The grounds are being torn up as they're prepping to build "Innovation Campus".
Injuries have had a tremendous effect. Talley would be a great addition. McCray is getting treatment on his foot but does show flashes (#0).....Walker has been getting treatment for his back, we sure could use Diaz, whether you recognize his positives or not.
They need to run the offense. I thought they did a much better job of that Saturday. Jacking up shots for the sake of jacking up shots leads to a dwindling shot percentage and no FT's.
Chosen strategy and a very sharp coaching move by Doc. MSU likes to force their pace on a team. We pretty much kept them from that. They outsized us, especially in bulk, big time. You could really see that when you watched the inside game. Niemann was the only player that could provide much resistance, but he's still a foul waiting to happen as he regains familiarity with the court, not that he'll ever be very smooth.
Agreed
As you noted earlier, we dropped 3 back immediately. You pick your poison. You take something away, conversely you give something up. We chose to wait until the ball got into their all-conference Fwd's hands and trapped from different directions in the second half. Although he's a very good player you probably noticed how often he panicked and launched passes into the crowd. This strategy helped us make the last run where we closed within 3 toward the latter-mid portion of the second half.
Unfortunately, the effort expended may have had something to do with some of our players losing their legs which may very well have led to missed shots later in the game by key players that were hitting earlier, IMO.
MSU wanted us to start running up and down the court. It's hard to say, but I think we made the right choice. You saw the teams. That was a VERY impressive team physically.
We need Diaz. He may seem soft, but he can be surprisingly effective against physical inside players. You might remember him having stretches where he outplayed KU's Cole Aldrich in many ways a few years ago.
I actually felt a LOT better after this game than I did after the Wisconsin game, although I thought Wisconsin seemed to can an awful lot of shots with a hand in their face(against good "D").
Doc really did a good job and the players stepped up and showed fight throughout this game. If we play with this effort the rest of the year we'll have some highlights.
It would certainly help if some of the health issues would start working out in our favor.