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Gopher Mens Hoops


Scott M

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A poor showing in Tallahassee from the seniors. The team looked very timid, especially in the second half. Half court offense got pushed way out from the basket and they never looked backdoor on overplays. Their defense was running all over the court letting penetration beat them and kick outs, not to mention all the sloppy play resulting in fouls. They knew coming in FSU was a good FT% team, and they paid for it.

They need to show some better poise on the road and better patience in the half court. Too much standing and people that were unsure what to do with the ball. Not a good game when Hoffarber leads scoring. Way too many turnovers again.

The gophers need to learn from this game and move forward. The schedule looks pretty favorable from here until after Christmas.

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Came out of the break hustling on defense, but constantly out of control. Not many coaches are going to make the difference when the team only puts it in the hole 33% of the time and the big three are more like 1 fer 4. And what's with 1/3 of your shots coming from behind the arc? Ah, well... Hoffarber is fun to watch, even when he shoots from a vertical position. grin.gif

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Yay, we finally got to watch a game on tv. Too bad it was this one instead of the IA St. game. They shot the ball terrible and turned it over too much. Also, had lots of foul trouble. FS was shooting the double bonus in both halfs with more than 7-8 minutes left to play. They were a step slow and it showed in the foul department. Better atheletes(which are coming) would have competed better.

Also, Dan Coleman needs to assert himself more offensively. His career has been largely a disappointment. He has the talent to be a Jacobsen/Rickert type of player, but rarely plays up to his ability.

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Nice game from MN, not that UC Riverside is anything to get excited about. I missed it for the ice show but they held an opponent under 40 for the first time since 1991 and hadn't won a game by such a large margin since December of 2002.

On to Monday's game with NDSU. Nobody's getting all jacked up for this one like they did the football game grin.gif

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Everyone's all hepped up over the number of 3-pointers that fell. I'm just hoping it doesn't mean we become a team that lives (or dies) by the long ball. Even so, blowout or not, it's tough to beat being in the Barn and hearing that call: "ABU!... for THREE!..." All in all, the most encouraging were the 21 assists on 25 shots. Tubby is doing his level best to make sure it's about "we."

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How about them Gophers? smile.gif They continue to improve. I'm excited to see them get into big ten play. They are playing great defense, diving for loose balls. Offense is getting spread around. All in all good all-around performance I thought tonight watching.

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Went to the game tonight. NDSU made it interesting for the first 10 minutes, keeping it neck and neck, then the Gophers just blew it up. They have probably 85-90% of this intense pressure defense figured out, but every once in a while a guy is a step slow in the shell defense or closes out without control or gets beat on penetration. This will hurt them against good teams, as we saw against FSU. I wish their press was a little better tonight but Woodside is a good point guard and at the least it slowed him down. He was averaging 27 ppg but finished tonight with 17.

That's where the observations start:

*Al Nolen. Great job tonight, lead all scorers. Hounded Woodside on defense, came up with 5 steals and a sweet 3 point rejection that started a fast break.

* Gotta get to the free throw line more. This team is settling too much on jump shots. Be aggresive, get more dribble drives or reverse the ball faster to attack teams.

* Stop turning the ball over. 16 turnovers tonight, right on pace with their 16 a game average. Yes, they win by 32 and score 88 points tonight, but some of those turnovers came under the basket or in transition or in other times when they could have scored easy ones. You would be talking about a 100 point effort otherwise.

* Get the ball inside. This goes back to the team being too much of a jump shooting team. Yes, there are some good shooters on the team, but Tollackson was working hard for hi-lo feeds, wing entries, you name it, and he wasn't getting the ball! He got whistled for an offensive he was posting up so hard...The guards need to get him the rock. He's not bad on the block...his touch has actually improved quite a bit. Jon Williams even showed some post moves tonight, being very efficient with 4/5 shooting in 14 minutes. And Coleman can get some off glass jumpers and jump hooks inside. They need to work inside to open the outside or the other way around..either way the post game needs to get cracked wide open.

I like what Tubby is doing. He is very dependent upon his bench and he can substitute line changes and get lots of distribution of minutes among players. He can see what he has to work with, get his kids some confidence, and make them better with each game. They just need to learn to make better decisions with the basketball, be a little more efficient on both ends of the floor, and keep working on the defense. If they can shore up some of those deficiencies, they will be a difficult team to beat at home during the conference schedule and will play tough on the road. They might make some noise in that post-holiday tournament still!

