Pike can’t be so thick as to not realize the starting 5 of Mulcahey, McConnell, Baker, Harper and Omoruyi is a failure. All they do is dig a deep hole in the first half that is very difficult to climb out of. It’s time to shake this baby up. I say sit McConnell and Baker with latter being the 6th man off the bench. Instead, play Mulcahey at the 1, Mag at the 2, Harper at the 3, Reiber at the 4, and Omoruyi at the 5. This means playing Agee to backup the 5, Palmquist to back up the 4, Hyatt or McConnell back up the 3, Jones back up the 2, and Baker the 1. Miller with no offensive game would only get situational play. Obviously a 10 man rotation Is a bit much, but this is all food for thought. This season is cooked so Pike needs to mix things up to pique the interest of the fandom and to prepare for next year (yikes!).
Pike Make a Line Up Change!
- Thread starter FIJI'83
- Start date
I haven't seen the value in Miller time yet: he has no "O".
Jones needs to get some time as does Hyatt.
Pike needs to figure it out.
MO
Sweet fancy Moses
We are putting Reiber at the 4?
We are putting Reiber at the 4?
Agree the starting 5 has not been working. I think we see a different lineup Saturday but unfortunately tonight was the night to do it.
Hyatt is awful. Did you see him in his 2 minute cameo tonight? Gives up an offensive rebound (?again) and then a turnover. How do you spell whiff?
He's a heralded 'under recruited' Pike kinda player...those under recruited guys always turn into diamonds in the rough....right Pike?!?
I don’t know. I feel like different guys play well on different days. Too much focus on line ups for me after each game based on individual games.
What I found interesting was how effective the press was with our bench guys and Paul. This isn’t the first time it’s been effective in spots and leads me to wonder if we’ll start using it more. When our shots aren’t falling out half court defense usually falls apart (except in the Iowa game). The press defense is a different skill and guys like Paul, Dean and even Oscar looked solid running it.
What I found interesting was how effective the press was with our bench guys and Paul. This isn’t the first time it’s been effective in spots and leads me to wonder if we’ll start using it more. When our shots aren’t falling out half court defense usually falls apart (except in the Iowa game). The press defense is a different skill and guys like Paul, Dean and even Oscar looked solid running it.
Don’t think Pikes is too preoccupied with piquing the interest of the fandom, or next year. He wants to win the next game.
Which begs the obvious question - why the F##€ did they not use the press against Minnesota?!?!
Because a depleted minny had tools to beat it. NW played not to lose which fell right in to our hands
Shrewsberry didn’t like PSU’s effort against Indiana and against Iowa started a kid who had been No. 9 in the rotation, gave major first-half minutes to a kid who hadn’t seen any action yet in a Big 10 game this season, and played one rotation guy for about a minute - the length of time it took him to lose a contact lens *and* miss a box out. (Shrewsberry later said it was the contact in combo with other guys playing well by the time the kid addressed the contact issue.
)
Despite better analytics (certainly due to a tougher schedule - No. 7 vs No. 85 nationally), PSU has no hope of an at-large compared to Rutgers, so that may have made it easier for Shrewsberry to shock the system. And while Shrewsberry obviously feels some allegiance to Harrar and Dread, it can’t possibly compare to what Pike must feel for Harper and Baker. It is *their* team, after all. It would be hard to believe Pike thinks he won’t get another chance to do all this again. Those two, probably not (RHJ, maybe).
)Despite better analytics (certainly due to a tougher schedule - No. 7 vs No. 85 nationally), PSU has no hope of an at-large compared to Rutgers, so that may have made it easier for Shrewsberry to shock the system. And while Shrewsberry obviously feels some allegiance to Harrar and Dread, it can’t possibly compare to what Pike must feel for Harper and Baker. It is *their* team, after all. It would be hard to believe Pike thinks he won’t get another chance to do all this again. Those two, probably not (RHJ, maybe).
