I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you said, except that your first thought in your original post was that Epps should start next week for Mayer. Like I said Mayer hasn’t played great necessarily, but neither has Epps consistently.
This next statement is not aimed specifically at you or any kind of indictment of your basketball knowledge, but in general when I see player X should be starting over player Y, one of my first thoughts is, “wow, we have someone on the board that is more knowledgeable than our head coach and assistants about basketball, this team and how all the pieces fit within the offensive and defensive systems. Does Mayer need to play better? Yes. And yes he had some clear outs that didn’t end well. So did CoHawk as well as some very questionable shots at times. Heck I wish TSJ had more clear outs cuz he seems to be lost since his head got whacked.
As to the defensive system, you are right they were not executing well. I asked this question earlier in the thread but got no response, so maybe you can tell me. Was PSU’s success from 3 today more a combination of hot shooting and poor execution by Illini or is there a underlying weakness that other teams might be able to exploit? I realize if Illini is executing perfectly, it wouldn’t be an issue but how often does that happen game to game. Just curious if PSU’s blueprint will be something other teams try to follow. Today and against VA when the ran the two-man game to take advantages of mismatches are the only time I’ve really wondered about the system (not that we shouldn’t run it, but just identifying potential weaknesses) this season.
Again, the comment earlier was not aimed at you specifically. For all I know you’re a 3-time IL HS coach of the year and the key presenter at coaching clinics across the country. Thanks in advance to any response about my D question.
Sorry to keep you waiting, I'm trying to take Sundays off (lol). Anyway, on my original post it was intended to be more of a prediction based on what I had heard from Underwood and my own observations on the game, not so much a suggestion. My tone sucked so I can see how folks might have read it as me calling for Mayer to sit, but I'm not sure I've got that strong of an opinion on it. I try not to be harsh on players like that because as outsiders we don't see what else is going on, like an injury or some off-court issue or having a guy just work on something that will change how he plays the game but cause a short-term dip in production. I will say that if Mayer needs to take plays off for some reason, Underwood should re-evaluate how much time he's getting. It's a bit of a catch-22 since you absolutely need the guy to play well to reach your ceiling, but if he can't get there you also need to consider cutting bait. I don't have enough info on his situation to know what's up, it's just a hot take.
I coached middle school basketball as a high school kid in the 90s, and I don't think that gives me any credibility at all with regards to this stuff. I'm just a guy who has loud opinions and watches a lot of hoops, and my assumption is that we're all in the same boat here. That doesn't stop me from running my mouth and occasionally arguing with folks, but I'm under no illusion that anything I'm suggesting has any value beyond just keeping the conversation going and I kind of assume that everyone else kind of feels the same way. It's just a bit tougher to be civil after a game like Saturday's.
Based on Underwood's presser, I'm assuming the next week of practice is going to be an audition for playing time over the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if that kind of thing has any value, but it sure sounds like that's where he's headed.
So I don't know how much of the issue on Saturday was execution and how much was game planning. (If a plane crashes into the side of a mountain after losing an engine, not having been given enough fuel for the trip, and with a drunk pilot, how much is the pilot to blame? Depends on how his pre-flight inspection went, I suppose.) Reading between the lines and based on how we've played in prior games, including on how much more frequently we blew switches and got crossed up than usual, I have assumed that Underwood asked the team to switch less often to keep a bigger guy on Pickett and to not leave their shooters wide open. It seemed like some guys figured that out and others didn't, so coverages got blown all day and guys got caught between staying at home and helping out but actually doing neither. That's what happens when you don't know what adjustments are being made from your base D, when you don't read the scouting reports to know if your opponent has four knockout shooters on the floor, or if you're just too lazy to get where you need to go on time. Either way, the one thing I absolutely do know is what we saw is not what Underwood drew up, because who would do that? Not a guy who's been the most successful coach in the B1G for the last three years, I think. That doesn't guarantee that his plan would have worked if executed, but we'll never know, or at least we won't know until we face these guys again.
I think PSU is generally going to be a tough team to guard because of their shooters. You can do things to take that away, like staying at home, staying in front of Pickett and daring him to shoot the three, dealing with the high ball screen better than we did, stuff like that. On the one hand, some of that might be difficult due to the particularities of our system and that might mean we need to make more adjustments, which could be difficult for us to execute. On the other hand, we've done a good job of denying the three point shot all year long in terms of attempts and I think that's one of the basic goals defensively, so I don't feel like we were set up to fail there at all. We just didn't do our stuff. And I'm not sure how many teams there are like PSU out there who can spread the floor with four shooters and exploit mismatches with a burly guard/playmaker in the paint. Some of the better Wisconsin teams of recent vintage did stuff like that, whether it was with big guards in the post running the swing O or with Happ as a big man playmaker, and it was always kind of a pain to deal with. But not every team has what it takes to do that.
Dunno if that was what you were after, but that's my uninformed lukewarm take. We'll be good, but we need to buy in and engage if we're going to be great.
