Army Post Game Thread

[5fouls]

Just now, KDB said:

Woody after the game: “For the most part, we played pretty good basketball.”

I'll have to disagree with that.  Turnovers galore and that rebounding margin against a much smaller team is not indicative of good basketball.  

[BGleas]

Just now, 5fouls said:

But, wrapped up in all of that, effort still matters.  Sparks plays his butt off and generally has a good feel for the game.  Should he take away minutes from Ware?  No.  IU needs Ware on the floor 35 minutes.  And, if Ware plays 35, then Reneau needs to play heavy minutes at the 4.  Add into the equation the lack of guard depth, and I'm honestly not seeing where playing MM big minutes at the 4 makes sense.  The roster is what it is at this point, and plating MM at the 4 creates different problems that don't currently exist.

.    

Those problems do currently exist. Reneau hasn't been good defensively. His defensive effort isn't always there. He has many of the same issues that Mgbako has, albeit maybe not as extreme because he has a year under his belt. 

Fine, keep playing the style we are. Keep banging our head against the wall while teams destroy us at the 3pt line. Keep our best pure shooter standing in the corner for 16 minutes a game. 

[5fouls]

5 minutes ago, bluegrassIU said:

I agree we need to evaluate or re-evaluate how we are playing.

 

I also strongly agree Mgbako has been lazy on defense and regularly being corrected about positioning on offense. He has not done anything to justify mote minutes.

He has to be play harder. Be more prepared. The days of relying on talent are over. 

So until he steps up, it's hard to change much that requires us relying on him right now 

With all that said, it also means we have upside....And Mgbako has as much upside as anybody on our roster.

You've said it better than I.  He should not be 'gifted' his minutes.  Right now, when we go 3 guards, he's the odd man out, and deservedly so.  

[Inequality]

I think we can all agree that if things don’t shape up quickly, we will get steam rolled by the likes of UConn and Kansas before the games even start.

For me, I’m taken back by how far behind we are compared to where I think we should be or thought we would be.

Where do I think we should be? I certainly think given the individual talents on the roster, we should be able to destroy teams like Army on our home floor by 20+ while letting our walk-ons play the last 3 minutes 😀 

[BGleas]

3 minutes ago, bluegrassIU said:

I agree we need to evaluate or re-evaluate how we are playing.

 

I also strongly agree Mgbako has been lazy on defense and regularly being corrected about positioning on offense. He has not don't anything to justify mote minutes.

He has to be play harder. Be more prepared. The days of relying on talent are over. 

So until he steps up, it's hard to change much that requires us relying on him right now 

With all that said, it also means we have upside....And Mgbako has as much upside as anybody on our roster.

Largely agree. His defensive effort needs to be massively better. It's just not good enough right now. 

With that said, what many of us are saying is that we think that upside potentially gets unlocked if you put Mgbako in a better position. 

Then our contention is you also put the team in a better position schematically. 

Now is the time to give Mgbako some of his minutes at the 4 and try it out. Not in February.

[bluegrassIU]

8 minutes ago, BGleas said:

Largely agree. His defensive effort needs to be massively better. It's just not good enough right now. 

With that said, what many of us are saying is that we think that upside potentially gets unlocked if you put Mgbako in a better position. 

Then our contention is you also put the team in a better position schematically. 

Now is the time to give Mgbako some of his minutes at the 4 and try it out. Not in February.

It's not just effort. He is repeatedly being corrected about positioning by his teammates.

It's like he is not grasping the schemes or plays just yet. 

Compound that with effort issues and it's hard to say "hey, here is a new scheme that has us relying more on your effort and trusting you will start being in the right position"

Yeah, in a perfect world you are right. But Mac has not shown he is remotely ready for that.

Can he be in a few weeks? A month? Sure.

The light bulb can go off at any time. Clearly he is talented enough.

But not right now.

Currently the line up with Gabe, XJ and Galloway is the way to go...not Mac at the 4.

100% it would be ideal. Hopefully that develops. It's sooooo early 

[5 championships]

1 hour ago, BGleas said:

It has nothing to do with the stars, you know that. It's about style of play. Ware is an NBA-talent center. He's better than Reneau at this point. 

The rest is about style of play. We don't play fast enough. We don't take remotely enough 3's. We don't get to lane/basket enough because always have 2 bigs in there. 

Mgbako hasn't been good. Nobody has said he has. But the coaches haven't done a single thing so far to utilize his talent. 

Mgbako is an elite shooter and his skillset is better suited as a "college 4". We need shooting and we need to shoot more 3's, but our style of play and lineup rotations are not conducive to that. 

