Slowing down made a ton of sense bc our offense is just unreliable. As many have said, one rebound or dunk and we win and with a dunk I think we would have won easily.
Slowing Down Was A Great Strategy
- Thread starter ImBadRU
- Start date
So you agree with what lost us the game. Great take.
Yes. It wasn't like we didn't get good opportunities to put it away. We just missed every single one of them.
And the fact is, many if us saw the collapse before the slow down, bc we were making a ton of bone headed plays in offense...needed to slow down and collect ourselves, but we just couldn't convert. The missed dunk I just want to erase from my brain.
People who think like this should stay faaaaar away from anything requiring strategy.
These conversations are always so interesting.
See Super Bowl LI (Falcons v. Patriots) and everyone yelling about the Falcons NOT slowing down.
Everyone says the Falcons should have gone AWAY from what got them the lead.
The ultimate answer is "Did you lose? then you should have done the other thing."
See Super Bowl LI (Falcons v. Patriots) and everyone yelling about the Falcons NOT slowing down.
Everyone says the Falcons should have gone AWAY from what got them the lead.
The ultimate answer is "Did you lose? then you should have done the other thing."
I don't like the prevent O strategy, but it works sometimes. Forget the 1 dunk or rebound, had we gotten any of the 3 or 4, maybe 5, foul calls that we should've, it would've worked.
I actually thought we should have run more clock before we actually started to slow things down. Reduce the number of possessions remaining. Force them to foul us and pray. Give me a few days and I'll look back at this as a successful season, the streak is now over, we have a good coach, facilities improving, great conference, and home crowds return for next season.
The lob seemed REALLY high and I don't think we saw an angle
I don't necessarily agree with I'mBad, but I have to give him a ton of respect for taking his position. Takes guts to say something when he knew he would be swamped with "yeah, but you see what happened".
Keep in mind, if the slow down worked, not a single person would be on here posting that it worked but Coach was wrong for trying it.
We only slowed down at the very end and on those two possessions Geo had a contested layup and Myles missed a bunny on the follow. The next one was young’s bad to. We had great opportunities and yes we got bumped multiple times but no whistle.
This was my thought. I felt like we should have slowed down earlier, but when we didn't, and the lead shrunk, it was too late to do so.
Watch the video..It has high and not a great pass from Geo for sure...BUT Myles has had worse...He just didnt time it right
I don't have any problem with slowing down. Hell, our typical regular half court offense is just dribbling around and firing up a contested 3 as the clock winds down anyway. The problem was not slowing down. The problem was the dumb isolation play to Geo. There was no reason to not just continue to run our normal half-court offense. First, it would have forced the injured player on Houston to either (a) get off the court, or (b) limp around and try and guard someone. And second, we should have been going right at the two players that had four fouls. With 5 minutes to go in the game, their two (non-injured) best players were one foul away from leaving the game. Our goal should have been to make it happen.
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its tourney time, you do not win games by slowing down and limiting possessions, you do it by doing what got you there. When RU is aggressive good things happen, we saw it all year,
I’m really mixed on this. I hate the standing around too. But at the same time our half court offense is pretty poor. We seem to thrive off of our rebounding and some fast break which at least leads to better ball movement. We didn’t have the opportunity to create down the stretch because we couldn’t get a rebound and continually had to bring the ball up in half court. I’d like to know statistically what we did this year in last 5 minutes of a lead. I do think that run a lot of iso and hold ball
JY saved the day in overtime against Minnesota after the hold the ball strategy and let Geo shoot failed. Then again JY held the ball and turned it over too up 2 with 31 seconds left
In the last 4 minuses: Missed a dunk, a layup, gave up 6 offensive rebounds including off two missed FTs that led to a 3 and caught a bad break on not being able to toss a rebound off a UH player while going out of bounds on a defensive rebound we did grab. All those plays needed to go UHs way or we likely win that game. I agree the strategy was correct. Execution and a few bad bounces cost us, not the strategy.
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Why cant people accept the fact that the strategy made sense but the execution just failed. This happens all the time in business and it happened on the court yesterday. I even see that in conversation at my company TODAY. It happens and all you can do is learn from it, adjust, and improve.
what people miss is that RU is not a good offensive team. When RU is at its best is when its attacking not passive. If you watched a few games this year, this was the same end game all over again. Yes you can say all the things had to go right for Houston to win but playing passive is infectious....we certainly saw it defensively, that was a passive effort down the stretch. This team does poorly when it has to think about its shots and puts pressure on itself. It wasnt a 10 point lead, it was a 3-5 point lead. This is the NCAA tournament, did you see Loyola win by being passive late yesterday. How about Oregon State when Oklahoma State made their rally. You keep playing your game. Being passive led to RU being crushed on both ends....see rebounding, we had players watching shots go up and not crashing the boards. Defensively we were chasing everything, way too slow, were we tired? I don't know but Myles couldnt secure any rebounds and we could not play defense without fouling. The non box out on the last Houston shot was criminal and that Geo fouled the guy was just a wtf moment.
What we don’t know is how the team responds to the strategy. Does it make them more tight? Do we not miss alley oops and layups? Might we grab a rebound? It seems like this has generally been pikes strategy in the end game. So players are used to it.
Basketball strategy in March is not different from basketball strategy in November.
NCAA tourney is way different, teams are elevating their play. There is no tomorrow. How do you think schools like Oral Roberts and Oregon State are winning and these are not that good of teams. Credit Houston as well.
Did you see the womens game today, another collapse, one team had all the desire and the other team passive and mistakes multiplying. When you lose your aggressiveness you are prone to chasing and mistakes.