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Nobody else has much enthusiasm. That's okay. When they last made the dance with Vinny Grier they were expected to be horrible also.

Has anyone seen their schedule? Besides UNLV and FSU(minus Thornton), they really don't play anyone until the Big Ten Season. They could be entering Big Ten play with ten wins. Go 9-7 or 10-6 in the conference, win the first game of the Big Ten tourney, and they're on the bubble. Do better and you're in.

They can win on defense and scrappiness. I think Tubby will get them turned around. I'll go out on a limb and say that they will be one of the last teams to make the NCAA tourney.


Going back to my bubble-talk, check out this bit from Reusse's column scheduled to appear tomorrow morning in the paper:

"The Gophers are now 5-1. There are six more nonconference games and they look like cupcakes, other than a game against UNLV at the end of the Duel in the Desert in Las Vegas.

So that puts Smith's first team at 10-2, minimum, when it opens the Big Ten season Jan. 5 at Michigan State. The home opener is four nights later against Northwestern.

The Wildcats recently lost at home to Brown. Michigan recently was blown out at Harvard. Iowa lost to Louisiana-Monroe in the first round of its Hawkeye Challenge -- its second loss in 26 years of the tournament. Ohio State has scored in the 40s twice in a pair of losses. Penn State finished eighth in the Old Spice Classic in Orlando.

What we're saying here is that there appear to be any number of inferior teams in the Big Ten. And these new, Tubby-fied Gophers do not appear to be one of them."

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Was at last night's game as well and while I'm less adept at the x's and o's, would agree that Tubby will put an entertaining product on the floor with the talent he's got. Can see a tremendous difference between this team and Monson's previous 2 teams. Tubby coaches and teaches rather than getting all emotional and flustered during the timeouts. Both styles can work but it obviously wasn't working for Monson towards the last. Also, you mentioned the first 10 minutes of the first half. This was always a scary time for Monson's teams as you were never sure if they'd continue to struggle for the rest of the game against teams they should have beaten handily. Since many of these guys are Monsons leftovers, team speed isn't what it needs to be. However, these guys look like they're in shape. They just wore NDSU down after awhile. I liked what I saw of Williams too. As he gets more playing time, he could be a load. The Big Ten is not as strong as it once was. Given Tubby's coaching, pulling off a few upsets, and minimal injuries, it's feasible they could make the NCAA's.

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50-27 lead at the half tonight over CO State, and the Barn is ROCKIN'! Sure rather be there than trying to pull it in on 'CCO. STOOPID big ten network! BTW: Great column in the Friday StarTrib by Judd Zulgad, blasting the greed that runs deep throughout the cable industry, effectively shutting out fans across the state. One revelation in that column: FSN could care less that we don't see the Gophs on their channel any longer: Fox owns 49% of the BTN

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Went to the game last night...Probably the best half of basketball (First half) I've seen in Williams in 5-6 years. They got whatever they wanted on offense and hounded the Rams on defense. They took care of the ball (4 turnovers at the half) Everybody played and scored

Hoffarber was unreal. I think he was like 5/7 on 3's in the first half. He was just unconscious. Tubby admitted in his postgame show that he probably cooled him off leaving him on the bench so long in the second half.

Spencer T. had a nice game, especially the first couple minutes. CSU's Frosh 7 footer Aguiler got 2 fouls in about 90 seconds. I think he had 4 fouls accumulated with maybe 3 total minutes played. Totally took the frontcourt players out of the game in the first couple minutes. Spencer fancies himself a 3 point shooter as he uncorked another one and nailed it this game. That's 2 3's in the last 2 games.

Dan Coleman had his best game as a Gopher. Period. Unbelieveably efficient. 10/14 FG, 2-2 FT. 22 points, 11 boards. Scored his 1,000 point on a 14 foot jumper near the top of the key. It was his 100th game and he joins a group of like 34 or 35 players who have reached the 1K mark. Quite an accomplishment for someone considered an underachiever (I still think this about him...too inconsistent). Great game though...he really was getting up on those rebounds and jump shots. If he can play mentally tough he will have a nice senior season.

Really the only guys that had bad games were McKenzie and Shamala. And McKenzie lead the team in assists and started at the point, so he has an excuse. Shamala is having a rough start to the year. Hoffarber does exactly what Shamala did last year, being scrappy and hitting big shots. Jamal looks timid out there on defense and out of sync on offense. He's probably transitioning to the offense and recovering from the stitches on his nose from Monday's game and the stitches on his hand from his accident at his apartment.

