In Game: at Loyola Chicago

[BaseRich306]

Really wish we got that W over Michigan State before the whole program and all of college basketball changed. Hard to see a way back to that level now. Go cats.

[Waitress]

Beautiful day in the Chi!

[seamac77]

They shot 50% from three.
We shot 26% from three.
Ballgame

[85Wildcatsky]

Our whole team had 6 3's.

Des had 5!

[RichmondCat]

This team tries hard but, sadly, has not gotten better at the one skill that is keeping it from being competitive—shooting. Mike Loughnane looks to be a good shooter…I’d like to see what he can bring.

[citycat]

Before today, LUC was shooting .350 on 3s. That's a little better than average in D1.

Today they were 14-28, .500.

Our coaches can use that as a baseline for further experiments. "An unguarded 35% shooting team will hit 50% of their shots at home."

If your opponents shoots 50% on 28 3 pointers, you're going to lose 75-80% of those games.

If we're going to play Bailey, Logan, and Schulte as many minutes as we did, you'd hope the inside defense would take care of itself and your guards could contest 3 pointers rather than sag into the middle in an attempt to clog things up.

[85Wildcatsky]

I don't mind the coaches trying to come up with custom defenses but you must be able to adjust. Our philosophy seems to be that we should do more of the same that is not working and just do it better. Ug.

[ScootCat]

Wandering in the wilderness. The question is: For how long?

[Jay Catsby]

Our interior defense is and has always been terrible. Skog pre-injury and Reed grade out as some of the worst big defenders in the league. Logan’s numbers are better because of the blocks but watching the tape he gets a lot of blocks from being in poor position to begin with and recovering.

If we want to be able to defend the three well, we need to keep players out of the paint. See URI, Richmond, & VCU games as examples of where we tried different strategies but still couldn’t do anything because we couldn’t defend the paint without fouling or double teaming.

End of the day, our defense is passable for a good team but not a great team. It has never been great (at least since 2008).

We could stand to bring in an assistant coach to help with that, in addition to seeking athletic bigs and shooters in the portal after this season.

We need to do SOMETHING different after this season. It’s no fun watching a team play sub-.500 ball and be borderline top 150, which we’ve now done two years in a row and will be a third if we don’t make a big change.

And to be clear I’m not suggesting clear out the whole coaching staff. We just need to be willing to have hard conversations with both coaches and players and evaluate all available outside talent for answers to improve.

[i77cat]

We're down to 32.7% on 3s for the season. With Skogman doing his post-surgical recovery, that percentage should drop. We started today at 33.0 %, good for 222nd. Kennesaw State was 32.75% in 236th, so we're just a bit worse than that. Prairie View is #301 at 31.04%. I'd like to stay above that.

[otherwildcat]

Kudos to Bailey for knocking down a couple of threes. Even though Loyola was letting him shoot, ditto Huffman.
If Bailey becomes a threat from the three and Durkin learns to create his own shot the offense will be difficult to defend.

[Dr. Bliss]

I'm wondering about our player development strategy. Players like Brizzi, Moss, Schulte, Spadone, and Adam don't seem to have a regular spot in the rotation; they come in sporadically and willy-nilly, sometimes just during one half. To me, this looks like a coaching desperation move rather than a well-thought-out strategy of developing players, based on pairing them with groups to maximize their potential and giving them predictable minutes and situations in which they can learn and grow. I'm thinking back to Sean Logan last year and how he would usually play some minutes in the first half (he rarely played in the second). I think that benefited Sean.

It's hard not to notice the improved play of Des, once he got into a situation where he was trusted to play starter's minutes. Tonight's game was not a fluke for him--he's been playing well all year. So you have to ask, what changed?

It's pretty clear this season's in the toilet. Yes, we need some players, but I'd like to see the rest of the season devoted to more intentional development of the ones we have.

[Jay Catsby]

I'm wondering about our player development strategy. Players like Brizzi, Moss, Schulte, Spadone, and Adam don't seem to have a regular spot in the rotation; they come in sporadically and willy-nilly, sometimes just during one half. To me, this looks like a coaching desperation move rather than a well-thought-out strategy of developing players, based on pairing them with groups to maximize their potential and giving them predictable minutes and situations in which they can learn and grow. I'm thinking back to Sean Logan last year and how he would usually play some minutes in the first half (he rarely played in the second). I think that benefited Sean.

It's hard not to notice the improved play of Des, once he got into a situation where he was trusted to play starter's minutes. Tonight's game was not a fluke for him--he's been playing well all year. So you have to ask, what changed?

It's pretty clear this season's in the toilet. Yes, we need some players, but I'd like to see the rest of the season devoted to more intentional development of the ones we have.

+1. Given our 3pt percentage, I’d like to see Loughnane get some run.

[bagelcat]

Players not named Bailey or Huffman were 6-29 from the field.

[hodeho]

I watched the Loyola game today. I'm surprised that no one is talking about the most surprising aspect of Davidson's team. There are no black players or coaches, except maybe one guy on the bench who never got into the game. Apparently, the modern Davidson team either does not or can't recruit black players. I was joking that they should be known as the Davidson Confederates. How you try to have a good A10 team looking like the 1957 Kentucky Wildcats is beyond me, other than knowing it won't work. Loyola is an average to slightly above average team. But they ran circles around those plodding guys with the bristle-cuts. How did the team that gave us Steph Curry come to this?