How about we try to get our best shooter involved a little bit? It doesn't mean Reneau won't play or won't get opportunities. 

Perfectly stated…the positive is a lot of this is fixable the negative is I’m not sure Woodson will do it or knows how to 

[Danomatic]

Fellas, I’ll say this and then I’m out. We’re going to struggle all season against solid guard play defensively. Offensively, we play too slow, and are still prone to making poor decisions with the ball. I don’t want to sound like an armchair expert, but outside of Cupps(and he’s not exempt)… our guard play is underwhelming to say the least. 

[5fouls]

We LOSE this game tonight without Reneau's production.  But, we also lose this game if Reneau had that same production playing the 5 instead of the 4, which means Ware's playing time would have been reduced.  Are we really promoting putting a lineup out there that would lose the game because it's what we would prefer our team look like?

[5 championships]

1 hour ago, BGleas said:

Yeah, this is a weirdly constructed roster. 

At this point I think you have XJ, Galloway, Cupps, Mgbako, Ware and Reneau. Banks situationally. 

That's my core. 

Banks can play he needs more time 

[BGleas]

3 minutes ago, bluegrassIU said:

It's not just effort. He is repeatedly being corrected about positioning by his teammates.

It's like he is not grasping the schemes or plays just yet. 

Compound that with effort issues and it's hard to say "hey, here is a new scheme that has us relying more on your effort and trusting you will start being in the right position"

Yeah, in a perfect world you are right. But Mac has not shown he is remotely ready for that.

Can he be in a few weeks? A month? Sure.

The light bulb can go off at any time. Clearly he is talented enough.

But not right now.

Currently the line up with Gabe, XJ and Galloway is the way to go...not Mac at the 4.

100% it would be ideal. Hopefully that develops. It's sooooo early 

Again, I don't disagree with much of that. But, Mgbako is going to play. He's going to get minutes. 

But, he hadn't gotten a single minute at the 4 yet. Why not?

I have never said he should be starting at the 4, but we should be giving him some minutes there. 

It's also a different defensive assignment and responsibilities at the 4, and maybe those would be easier for him to understand?

I'm saying we haven't tried it at all. Not for a single second. If he's in a better position to be successful maybe some of the issues get minimized. 

We are going to need his shooting ability to be a better team and need to find way to utilize it. 

There's no reason why he can't get some minutes there. 

[94Bulldog]

1 hour ago, 5fouls said:

Reneau had 14 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks tonight.  Don't try to tell me that MM deserves to be the 4 in a 3-guard lineup.  Just don't.  

Those stats don’t show how many times he didn’t dump the ball off to an open man for a shot, turned the ball over or how many times he was lost on D.  I’ll grant you MM hasn’t shown anything but MR can’t shoot outside or create his own shot from the perimeter like MM allegedly can.  

[TheWatShot]

Watching us struggle to defend a team that scored 55 and 44 points in its first two games while largely looking clueless on how to run its own offense, I just found myself thinking once again that this program is hopelessly broken and I'm not sure it's ever getting fixed. It just blows my mind how we can accumulate the talent we do and look so bad at what really should be a pretty simple game. 

 

Woodson is on record saying he didn't come here to rebuild. So why are we this bad? He's had over 2 years to get this thing rolling and right now we look just like we did 2 years ago. 

[BGleas]

3 minutes ago, 5fouls said:

We LOSE this game tonight without Reneau's production.  But, we also lose this game if Reneau had that same production playing the 5 instead of the 4, which means Ware's playing time would have been reduced.  Are we really promoting putting a lineup out there that would lose the game because it's what we would prefer our team look like?

We almost lost to one of the worst D1 teams in the county at home. Like, we barely won that game. We were lucky to win that game. 

So yeah, I'm saying a different style of play and maybe we win that game much easier. 

Maybe if we shot more 3's than the other team made we win more comfortably. 

Maybe if we spread the floor, create more space and play faster we win more comfortably. 

To 100000% crystal clear, nobody has said Reneau shouldnt play. Nobody has said that Mgbako should start at the 4, and that Ware should have his minutes cut. 

There's ways to do it for periods of time. We haven't even tried it. 

[KoB2011]

21 minutes ago, BGleas said:

Largely agree. His defensive effort needs to be massively better. It's just not good enough right now. 

With that said, what many of us are saying is that we think that upside potentially gets unlocked if you put Mgbako in a better position. 

Then our contention is you also put the team in a better position schematically. 

Now is the time to give Mgbako some of his minutes at the 4 and try it out. Not in February.