Overall there are things to pick apart.

Excellent intense pressure on the perimeter, although I still think they allow too many dribble drives.

The press was good but players are still a step slow and they don't run back and recover when they get beat. They allowed a guy to drive the length of the court 3 times in a row for layups without anybody getting in front of him. You can't allow that in the regular season. Gotta cut guys off better.

Too many 3 pointers being taken (10-29). Spencer got things going early inside, got his man in foul trouble, and then never got the ball the rest of the game. The guy has developed some inside moves. He pivots well, drop-steps well, has a great up and under. He has pretty good footwork and foot speed, but he can never show it off because 10/12 of the roster plays on the perimeter and wants to jack 3's.

I would have left with nothing to seriously complain about if they would have scored 100 and won by at least 30. But they took their foot off the gas pedal and coasted in teh second half, getting outscored in the second period. They lead by 24 at the half, and only ended up winning by 17. I think they need to keep the killer instinct and finish off this team. Beat a team by 40 and drop 100, they could have done it tonight, just killed the will of another team, and a Big Sky team besides.

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Nice recap, da chise! Can't blame the BTN for it not being on last night. It was on ESPN360 (whatever that is). I turned to the BTN last night thinking it would be on to no avail. So I watched the Wolves beat the Suns instead. Great game!

Aaron

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Oh, I'm not blaming BTN for that game not being on. I'm blaming BTN and all those involved for their part in blacking out 90% of the TV schedule for the average Gopher hoops fan. frown.gif And, no, I don't get ESPN360, either, whatever that is.

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ESPN 360 is an online streaming video service, but I think it is only available to people who use Verizon Wireless as their Internet provider. So just about everyone misses the games. We'll just have to wait till the Big 10 season rolls around to catch some games. I still listen to most games on the radio. There blowing teams out of the water right now so it'll be nice to have some good competition in a few weeks!

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What a garbage fest. MN beats SDSU 78-72. You gotta figure they will play down to the opponent a few times and play without passion. Tonight was that night.

I keep watching this in your face perimeter defense waiting for the team to turn the corner and really play it well, but lately they were a step slow. Tonight they were 5 steps slow. The rotations were bad, the close-outs were bad, they fell for every pump fake and drive, they didn't have hands up on defense, THEY GOT MURDERED ON THE BOARDS. They got outrebounded by 15 by a team that really didn't have a dominant or even good post player. It was horrible rebounding all the way around. I don't think I saw more than a handful of box outs the whole game. Johnson and Coleman are the only guys that can outjump anybody, but don't come down strong enough with the ball....not that anyone should ever do that, you should always rebound by positioning.

I don't know if it was rebounding as a team or rebounding out of the zone but they were killed on the boards.

Offense was really stagnant. Bad shots and lots of them. McKenzie looked like it was last year and he needed to drive against 3 guys and then hoist a shot.

SDSU came out with a nice plan though, and played tough. Got to give them credit. They hit the boards, they were patient on the press (the press was worthless...didn't wear them down, didn't register turnovers, didn't change the tempo of the game), they took good shots (the gophers gave them PLENTY of wide open looks). They gave an unathletic sophomore guard with a 9.5 career scoring average a variety of open looks and drives to lead all scorers with 28.

The only bright spots were Coleman and Hoffarber on offense. Coleman repeated his Saturday performance in terms of efficiency. 10/14 FG, 24 pts in 30 minutes. Hoffarber had a man draped on him all night, yet with just a little bit of space he started out 3/4 on Treys. He took a couple more shots (this kid oozes confidence) that were bad decisions (he's young and he'll learn), and finished 3-6 on threes for 9 points, he also is a heck of a passer with his southpaw passes and post entries with english on the ball. 6 assists.

You know the Gophers will have a game like this ever now and then but they never quit, played through it, and finished strong. The free throws need work. They shot 19-28, but hit them down the stretch when they needed to. So tonight they took 1 step forward, 3 steps back.

I believe a Monson coached team would have dropped a few more games by now. I hope to see Tubby's team make some adjustments and get better as they progress through the cupcakes and into the holiday tournament and Big Ten season. They have a huge layoff for finals week so hopefully they come out with intensity on Dec. 22 versus Santa Clara (sans Steve Nash wink.gif)

Go Gophs.

