Still can’t guard the 3

seccats04 · 2026-11-06T19:05:44-0600

Last year we literally ran away from 3 point shooters. It was baffling. This year we always over help and leave the shooter wide open. It never gets corrected. Mind blowing.

loublue22_rivals308424 · 2026-11-06T19:06:34-0600

Tale as old as time.

Drogon · 2026-11-06T19:18:03-0600

Why use your length in a zone(and im not even a proponent of it, but.....) when you can play run-around-like-a-chicken-with-its-head-cutoff-defense

MonsterMash79 · 2026-11-06T19:18:20-0600

Complete trash. JMU won’t hit half of these 3’s all year..

seccats04 · 2026-11-06T19:39:21-0600

MonsterMash79 said:
Complete trash. JMU won’t hit half of these 3’s all year..

Well, you’re probably right but other teams will play better defense.

Dward13 · 2026-11-06T19:50:23-0600

I think conceding the 3 is just a staple of Mark Pope defense. Unless a dude has never made one, you can’t leave division 1 players open all night. Even the worst shooters can get a rhythm and burn you if you do that.

HowardDaDuckDoe · 2026-11-06T20:00:37-0600

they shot out of their ***. Yall remember the Cal teams constantly getting lit up by trash these early season games, and in the NCAAT?

Wunky · 2026-11-06T20:02:42-0600

HowardDaDuckDoe said:
they shot out of their ***. Yall remember the Cal teams constantly getting lit up by trash these early season games, and in the NCAAT?

Because Cal did the same thing — switch everything and go under every screen. Stupid. Just fundamentally stupid and lazy basketball.

cat tat2 · 2026-11-06T20:06:05-0600

These guys can’t guard me.

seccats04 · 2026-11-06T20:10:52-0600

We can’t guard anyone off the dribble and leave guys wide open on threes. Not a good combo.

bnewt · 2026-11-06T20:34:11-0600

seccats04 said:
We can’t guard anyone off the dribble and leave guys wide open on threes. Not a good combo.

Never have been able too, but never changes defense

Loucatfan30 · 2026-11-06T20:35:26-0600

It might get ugly on Tuesday night

Wildcat_in_DC · 2026-11-06T20:38:19-0600

MonsterMash79 said:
Complete trash. JMU won’t hit half of these 3’s all year..

nonsense. they made 14-34 in the opener agaisnt miami OH (which they lost). this is who they are and what they do. and either:
A) they scouted poorly
or
B) players couldnt execute it

my guess its (C) both

Cats_2010 · 2026-11-06T20:39:35-0600

MonsterMash79 said:
Complete trash. JMU won’t hit half of these 3’s all year..

They hit 14 in their first game. Pope had to know coming in what they were going to do and he still didn’t have an answer to stop it. His hope they miss defense finally paid off in the 2nd half so good job pope I guess.

peterpiper09 · 2026-11-06T20:40:03-0600

Loucatfan30 said:
It might get ugly on Tuesday night

I don’t know
Kansas doesn’t look good at all
Just have the luxury of the other team can’t make a wide open 3, layup, or FT.

Ash Williams · 2026-11-06T20:42:12-0600

They shot 15-45, that's 33%. Not great, just average.

We shot 10-28, better than they did.

Bluegrass79 · 2026-11-06T20:43:55-0600

You can't play the outscore game with people unless you can really block shots at the 3 ,4 ,and 5.

cornbreadnmilk · 2026-11-06T20:44:09-0600

Ash Williams said:
They shot 15-45, that's 33%. Not great, just average.

We shot 10-28, better than they did.

Did you watch the game? They were wide in most and we were lucky they are a poor team.

Ash Williams · 2026-11-06T20:45:06-0600

cornbreadnmilk said:
Did you watch the game? They were wide in most and we were lucky they are a poor team.

I watched the game. Did you read the box score? Show me where what I said was incorrect.

RunninRichie · 2026-11-06T20:45:26-0600

Tuesday is gonna be a bloodbath

Wildcat_in_DC · 2026-11-06T20:45:47-0600

Ash Williams said:
They shot 15-45, that's 33%. Not great, just average.

We shot 10-28, better than they did.

we shot 3% better from three than them but they outscored us by 15 from deep. combined with uk giving up 14 offensive rebounds to a much smaller team. you will lose a lot of games playing like that

Catastic5 · 2026-11-06T20:45:58-0600

RunninRichie said:
Tuesday is gonna be a bloodbath

Holding out hope that Kansas won’t be that good.

Ash Williams · 2026-11-06T20:54:34-0600

Wildcat_in_DC said:
we shot 3% better from three than them but they outscored us by 15 from deep. combined with uk giving up 14 offensive rebounds to a much smaller team. you will lose a lot of games playing like that

Maybe, but we also outscored them by 9 overall and only had 7 turnovers with MM having an off game. bCould have been worse. Teams that shoot a bunch of threes usually get a lot of offensive rebounds due to the long bounces. Not sure you noticed the final score in your "analysis."

tls · 2026-11-06T23:00:46-0600

Cats_2010 said:
They hit 14 in their first game. Pope had to know coming in what they were going to do and he still didn’t have an answer to stop it. His hope they miss defense finally paid off in the 2nd half so good job pope I guess.

