The December schedule is kind to the Hilltoppers this season. With opponents like Saturday”s East Tennessee the Tops can have an off night, learn some lessons without putting a blemish on their record. If you ask me an intelligent tactic.
OK, we had Witchita State and will face Louisville, but other than that the Tops were smart to schedule a weaker schedule, so that the win loss record would look better at the end of the season and they can have some bad games, learn some lessons and still get the W.
I see nothing wrong with this tactic. Top 10 teams usually play programs inferior to them in December and why is that? They are also busy padding their stats. Not that upsets don’t happen, and well they should, this gives smaller programs a chance at the big boys and improve their programs.
By the time January rolls around, the Tops should be a well practiced team, at full strength with the return of Brandon Harris and the induction of Chris Harrison Docks and Trency Jackson. So, while no one is assuming nor even worried about beating Louisville, the whole point of the “pre-season” is to get ready for conference, to win the regular season and tournament title’s before leaving the Sun Belt and getting a higher ranking in the tournament bracket. Playing #1 year in and year out is not likely to help your situation out.
Even with both titles, and say a W-L of 25 – 4 you wouldn’t anticipate a higher selection than 7 or 8, considering our competitive level.
OK, so what good did the ugly game do WKU? The Toppers are a physical and athletic team with nice talent, no projects per se, and they play hard defensively. But, there are gaping problems that showed up…
1. Shooting at 36% overall, 20% of 3s and a 53% from the line…is disasterous.
2. 23 Turnovers is entirely out of control
3. Both of the above stats are partly if not majorly due to lack of ability to play against a simply 2-3 zone, and a lightly resistent press. Give ETSU credit, that slowed us down a lot.
4. The rules being enforced again is a good thing, so the Tops must learn not to foul and for one reason…East Tennessee shot 80% from the line and the Tops 53%, luckily we had fewer fouls, or this game would have been very close at the end.
Promising were the pump fakes of Dickerson for a couple of nice short jumpers, although he didn”t make any 3s, people still assume he can actually hit them.
I am bothered by the forced attempts to throw the ball inside at all costs. Too many TOs due to trying to get the ball in, but we look best when the offense is an inside out affair, rather than outside in.
Sometimes they pass up good shots trying to pass to a great shot and it gets TOed. Just freaking take the shot you got rather then pass to one that might be.
You get the feeling like they are looking for a pass when they should be looking at the goal to shoot.
Thursday vs UNC Wilmington…Go Tops.