The same way upsets happen in the regular season.
Sure everyone is more focused in the tournament but the strategy is not different and there is no reason to expect it should be.
I mean one exception is that teams are less likely to give up when they are down like 10 with a minute left but that's sort of a separate thing.
At this level in any sport, it’s why you practice converting bad feeds and throws instead of the easy ones.
The outstretched, and shoe string catches in football, turning the double play from a feed at your ankles.
Those are the plays that win games.
If every pass and feed were perfect, the game would be easy
I’ve advocated for the iso offense on here several times, so I’m not going to back off it now.
We had the game won with two balls in Myles hands under the rim, what more can you ask?
I still have no clue, why we didn’t crash the defensive glass...that’s the mystery I can’t solve
We had the game won with two balls in Myles hands under the rim, what more can you ask?
I still have no clue, why we didn’t crash the defensive glass...that’s the mystery I can’t solve
I'm not sure it is factual to say that Rutgers slowed things down, despite the announcers claiming we did. I think we just played Rutgers basketball the way we've been playing all season, and they way we played the entire game yesterday.
I looked at the yesterday's box score play-by-play for all possessions until the last 3 minutes of the game, to see how long Rutgers held the ball on each new possession before taking the first shot (or turning the ball over), and what was the result. Sure enough, we had about an equal number of medium possessions (10-19 seconds) and long possessions (20+ seconds), and only a handful of short possessions (<10 seconds) on fastbreaks. I was surprised to see that we actually performed much better on those long possessions.
With 26 long possessions, we scored on 42% of them. Of 25 medium possessions we scored on 28% of them (This does not include additional scoring opportunities we may have received from offensive rebounds or free throws).
I think because the announcers complained about Rutgers slowing things down, that planted the seed in the minds of the viewers, even though that is just how we play. The announcers seemed to expect a Houston blowout, and they did their homework on Houston and not so much on Rutgers. They did not recognize that the iso offense was a normal part of our offensive package, and that long possessions are typical for Rutgers. It is not like we are an up-tempo team that switched to an unusual offense for us. It is not like we were ignoring open looks at the basket to run down the clock.
We just played the same offense that got us to this point. Unfortunately, as we know, this offense is inconsistent, and we paid for that last night. It also didn't help that we had some defensive lapses in the final minutes either.
I looked at the yesterday's box score play-by-play for all possessions until the last 3 minutes of the game, to see how long Rutgers held the ball on each new possession before taking the first shot (or turning the ball over), and what was the result. Sure enough, we had about an equal number of medium possessions (10-19 seconds) and long possessions (20+ seconds), and only a handful of short possessions (<10 seconds) on fastbreaks. I was surprised to see that we actually performed much better on those long possessions.
With 26 long possessions, we scored on 42% of them. Of 25 medium possessions we scored on 28% of them (This does not include additional scoring opportunities we may have received from offensive rebounds or free throws).
I think because the announcers complained about Rutgers slowing things down, that planted the seed in the minds of the viewers, even though that is just how we play. The announcers seemed to expect a Houston blowout, and they did their homework on Houston and not so much on Rutgers. They did not recognize that the iso offense was a normal part of our offensive package, and that long possessions are typical for Rutgers. It is not like we are an up-tempo team that switched to an unusual offense for us. It is not like we were ignoring open looks at the basket to run down the clock.
We just played the same offense that got us to this point. Unfortunately, as we know, this offense is inconsistent, and we paid for that last night. It also didn't help that we had some defensive lapses in the final minutes either.
Exactly! I'm old school in that you play hard until the buzzer. We were doing great when we were aggressive. I think pIke deserves some blame because he is the one who is in charge of strategy. Slowing down at five minutes not good, slowing down at 2 1/2 minutes I think RU wins. Regardless, this season was a success like we have not seen since I was 23! We have a good coach, facilities are getting better, and I think recruting will get better. I am sure from this point forwards we will be in the dance again.
Slowing down didn’t get us the 8 point lead. Changing the way you play can change the momentum...especially when it results in desperation heaves at the shot clock. There is a time to take the air out and we always do it way too early.
We lost because of two missed dunks and an attempted 3 point shot that was unnecessary. Those moments right there were at least an 8-10 point swing. Never mind the lack of FT's by us and their 16 FT's in the second half.
The slowdown didn't bother me at all. The execution on some of the missed dunks and shot selections were IMO the problem not the slowdown at that time.
There were no desperation heaves though. There were missed layups and dunks and turnovers. And no defense.
Absolutely. The color guy was very unaware of what Rutgers does. It was almost like the only 2 games he watched were Clemson and Houston. And you can run the clock on offense and still be aggressive on defense, they are not mutually exclusive. They boxed out very well as a team in the first half. Caleb had several strong boards. Geo boxed out. Why did it stop at the end? Pressure does crazy things.
I am not a big Montez Mathis fan however, Mathis had 10 in the first half and generally played well including hitting from outside. No he has been mistake prone in many games but seemed like an asset in this one. Not sure he was utilized enough in the 2nd half given what he provided in the 2nd half, obviously because RU built the lead in other ways, Tez wasnt an option then but perhaps he needed more time in the last 6 minutes, I think he came in when Caleb fouled out.
Its hard to criticize though given Mathis has not been the most trustworthy
Its hard to criticize though given Mathis has not been the most trustworthy
It's not that they slowed it down. It's that they didn't force action. The offense should have attacked through RHJ and Caleb. Force Jarreu (injured) Chaney and Gorham (4fouls) to make a decision and play d.