The Cats are tall not quick .. No way you can keep them from shooting the 3 if they really want to and they did .. especially when you have the M and M boys in together

I noticed Ousmane played 17 minutes only scored 3 points but had a +- of +11
Defense was better when he was on the floor

MonsterMash79 · 2026-11-07T06:43:09-0600

Wildcat_in_DC said:
nonsense. they made 14-34 in the opener agaisnt miami OH (which they lost). this is who they are and what they do. and either:
A) they scouted poorly
or
B) players couldnt execute it

my guess its (C) both

Good point

chroix · 2026-11-07T06:48:00-0600

Smile and take it or the pumpers will spin up some new sock puppets.

Lameguy · 2026-11-07T07:03:37-0600

Ash Williams said:
I watched the game. Did you read the box score? Show me where what I said was incorrect.

Factually you are correct, however your facts conflict with view points, therefore some get a little upset. Me I saw a team that had one path to winning and it was to jack up as many 3s as possible and no they all weren’t wide open. And if the OP had watched the game he would have noticed that our best defensive guard set for a large portion of the game in foul trouble.

HolySmokes · 2026-11-07T07:06:44-0600

Loucatfan30 said:
It might get ugly on Tuesday night

Tuesday will look like year one against Duke but we wont have the older players that knew how to beat the younger stars like Flagg.

I think we get behind early like always but aren't able to recover this time kind of like Gonzaga last year.

megablue · 2026-11-07T07:16:23-0600

seccats04 said:
We can’t guard anyone off the dribble and leave guys wide open on threes. Not a good combo.

So far, I see what you see. Our length makes us slower to move and vulnerable to quickness.

megablue · 2026-11-07T07:22:59-0600

Wildcat_in_DC said:
we shot 3% better from three than them but they outscored us by 15 from deep. combined with uk giving up 14 offensive rebounds to a much smaller team. you will lose a lot of games playing like that

I think we will beat Wichita State, but I watched them play on Wednesday. They play much like JMU, but with quicker guards, better shooters and very pesky defense. It will not be an easy or "automatic" game, based on what I've seen. We need a more balanced offense and more effective defense.
Hopefully, practice time will be used well and rotations will be scrutinized.

RunninRichie · 2026-11-07T07:24:07-0600

megablue said:
I think we will beat Wichita State, but I watched them play on Wednesday. They play much like JMU, but with quicker guards, better shooters and very pesky defense. It will not be an easy or "automatic" game, based on what I've seen. We need a more balanced offense and more effective defense.
Hopefully, practice time will be used well and rotations will be scrutinized.

That's gonna be a loss.

megablue · 2026-11-07T07:28:42-0600

RunninRichie said:
That's gonna be a loss.

I don't think so, but they will challenge us.
They play three (3) guards and all can really move with the ball to the rack AND shoot threes ... good shooters.
They are also very pesky on defense.
Their lack of size should allow us to get pretty much anything we want inside, it seems to me.
They are a FUN team to watch play.

seccats04 · 2026-11-07T07:31:24-0600

megablue said:
So far, I see what you see. Our length makes us slower to move and vulnerable to quickness.

Another dilemma we have is N'diaye is long and lanky and has good lateral quickness but is a black hole on offense and doesn't give us much scoring. McBride is much better on offense but doesn't have much length or lateral quickness on defense. Do we sacrifice defense for offense going forward?

MichaelGray · 2026-11-07T07:31:38-0600

MonsterMash79 said:
Complete trash. JMU won’t hit half of these 3’s all year..

Every team that comes into Rupp goes nuclear from 3, never fails, I just expect it.

seccats04 · 2026-11-07T07:32:40-0600

megablue said:
I don't think so, but they will challenge us.
They play three (3) guards and all can really move with the ball to the rack AND shoot threes ... good shooters.
They are also very pesky on defense.
Their lack of size should allow us to get pretty much anything we want inside, it seems to me.
They are a FUN team to watch play.

We don't have much of an inside game. Moreno is not athletic, low motor and we don't run anything that gets the ball to our bigs in the paint.

SenseMaker_Cats · 2026-11-07T07:35:55-0600

megablue said:
I don't think so, but they will challenge us.
They play three (3) guards and all can really move with the ball to the rack AND shoot threes ... good shooters.
They are also very pesky on defense.
Their lack of size should allow us to get pretty much anything we want inside, it seems to me.
They are a FUN team to watch play.

Good shooters?

megablue · 2026-11-07T07:36:48-0600

seccats04 said:
We don't have much of an inside game. Moreno is not athletic, low motor and we don't run anything that gets the ball to our bigs in the paint.

I agree 100% and dislike the professed emphasis on shooting threes. I think we need to be far more balanced offensively ... as a focus. I think we should play inside-out, versus outside-in ... in terms of ball movement and scheme. But ... that's just me.

megablue · 2026-11-07T07:37:47-0600

SenseMaker_Cats said:
Good shooters?

Yes ... if I recall correctly, the three (3) guards all shot over 38% from three last year ... based on what the announced said.

SenseMaker_Cats · 2026-11-07T07:44:14-0600

MichaelGray said:
Every team that comes into Rupp goes nuclear from 3, never fails, I just expect it.

But they didn’t go nuclear. They just shot a whole bunch of them.

WallMash · 2026-11-07T07:47:30-0600

Run to double the guy at the elbow, wide open guy in the corner for a splash 3, rinse and repeat.

Still can’t guard the 3

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