For me, it's more on Jon not putting Coop in the best position to succeed. Coop is a great player but I'm not sure drving through the teeth of the defense is a strength of his.
Duke 72, Kentucky 77 Post Game Thread
- Thread starter scottdude8
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bluedevilwildcats
Member
I'm getting tired of all the lessons our players and coaches need to learn...the past 3 years. Like, are we actually learning or just doing the same thing and hoping for a better result? A good offensive scheme is going to prioritize open looks for the other players over the star trying to do it himself. Every time. Why Jon hasn't figured this out and adapted is frustrating and concerning. Maybe it's because the coach he learned from never figured it out.
Other than Steph Curry, who is clearly 1 of 1 unique, show me another good NBA shooter who shoots a push shot from his chest with extremely high arc like Caleb does.
It's too early in the season for adjusted efficiencies to be taken too seriously. Duke's defense in the second half was very poor.
We played the 3 of the 5 grad students who were expected to play meaningful minutes this year. Begovich and Sheffield were brought in as practice bodies (Begovich last season, Sheffield this year). James, Brown, and Willis were the transfers brought in to play in games. So, no, Sheffield wasn't a miss. He just wasn't recruited to play in games. We had 10 guys already in the pecking order for games, and he was brought in to be #11.
That said, I think a question could be made as to whether it would have been wise to give Harris a couple of minutes in the second half to buy some time, as our starters appeared to run out of gas late. Ideally, if James hadn't gotten hurt and Maluach not cramped up, this might not have been an issue though. Scheyer gambled that he could get by with his main 8 even after the injuries, and it almost worked out. But maybe he should have gone a different direction.
Proctor had a good game overall: 12 points on 9 attempts, 3 assists and no turnovers. But yes, the offense in went through Flagg for the majority of the second half, and I think Proctor was underutilized. Most of Proctor's damage was done when we played well in the first half (10 of his 12 points).
I thought our defense played pretty well against a good offensive opponent. It was our offense that let us down. Just 27 points in the second half, and just 11 points in the final 10 minutes. That probably was fatigue-related. But we also missed some very makeable shots, including a couple of layups by Knueppel.
Agree here, as either the players didn't do what Scheyer wanted or Scheyer was unable to make the right calls. The last 10 minutes was not a great example of a well-coordinated, well-implemented strategy. With an 8-point lead and the ball with under 10 minutes left, we really should have won that game. But the offense cratered, and Scheyer wasn't able to come up with an answer.
Definitely one of the dangers of running the offense through a guy 6'9"+. Regardless of how talented that guy is. If he's dribbling in traffic, it's likely to be a risky endeavor unless he gets REALLY low. Flagg and Filipowski are both high-dribble guys. Very skilled, but that's a dangerous rope to walk.
Unfortunately, Foster and Proctor both also seem kind of high-dribble types. Neither gets down in the pocket on their drives. It's probably why they aren't the strongest finishers in the paint: they aren't positioned to explode upward, but more of a launch laterally. On this team, Knueppel is the only guy who really gets down into a power-dribble position that allows him to protect his dribble and use his strength in the lane.
I am guessing that Cooper was doing exactly what Scheyer was telling him to do down the stretch. I think, rather than a complete clear out, he should have put him into pick and roll in an attempt to get a switch onto a weaker defender and then let him make some decisions. He was too easy to guard in isolation.
Yeah, I thought the defense played pretty darn well. And the offense did too.... for 30 minutes. But the last 10 minutes, the offense completely cratered. 11 points in the last 10:21 of the game.
from the Mega Cooper profile by ESPN's Baxter Holmes (EK Board thread)... https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...0s-nba-boston-celtics-team-built-cooper-flagg
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MacKenzie [Cooper's coach] knew another test was needed.
So he reached out to a friend, Ja'Shonté Wright-McLeish, a 6-4 sophomore guard at the University of Maine.
MacKenzie told him he had a young player -- a 6-foot-6 eighth grader -- whom he wanted him to play. Wright-McLeish was skeptical, but he figured he'd help MacKenzie as a favor. MacKenzie provided a directive: Don't take it easy on the kid. Go hard. Be physical. Bully him.
In their first game, Wright-McLeish did just that. He stripped the ball. He blocked Flagg's shot. He initiated contact. "I played a little dirty," Wright-McLeish told ESPN. Flagg departed the Bangor gym, fuming. "He came back a couple days later," MacKenzie said, "and he looked at me and he goes, 'That's never going to happen again.'"
Flagg and Wright-McLeish faced off again -- and it wasn't close.
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I think that end-of-game sequence will push Coop to better performances in the future. He appears to be "that kind of player".
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MacKenzie [Cooper's coach] knew another test was needed.
So he reached out to a friend, Ja'Shonté Wright-McLeish, a 6-4 sophomore guard at the University of Maine.
MacKenzie told him he had a young player -- a 6-foot-6 eighth grader -- whom he wanted him to play. Wright-McLeish was skeptical, but he figured he'd help MacKenzie as a favor. MacKenzie provided a directive: Don't take it easy on the kid. Go hard. Be physical. Bully him.
