He did great. They just couldn't beat Troy in those two games with them. Troy has a fantastic coach who must be going to stay at Troy. Hodgson is known as a great recruiter and uses the Alabama playbook where he was an assistant.
Charlotte at TU
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You are not going to convince me that USf is better than we are. There isn’t a game we have played all season that we should not have won. USF was just better on the first day and we just played worse on the second. Could we have used a 7’2 guy to go along with Behrend? Yes but we don’t have a bad defense and Behrend and Smikle do well enough as rim protectors.
I can’t please all the people all the time lolI was with you until the rim protector comment
They are sub par as far as rim protectors go. They get by for us most games. Yes we only lost by 6 at home to USF, but by 15 at home. That says we would lose 4 out of 5 to them no matter where it is. If we had Berg or Bonge that would not be the case. If we had a player like that, we wouldn't be playing in so many close games. We likely would have won at Wichita, KSU, @N Texas, and split with USF. Our record would be more like 24-4 or 26-2. They are having to fight to keep us in it. Sometimes they pick up too many fouls while doing it as well. That's them doing it the best they can, because they aren't really rim protecters.
I want BEHREND to play NEXT to a BERG or BONGE type during several minutes in the game. Beherend and Smikle average .6 blocked shot per game, TOGETHER. Their separate average is .3 per game. Barnstable has more blocks per game. Next year with an extra season to work out, and coming back with more experience, I might buy Behrend as projecting to be a better rim protector, but not this season.
With a Berg/Bonge type it would free up Green to do more instead of getting in the middle of it all the time, because we don't have any other option. Green averages the most blocks per game at .7 per game because we don't have someone on the inside to take most of that load as the 5. I guarantee you if we had Green, Berhend, and Bonge as our Bigs we would be a much better team. That's both on the defensive and offensive end of the court. Too bad that Onwuchekwa didn't even want to try. He might have worked into something respectable if he put out the effort.
Side note: I didn't even comment on the UAB game because that was an effort game that we lost. A rim protector won't help much in that game.
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Behrend and Smikle as "rim protectors" ???????????? Loca?????? Behrend has 8 blocks the whole year and Smikle 10........... the worst in years........ Devon Williams of FAU is a "rim protector" He has 80 blocks this season. With Devon Williams, we are NCAA bound.
Interesting that the top teams in the league change their defenses during the game. And for more than one possession. I wish we were able to do that too. The guy Haith had for one year was our best defensive year. Of course Self with the guards smothering people and Nolan with his 1-3-1 full court press made a difference too. Wojcik and Konkol seem to be man defenses only and good ones are hard to beat, but I am beginning to see us getting beat off the dribble with no inside ability to alter the shots.
We don't even need a guy that qualty of a rim protector. Somebody that averages 1.5 per game would turn us into an ncaa at large team.
Look you cats do not have to agree with me on this and I am ok with that but Both of these guys do well. Behrend really does well. Teams do not score a lot inside when Behrend is in the game. Good defense from your big man is just as good as swatting the ball away. Its when he is out of the game that these players go inside alot because now they arent being guarded by a forward, they are being guarded by a guard. You guys are only looking at blocks. If that is all that counts then yeah I will go with you but its not. Those two play defense well down low. Smikle could be doing better than he has been. Kinda let down this year by his performance compared to the potential he had from last year going into this season. Behrend on the other hand has been pretty stellar until he gets 2 quick fouls.
The games we lost we averaged 42 percent from the field, 30 percent from 3 and 73 percent from the line. Most of those games that we lost we couldnt hit the broad side of a barn and just kept chunking 3's praying we would hit one. All the rim protectors in the world will not do you any good if you dont put the ball in the hoop. Its called basketball not blockyball.
There should be no reason in the world we are shooting under 80 percent from the line with the quality of free throw shooters that we have. That gets corrected and we win all of those games but 2. In those two if we didnt dig ourselves into a huge cravasse in the last 3 minutes of the first half then we win those two games.
As I said would it be nice to have someone that is 7 thousand feet tall? yes. What we have though is not bad and does the job pretty well. That one guy will not change how we shoot the ball.
Two of the games we lost UNT and the home USF game were lost due to not getting our shooters open shots. ( coaching) An important fact with the new rules is that all body fouls in the post are now called on the defense The exception is blocks which never have body fouls called when executing them. This is the reason rim protectors with the new rules are a must have. Our little post men used to draw charges since they can’t block shots but now just get called for fouls.
Blocks are a sign post stat most of the time. The more blacks you get the more you are up their defending the rim 3 out of 5 plays when you don't get a block.
I don’t disagree with you that blocks are a sign of a good rim protector. What I am trying to point out is that is not the only stat to prove they are good rim protectors. You can’t say blocks are it just like you can’t say that if you win the rebounding metric then you win the game. More go into this. For some people such as Behrend and smikel is the intangibles that make them who the are but at the end of the day if we don’t put the ball in the hoop we lose.
Almost all good rim protectors have higher stats at Reb/OR/Blcks. Only a few good rim protectors have one of those stats that are subpar. Yes I think Behrend punches above his weight, but I want someone who has the weight as well. I want Behrend AND a Rim Protector not a replacement for Behrend. I really want Smikle to move on next year unless he continues to improve in several areas & shows improved jumping ability. I was all over Smikle, and would have gone to battle for him last year and in the preseson, but he just did not show enough improvement from last year. His play this year is pretty close to last year.
We've jawed back and forth on this maybe more than is necessary. I'll let it go.
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lol. I agree with this post. All of it. One thing I’m not short of is talking about how good Behrend has been. Totally agree with smikel
One TU stat that Bruce mentioned in his postgame comments on Sunday amazed me. Popoola had 10 rebounds on Sunday. That was the first game that ANY Tulsa player had double digit rebounds in any game this season!
I think that’s because we have so many guys, including the guards, that can rebound well and we play 9-10 players significant minutes so they get spread around.
Well, here you have it. Lol Konkol moving up. Maybe he goes to K-State and gets another year with Haggerty. Wouldn’t that be bizarre? These X posts should get some healthy responses. Haha.
Wojcik tried to get a job multiple times with his 20 game wins at Tulsa. Failed each time while at Tulsa. By the way, I love the Troy HC. But it would take a lot for him to leave Troy.
So this means we will get an NCAA bid this year and every year we have Konkol as our coach in the future, when he wins 20 games a year as a member of the AAC, which makes sense lol, since this means he is a top 7 coach lol