Not to quibble, just to clarify: Do you mean constructed as a team, or as individual parts? If it's the former, I completely agree. My point was more about individual players, with the exception of Happ and Hayes, and I would take MH over Hayes.
Wisconsin 69, Illinois 60 POSTGAME
Not to quibble, just to clarify: Do you mean constructed as a team, or as individual parts? If it's the former, I completely agree. My point was more about individual players, with the exception of Happ and Hayes, and I would take MH over Hayes.
icengineer
- Southern Illinois
I like this! So when Finke has a bad game we can refer to him as Funke. But I'm hoping that never happens so we never use the term!
Thanks for the recall, geneseo!!
Blackman was brought in to get us back to some level of respectability and I think he did that.
Bronson Koenig is a really good player and can play the PG position better than anyone we currently have. Add Hayes, Happ, Brown and Showalter and it is not a bad team. Do not have depth, but solid in their starting lineup.
OrangeDeeLight
- Champaign Area
At this point, what can Groce do that is NOT viewed as a negative? Well, at least on this and other boards. :tsk:
Win!:thumb:
I think that's likely true, but Malcolm Hill was the best player on the floor. For a five minute stretch starting with 11:30, we didn't run the offense through him at all, no plays set for him, forced situations by role players and turnovers/questionable shots by Kendrick.
Given the same talent around them both, I'd roll with Malcolm Hill as the lead guard over Koenig. Now that doesn't mean that Malcolm's true position isn't a 3, but Malcolm has a considerably higher assist rate, and a lower to rate than Koenig. Slightly different system.
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Koenig is better at the PG position than Malcolm. The emergence of Koenig over Jackson at the PG position was actually part of the reason Wisconsin got elevated from a really good team to a team that came just a little short in their quest for a NC. Wisconsin is also visibly better than us this year, a solid starting lineup as I said, but it is not that Koenig has huge or abundant talent around him. And it is not just coaching either.
We have a huge gap at PG, and PG play is one of the biggest problems on this team (and previous teams). We do not have adequate PG play, let alone have someone who can play the position better than Koenig.
PG play has been a bigger issue for us because we continued to play Lewis (and until recently Tate) there for a lot of minutes. When Hill is initiating the offense, it looks much better, unfortunately, much of the time even if we were running the offense through Hill Lewis or Tate have been on the floor and their defender doesn't defend them (note how often we have to kick to a wide open Lewis).
I believe it is true that Hill is equal or better at running the PG than Koenig because statistics support this claim and the eyetest shows it. That said, with the exception of Jordan Taylor, Wisconsin has never really had a high assist rate guy because the rely more on ball movement than a lead guard making plays. Wisconsin's style and history shows, they need their "PG" to simply be capable of keeping the ball moving and knocking down shots more that making plays. I guess we'll just have to disagree about Malcolm's capability vs Koenig.
I will say that few things have hurt us more during Groce's tenure than having guys on the floor who simply aren't guarded on offense. At least with Egwu, he gave a ton on defense, but this year it's been bad. This is where the injuries hurt also hurt you, but our holes on offense aren't great on defense either.
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Couple things I've seen with Malcolm as PG:
1) Against NW it seemed to impact his scoring, as has been noted he didn't take many shots that game.
2) Against UW while we were making the run to get the big lead, a lot of it was Malcolm on isolation plays. We ran the same set over and over, getting MH on Happ and he was taking advantage. But I think that comes at a price, he dominates the ball and didn't really get anyone else involved. Then as we lost the lead, he didn't get enough touches. It also hurt that JCL got in foul trouble and was having an off game, that is probably why Lewis played more than we'd like.
Still very much a work in progress.
TV Ted wasn't working the game. Which worries me a little bit--we might him tomorrow.
A friend (who is a fan of a rival B1G team) and I were watching this game at a bar last night and we were discussing how bad the B1G refs are. At about this point in the game we both agreed that the refs were about to realize that they better stop homering for iowa if wisconsin is to have a chance at the NCAA'S. Lo and behold... lmao
Yep they got every call, it was unreal in that 2nd half. I don't like Woodbury but he got no help from the refs.