds and to the floor on a rebound, and the one where a Houston guard literally took out Elvis diving for a ball that was bouncing out of bounds. In any other game, I think both of those are called as fouls. But the constant brutality of a Houston game seems to change the standard.

[Flyers98]

Originally Posted by Fudd For the most part, I was Ok with the officiating. But there were a few plays where you step back and ask, "How is that not a foul?". Two that come to mind were Santos being knocked out of bounds and to the floor on a rebound, and the one where a Houston guard literally took out Elvis diving for a ball that was bouncing out of bounds. In any other game, I think both of those are called as fouls. But the constant brutality of a Houston game seems to change the standard.

There was a no-call where Holmes went up for a layup and I heard the unmistakable sound of skin slapping skin ON TV, and there was no call.