Yes, JMike played his usual solid D, and was disruptive to PSU’s offense. Gavin took another step in the right direction. I loved his blocked shot on the PSU big man, for which he was whistled for a foul, but he showed some moxie on that play. Davis also had 4 rebounds and Gavin had 3 (more than Hyatt and Mag but not more than Derek who had 8).
Pike has not gotten the starter lineup correct all year. But when you take it out 4 minutes into the game you ruin any possibility of things becoming more cohesive. Your stats cited mean almost nothing when Mag and Hyatt only play 15 and 14 minutes.
I don’t know man, maybe Hyatt should have been given a longer leash, but something is definitely going on with Mag. In his 15 minutes he had 1 rebound, 2 turnovers, and 2 fouls to go along with his 0-3 shooting and zero points. His minutes may have been limited based on not only poor performance but by a nagging injury of some kind. Third bad game in a row and very uncharacteristic showing for my favorite player.
He has apparently decided who his starters are, some can argue who they should be , but damn let them play 8 straights minutes unless they are gasping for air. Chemistry and flow doesn’t always work when you are yanked 4 minutes in. One of the reasons Gavin looked good against Purdue was that Pike let him go 7-8 straight minutes.
So tell me how you or he should do it?
Let me see the plan. Show it to me. Playing everyone 40 minutes?
When you have no guards on the team that can shoot from the perimeter you pretty much have no choice but to "thread your needle" against most teams.
They will hit a brick wall by January. A very good chance one of them gets hurt.
Players do not need the rest you think . Most of the top teams have their starters play 32-37 minutes a game . The players should have been better conditioned to play longer especially with all the TV timeouts.
This last sentence is the key.
What happens when you ask a team to play the defense our program asks and you play them 35 minutes every game?
Nebraska and Indiana it sort of worked. Middle 1/3 of last year it worked.
Mag getting hurt was a fluke. Caleb and Paul started the year hurt . When we were playing Michigan State we were humming because the starters were playing 32 plus minutes a night playing elite defense and real good offense . Don’t rewrite the facts. We were kicking *** and taking names on the way to a 5,6 or 7 seed . Just stop with your ******** that young 18-22 year need rest.
It’s equally about putting the ball through the cylinder and stopping the other team from doing same. 23-21 is a better outcome than 88-90.
And the team hit a brick wall. Rewrite facts? We had an epic collapse.
You are mixing seasons. Paul ‘s explosion was 2 years ago. Keep to the actual facts. Last year we were humming until Mag went down and Paul willed us to the win against Michigan State playing his best game or second half of the year.
It was a combo of both.
First of all, that was Paul’s junior season. To expect our junior to take a leap like a lot of BiG 10 players that made the leap as sophomores and as much improved juniors was not unrealistic especially since he did it for 5 straight games not 1 isolated game. My thought and the thought of many was that Paul ‘s uptick in play would take us to the next level.
We play two games a week. Sometimes one day a week. Players will get hurt because they get hurt, it has nothing to do with the minutes. In high school this kids play every day during AAU, sometimes twice a day during tournaments. Players are not tired and quite honestly could probably play the whole game given the light schedule.
He was clearly hurt last year, but our opponents had also figured him out and he wasn’t able to adjust. He was a poor ballhandler, dribbled way too high, couldn’t bring the ball up, and when he tried to dribble to the basket, opposing players who were guarding our players on the perimeter would dig into him and knock the ball loose, and what had been effective no longer worked.