You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’d argue Hyatt has the best NBA body and athletic ability on the team. All of two mins play and you have It all figured out on Hyatt? Please. In that case Paul should have been sat multiple times throughout the season but look what happened yesterday: Paul played out of his mind.
Lineups should be situational game to game. The only player that should get the benefit of the doubt and play 30 mins plus every game no matter is RHJ in my opinion. The rest of the roster is inconsistent and minutes should be determined by the opponent and the rhythm they establish.
The starting five continuously put out has a problem producing offense to start out the game. It’s obvious now and Pike has to stop the insanity. 25 pts in the first half against one of the worst teams in the BIG? Unacceptable.
Pike has to play the hot hand from game to game. Kudos to Reiber btw. Kid is playing with confidence and overplaying his ranking.
GO RU
I can only think of 1 reason. They expended so so much energy in the Iowa game less than 60 hours before and he didn’t think they would have the legs or energy to still be able to score, which they did reasonably well (65 points not 70) but gave up too many threes which cost them the game.
Not sure - it might have worked. Hard to say. But it’s always easy to look back on a loss and question these types of decisions. Our halfcourt defense was putrid against NW. I didn’t feel that way against Minny. The kid was on fire making shots with a man in his face. I expected him to cool off at some point. He just didn’t. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the right call to stick with the half court game.
Or Pike went with the law of averages and decided to stick with our half court game that wasn’t really doing poorly outside of Willis making tons of contested shots, even a bank.
What I found interesting yesterday wasn’t the effectiveness of the press itself, but how solid our bench kids looked running it. In most games, Pike has had to go to a short bench because most guys on our team can’t defend in the halfcourt. It didn’t matter who played against NW though - everyone was terrible against their ball rotations in the halfcourt sets. So Pike brought in subs and tried pressing and it worked.
I agree with the sentiment that different guys play well or poorly from night to night, and you can't use recency bias to determine the starting lineup.
BUT
The current starting unit has been playing terribly in the first 5 to 10 minutes of games, leading us to have large deficits early in the game, and then hoping we can claw back into the games. This has to stop, and so we need to tweak the starting lineup.
My choice is to sit McConnell and start Mag. You get pretty similar defensive intensity but much better offensive skills.
G - Baker
G - Mulcahy
F - Mag
F - Harper
C - Cliff
BUT
The current starting unit has been playing terribly in the first 5 to 10 minutes of games, leading us to have large deficits early in the game, and then hoping we can claw back into the games. This has to stop, and so we need to tweak the starting lineup.
My choice is to sit McConnell and start Mag. You get pretty similar defensive intensity but much better offensive skills.
G - Baker
G - Mulcahy
F - Mag
F - Harper
C - Cliff
A depleted Minny can beat our press... Pike should get fired for that alone!
Exactly with Mag. He plays awesome defense. Brings energy effort and intensity. He also will score 8 points a game on effort and movement alone if he gets the minutes.
Caleb has been poor offensively recently. Mag might even be a better defender. Switching Mag into the starting lineup makes a lot of sense.
If he sat Geo instead you have Caleb and Mag on the wings. That's a formidable defensive lineup
Maybe. But we are taking about 18-22 year olds . They can’t recover in 60 hours?! Really? Plus didn’t some of our reserves press effectively last night? So that further begs the question
How do we know that if pike never tried to press?
It’s one thing to abandon it if it’s not working but another thing not to even TRY a press against a team with only 7 players
There was no line up that looked good in halfcourt defense against NW. Caleb had a terrible game so Pike pulled him and sent a message. Maybe should’ve kept Geo out too. He was awful too.
I wouldn’t say Mag exactly had a good game either though. He was 0-3 in 22 minutes. He didn’t hurt us in the second half, but it was really Paul, Dean, Oscar and later RHJ who were responsible for the turnaround and the success of the press. Dean had a great 7 minutes and looks more and more confident to me every game.