Looks like I was very wrong about this team. Among the many problems, the biggest is that we are playing without a point guard. For the third season and for possibly two more, our starting point guard is a 6’1” shooting guard who can’t penetrate and create, can’t defend, and worst of all he cannot dribble against pressure. He constantly picks up his dribble in the backcourt when pressured, then floats long crosscourt passes begging to be picked off. Also when pressured in the backcourt, he likes to dribble into the sidelines where he’s even easier to get pinned down. Point guards are supposed to be able to dribble, even against pressure. Pearl didn’t pick his dribble up once in three years and one of the greatest pressure defenses in history, Georgetown, gave up trying to press him because he would use the dribble to slice them up like a turkey. Put pressure on Girard and our offense will grind to a halt, yet our backup point guard played only four minutes. We have a long history of many illustrious point guards but we currently don’t have one.
Incredibly, a team that cannot shoot or score made more threes than we did. We don’t seem to be relying on using screens to free up shooters as much as we have in the past. Instead, Buddy and Swider are putting the ball on the floor a lot. Shooters like Andy Rautins and Trevor Cooney used to put a lot of miles on their sneakers by running around screens all game. Seems Buddy did also in past years. But now, Buddy and Swider are doing far too little catch and shoot, getting the ball delivered at the right time and spot after coming off screens to just go up with a clean look. It is the biggest strength of each of their games. Yet most of their shots are coming off their own dribble. I’m all for expanding their game by sometimes using their dribble to get an occasional midrange jumper, but they are not JJ Starling. They are elite three point shooters, they are not elite scorers off the dribble.
With the tough schedule coming up, if we don’t quickly get a lot better we will have little chance of the NCAAs. Luckily, the weak ACC this year might be able to keep the season from being a losing one. Hopefully we can turn things around.