I’d add if we aren’t playing him after the 16 minute mark in the second half, why is Malik Reneau playing there?

I know what Malik has done in second half’s when we have three guards, but I think Malik can do a lot of that too. They both have a lot of the same problems and same strengths (scoring). 

[KoB2011]

3 minutes ago, BGleas said:

We almost lost to one of the worst D1 teams in the county at home. Like, we barely won that game. We were lucky to win that game. 

So yeah, I'm saying a different style of play and maybe we win that game much easier. 

Maybe if we shot more 3's than the other team made we win more comfortably. 

Maybe if we spread the floor, create more space and play faster we win more comfortably. 

To 100000% crystal clear, nobody has said Reneau shouldnt play. Nobody has said that Mgbako should start at the 4, and that Ware should have his minutes cut. 

There's ways to do it for periods of time. We haven't even tried it. 

Why wasn’t Mgbako in when Ware and Reneau were on the bench in the middle of the 2nd? That’s a great chance to play through him and try to get stuff going.

X got hurt and we went to CJG…

There were chances, we didn’t take them. 

[5fouls]

If Todd Leary had not compared MM to Jay Edwards, the narrative on this board right now would be a lot different. 

Jay Edwards was hands down the best pure scorer I every say put on an IU uniform.  That said, he was also a notorious defensive liability.  IU was ranked 6th preseason his freshman year, and coming off a National Championship.  They finished 19-10 overall and 11-7 in conference.   

We can romanticize about the next Jay Edwards all we want, but what does that even mean in the grand scheme of things.

[BGleas]

I dont even care how we do it. Start Cupps and bring Mgbako off the bench as the backup 4 in a rotation with Ware and Reneau. Let Mgbako be the scorer the 2nd unit needs as a 4. 

Just do something to change the style of play for periods of time. 

The 2nd unit can be Cupps and Mgbako in the pick and pop and make Gunn stand in the corner. 

I don't care how it's done, just figure out how to use the unique skill Mgbako brings while fixing our massive 3pt issue (on both ends)  

[BGleas]

Just now, 5fouls said:

If Todd Leary had not compared MM to Jay Edwards, the narrative on this board right now would be a lot different. 

Jay Edwards was hands down the best pure scorer I every say put on an IU uniform.  That said, he was also a notorious defensive liability.  IU was ranked 6th preseason his freshman year, and coming off a National Championship.  They finished 19-10 overall and 11-7 in conference.   

We can romanticize about the next Jay Edwards all we want, but what does that even mean in the grand scheme of things.

This just tells me you have not seen Mgbako shoot. 

[BGleas]

3 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

Why wasn’t Mgbako in when Ware and Reneau were on the bench in the middle of the 2nd? That’s a great chance to play through him and try to get stuff going.

X got hurt and we went to CJG…

There were chances, we didn’t take them. 

100%. The kid clearly is an excellent shooter but is struggling to find his way, let's try putting him in a different position. 

[5fouls]

6 minutes ago, BGleas said:

 

To 100000% crystal clear, nobody has said Reneau shouldnt play. Nobody has said that Mgbako should start at the 4, and that Ware should have his minutes cut. 

 

A bunch of people posted in the FGCU post-game thread and the Army pre-game thread about a lineup of Cupps, XJ, Galloway, MM, and Ware.  A whole bunch.  

[BGleas]

1 minute ago, 5fouls said:

A bunch of people posted in the FGCU post-game thread and the Army pre-game thread about a lineup of Cupps, XJ, Galloway, MM, and Ware.  A whole bunch.  

Yeah, I've posted about that lineup too. I don't think I've ever said it should be the starting lineup and that Reneau shouldn't play. 

[5fouls]

6 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

Why wasn’t Mgbako in when Ware and Reneau were on the bench in the middle of the 2nd? That’s a great chance to play through him and try to get stuff going.

X got hurt and we went to CJG…

There were chances, we didn’t take them. 

That is a valid question, but the bigger question is why both Ware and Reneau (especially Ware) sat so long.  

Giving Gunn time in critical game situations is mind-boggling.  

[KoB2011]

3 minutes ago, 5fouls said:

A bunch of people posted in the FGCU post-game thread and the Army pre-game thread about a lineup of Cupps, XJ, Galloway, MM, and Ware.  A whole bunch.  

Starting? I had a busy week and may have missed it but I didn’t see that. 

[KoB2011]

Just now, 5fouls said:

That is a valid question, but the bigger question is why both Ware and Reneau (especially Ware) sat so long.  

Giving Gunn time in critical game situations is mind-boggling.  

Yeah, Woody isn’t doing a good job so far.