In their first game, Wright-McLeish did just that. He stripped the ball. He blocked Flagg's shot. He initiated contact. "I played a little dirty," Wright-McLeish told ESPN. Flagg departed the Bangor gym, fuming. "He came back a couple days later," MacKenzie said, "and he looked at me and he goes, 'That's never going to happen again.'"
Flagg and Wright-McLeish faced off again -- and it wasn't close.
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I think that end-of-game sequence will push Coop to better performances in the future. He appears to be "that kind of player".
Our defense in the second half was basically equal to our defense in the first half, up until the final 10 seconds where we had to play the foul game. We gave up I doubt this is going to go down as a bad defensive game this season. I do expect that this will go down as a bad offensive game.
mph
Well-known member
You can find DBR posters on every side of every argument so I’m sure there were also folks who were happy with both K and Scheyer’s end-game strategy and others who were split.
Either way, it seems to gloss over the distinction some are making that a) you can set up Flagg to take the final shot without having him initiate the set in isolation. Maybe run an action that produces a more favorable switch or that gets him the ball in an attacking position so he doesn’t have to create everything off the dribble. And b) putting him in isolation for 4 of the last 5 plays might not be the best way to generate quality looks or to maintain any sense of offensive flow.
I’m firmly in the camp that Jon is a very good coach and will continue to get better. I’m also encouraged by last nights game. I’m more convinced than ever this team has championship potential. But the lesson I took from last night isn’t that we just had a poor shooting game or Cooper made freshman mistakes but that Jon could have done better at putting our guys in a position to succeed. But, hey, I was the 10th man on my high school basketball team so what the heck do I know.
Yeah, I think the timing of the injuries had everything to do with the limited rotation. He wasn't going to go beyond the core 8 man rotation unless we had a decent lead. We didn't get the lead until Kon was fouled on that 3 with 8:30 to go. Just when we pushed it to 6 with 6:30 to go, Cooper goes to the bench with foul 2. I actually thought that last 6:30 when we extended the lead was awesome as we were doing it without Flagg, showing our depth. That unit was playing so well, he wasn't going to mess with the chemistry to give Evans or Harris some run. We came out flat, let them cut the lead to 4 in the first minute and a half, and then we got it back to 9 with 14 to go. Maybe at that point you try and give Evans or Harris a try, but Gillis and Brown were still pretty fresh at that point? While Brown had fouls, we really didn't utilize he and Gillis as much as we could have, using the depth more could have started with those two. Once Sion and Khaman were limited, it was too late to try the other frosh. Once the game was in the balance, it wouldn't have been fair to throw Evans or Harris into the cauldron. I do hope we see some Patrick N against Wofford as we need some taller insurance for Khaman when we face teams with big lurchers like Kansas with Hunter D.
Those two statements are perfectly consistent. In our previous games, we eventually heated up. We didn't tonight.
Having an off night shooting is a 1 of 3 game problem. Coming out of the locker room with cold shooting at the beginning of the game is a 3 of 3 problem
Take away three made free throws in the foul game, and they scored 37 in each half for a total of 74 points in 74 possessions. That's pretty good against what seems to be a very good offensive team. And it's in spite of a couple of obvious lapses or miscommunications that led to easy buckets.
The offense was bad in the final 10 minutes, but I don't agree that the defense was as good in each half. Kentucky scored 6 points in the paint in the first half and 20 in the second, two second-chance points to 7, and 1 fast-break point to 9. Duke went from doing a great job of preventing easy offense to allowing a whole lot of it.
The defense allowed points differently in the two halves, but basically distributed the points equally.
And fast break points allowed are generally a function of your offense, not your defense. They typically result from turnovers, of which we had way more in the second half than in the first.
I agree with this. Some of the challenges of the Flagg late game ISO might have been execution as much as strategy. On two plays Flagg was doubled and Kon was wide open on the right wing. One of those plays ended up in a Flagg 3 point play as he made the elbow jumper over 2 defenders, and the other was the penultimate play where he spun into the turnover. But on each he could have kicked to Kon for the 3. And on the final possession Maluach set a screen that forced UKs big to switch onto Flagg on the wing which is probably a match up Duke wants, but Flagg carried the ball too far into the corner and lost his handle. If Flagg kicks to Kon who buries a three, or beats the big baseline for a layup we are not killing Scheyer for playing through him but praising Flagg for making winning plays.
DevilYouKnow
Member
My sky sure isn’t falling. It was a great game and our hero, who kept us in it all night, briefly played like a 17 year old under the super bright lights.
We may some of the next few, due to our youth. The real determining factors are what we learn and how we respond.
We may some of the next few, due to our youth. The real determining factors are what we learn and how we respond.
Yeah, definitely not a "sky is falling" situation. But a frustrating one, giving away a marquee win that was very much there for the taking.
Phredd3
Member
That is undeniably good coaching.