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Nice summary, da chise. SDSU's tallest guy is 6'7" and like you said they killed the Gophers on the boards. Callahan lit them up from outside and he managed to be left open for un-contested shots way too often. Looked like the Gophs were playing like they could just "out-talent" SDSU and forgot about hustling to the ball and contesting shots. Wasn't impressed with his first half play but a couple of Tallackson's plays late in the second half,(the bank shot off the board and the dish in the paint to Coleman) were key to this team playing well enough to win. Demonstrating some leadership at that point was a real positive and it seemed to spark them. They played more cohesively and hustled more on D the last couple minutes. I agree, if this had been a Monson coached team, probably would've wound up in the L column. Have a feeling practice today might not be real fun. smirk.gif

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Been away for a few weeks. Anybody watch the Duel in the Desert games or Santa Clara at Williams? I kind of figured they would be 10-2 going into the conference season. Won every game they were supposed to...but you'd still like to see them steal a game or two, especially if they want to go to the Big Dance.

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They may not go dancing, but they look stronger than last year-- I may be wrong, but it seems Tubby quietly does his work- recruiting seems vastly improved--the current crop is defending and they could have a good year which after last year I did not anticipate. shocked.gif

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Nice little game at home with Northwestern. How embarrassing was it that the Gophers had lost 6 of the last 7 against Northwestern? Just remember that Monson left on his own terms, he wasn't fired...Maturi should have shown him the door a long time ago.

Didn't make the game since I had my own league starting, but it sounded like Hoffarber was his usual self, 5-5 on treys in the first half, and Spence and Dan were taken care of business in the middle.

Tough stretch of game coming up starting with a frisky Penn State club on a winning streak on Saturday, and then Indiana and Michigan State at home next week. Gotta take one of those home games against those ranked teams if they want to dance.

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Gotta hand it to Tubby; the guy can flat out coach. Benching the starting 5 when they were floundering in the first half must've sent the right message. Play his way or don't play. The cutaway to Tubby giving Tallackson a tonguelashhing on the sidelines was priceless. Looked like a lot of "gosh darns", "by gollies" and "gee-whizzes" being uttered. Nice win over Northwestern, a team they should beat at the Barn but hadn't in the past 3 meetings I believe. And, the Barn was rockin' which never hurts.

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Tubby gets a taste of Big Ten officiating at it's finest: consistently inconsistent in spurts on both sides. People get killed and no call. Shed some dandruff, it touches someone, and a whistle blows. He and the Gophers still pull off a win thanks to PSU's poor free throw shooting. They stayed with it, clawed their way back from 16 down and won thanks to the Hoffarber 3-balls & hustle of Nolen at the end. Not pretty and painful to watch due to all the ticky tack foul calls but a W nonetheless. Win one of the next 3 (IN, MSU, OSU, excuse me, THE OSU) and it may open some eyes come tournament time.

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Right on Dotch. Was fishing Winni so I missed the game, but the recap sounds like it was exciting. Nolen has some intestinal fortitude to pluck that pass and go coast-to-coast, and then sink 3 of 4 free throws. Heck of an on the ball defender. I'll be at the barn on Thursday for the showdown with 14-1 Indiana and Sunday for the home rematch with MSU.

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I used to really enjoy watching gophers basketball. I went to high school with Sam Jacobson and I used to be a huge fan. I kinda of lost intrest when monson was coaching, but now I would love to watch them play under Tubby. Only problem is I dont have the stupid big ten network. I was glad I didnt have it this past football season, but now I really wish I could watch some hoops!

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lol! Poor Oly...I really enjoy your insight da chise. You sound like a student of the game and look forward to your report on the next several games. Nothing like being there at the Barn. I was a rassler in high school but played a lot of full contact 'barn-ball' at practices until they finally made us quit because of all the injuries. I've been watching Gopher's BB on TV a long time, since the Mussleman era. Mychal Thompson was in one of my classes on West Bank at the U (hilarious to watch him try to sit in one of those little desks) and Johnny Kundla taught the conditioning class I took on St. Paul campus. Super nice guy. Yes, I am a geezer but still bleed maroon and gold. I get to a few games every year but regret that I didn't have the foresight to buy season tickets when Monson was tanking. I feel your pain Oly. You're right about the football season, it was awful. Luckily we have Dish Network. I enjoy the women's BB too. Now if only the men's hockey team was playing a little better...

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