FanPost

WSU Thoughts & Playing with Nothing to Lose

Bumped. Some good takes worth considering as head into a big on Saturday with nothing to lose. GO BRUINS. -N

As I posted this comment in Nestor's 'Nothing to Lose' post, here were some of my thoughts on the WSU game and the pressures both the fans and players have put on the team:

1) Living by the 3: also means dying by the 3. When we get cold is when our offense stagnates. We need to continue making good passes inside and opening the floor for driving to get high FG% shots.

2) Rebounding: absolutely atrocious getting offensive boards. That’s been our bread and butter the last 3 years and has given us tons of easy baskets and denies easy possessions to the other team.

3) Defensive intensity as a product of fatigue and depth: I think it’s clear that our defensive intensity at times has been tempered by our fear of depth and due to fatigue. For example, last year when Collison got in foul trouble, we’d be in big trouble given that we didn’t have a lot of depth at guards. This year, however, we have much more depth and can rotate players at that spot. Aboya has done a marvelous job at avoiding fouls this year – but that’s also been a large part of his intensity as an enforcer in the past. Obviously, our depth up front isn’t as good as previous years, but with ND showing he can play as a starter, we still have 4-5 guys we can rotate up front.

How I noticed this was watching some clips of previous years and how we played defensively. Aboya was always considered raw on defense, but he readily sacrified the body to take charges. Taking charges of course also means you have chances of getting called on blocks and what not. There’s no doubt he’s avoided fouls, but I also feel like that means he’s taken a notch off the intensity of defense.

Same goes for when I watched some of Collison in previous years. He’s always been described as having machineguns for hands, with the way he can disrupt an opposing team’s point guard. This year, whether it’s fear of depth or fouling out, he hasn’t shown that same intensity at times. It’s helped keep him on the floor, as I rarely see him hit 3 fouls even (and that’s what got us in trouble last year against Western Kentucky for instance). But, with Holiday, Lee and Anderson all being excellent ball handers, I don’t think depth is any more of an excuse to avoid playing intense on defense.

I realize I’m naming these 2 names in particular, and they are far from being the only ones, but they were just the more obvious cases I’ve noticed after seeing some video of previous years compared to this year. Yeah, they’ve helped avoid fouls, but the defensive intensity just doesn’t feel the same.

Wanted to add this after Class of 66's fanpost on the performance of the bench:

Gordon: 4 rebounds in 10 minutes
Keefe: 5 rebounds in 11 minutes
AA2: 1 rebound in 30 minutes
ND: 4 rebounds in 29 minutes

AA2 obviously had a very down game for most of it, but it's pretty startling to see that our 2 bench post players got some big rebounds when they did play. Offensively, our bench played really well (Keefe and Roll were absolutely efficient). I'd really like to see more of our bench play, as it gives our starters more resting time to stave off fatigue from the game and from the rough pac-10 schedule. Also, our bench has played relatively turnover free and has played solid D. Either way, it hasn't been our bench on the floor when the teams made their comebacks the lats couple of games.

Some will say that Keefe and DG got most of their play time when we were up in the 1st half. Actually, we pulled away with ND hitting those 3's and shutting down WSU in the 1st half, and undoubtedly they played a big role in defense and narrowing the rebounding gap. We have a far deeper team than the last 2 years and I love watching players develop, which leads to this 4th point about it:

4) We need to play looser: There, we said it. I understand we have high expectations going in this year, but it’s obvious with the pieces we lost and the # of freshmen we have, we’re going to go through a pain period of learning. Listening to the comments, I feel like a lot of players are playing under tremendous pressure of making the team better, when we should be willing to lose a few in PAC-10 play in order to gain experience and play hard when it matters.

I understand some fans have unreasonable expectations of this team, and surely our players feel it, but I also like to think of the 06 run we made: we played with an extremely talented freshman class (very underrated though), a very talented sophomore class, and leftovers from the Lavin years. Nobody thought we would make it to the championship game, and we very nearly didn’t. But we played with nothing to lose. There was that article posted that showed how at one point, CBH rolled out 4 freshman and a walk-on in our big game against LSU.

I’m just hoping we see more players get play time against Washington, since UW will undoubtedly try to force us to run and will tire our legs out a lot. We won’t let them dictate tempo, that’s for sure, but we’ll need to stay fresh and intense on defense. It’s going to be a tough game against UW as they’ve had our number up in Washington, but they are still beatable.

Added this thought: Reading the DC comments, I absolutely love that he's the leader on this team and is willing to be in charge when the game is on the line. But that's also what prompted me to make my comments on playing looser: it's a long tough season, and I don't want to see DC beat himself up for trying to live up to unreasonable expectations. Losses happen in basketball, and it's better to lose and learn now than in March.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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