I did not expect that

[Jason94]

I was in Vegas this weekend for my 30th reunion with the full intent of ignoring what would be a sure win against a bad team. So I was most shocked to find out that we not only lost to a team ranked in the 300's on kenpom at home, but lost by double digits after being a 20+ point favorite.

The two obvious parallels would be the Furman loss in 2006/7 and the Marist loss in 2012/13. Furman wasn't a horrible team, but they weren't a good team either, and it wasn't a buzzer beater loss. We had just lost Alan Metcalf to injury in the Wake game, and CKS was experimenting with starting Ted Skuchas and JeJuan Brown in the wake of the injury. That combined with horrible shooting nights led to a loss that left the team at 1-3. After messing around with lineups, CKS settled on a smaller lineup with Gordon and Cage, and got Byars to have an all-time great season and the Furman loss was but a distant memory.

Marist was an even worse team than Furman, but the 2012-2013 team did not have either the talent nor the experience of the 2007 team. While Johnson was the clear leader of the team, a horrendous shooting night from everyone led to a very bad loss at a neutral site. That team was at one point 8-13 and 2-7 in conference but managed to finish out at 15-16 (8-10), including a blowout win against UK in the SEC tournament.

I note this not to say that this season will automatically turn itself around after about as bad a start as we could have conceived, but to note that injuries, lineup shift, etc can all have a major impact on team chemistry and when you combine those imperfections with a very bad shooting night disaster can result.

I think it might be a tad bit early to play for next year, but whatever pep talk/motivational speech he can give to Wright and Robbins, now is definitely the time. It is disconcerting as poorly as Robbins and our guards have played that two of the jewels of the freshmen class (Dort and Shelby) are struggling to get more than mop-up minutes right now. After two games the only player on the team who has had a net positive impact offensively is QMB. Otherwise we don't shoot well, don't get to the line with any frequency, and miss half our FTA's when we do happen to get there. The news isn't much better on defense, and a number of things have to drastically change for the better, and in a hurry.

[dcdore]

Sad but true

[quasidiehardvandyfan]

The other thing I'm having a hard time with:

So much of the excuse of us not being a tournament team last year was the injury bug. Lawrence is coming back from an ACL tear, Chatman and Robbins weren't available. Lawrence looks marginally improved thus far?
Fundamentally the same?

And while I think Robbins is highly likely to improve (he can only go up from here), if this is what we were waiting on last year, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Chatman was the real deal, so perhaps him alone would have boosted us to a tournament team level (we certainly looked the part toward EOY).

[Nashmann]

Robbins needs to get his act together and stop shooting 3's. He needs to get his fanny down low and post up. Either shoot there posting up or kick it back out for a good shot(hopefully some can finally hit an outside shot).

[Jason94]

The other thing I'm having a hard time with:

So much of the excuse of us not being a tournament team last year was the injury bug. Lawrence is coming back from an ACL tear, Chatman and Robbins weren't available. Lawrence looks marginally improved thus far?
Fundamentally the same?

And while I think Robbins is highly likely to improve (he can only go up from here), if this is what we were waiting on last year, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Chatman was the real deal, so perhaps him alone would have boosted us to a tournament team level (we certainly looked the part toward EOY).

While I am sometimes accussed of being a bit pessimistic at times, at the moment my preseason musing look like wild optimism. So I would agree that we cannot possibly be this bad and that it is more likely a perfect storm of events that can turn themselves around. The problem is how long will it take for it to do so.

There are players who I believe will play better, like most all of our returners who are playing well below their potential, and hope that Shelby and Dort are given more opportunities to show their stuff. But my main concern with the team was that we didn't have a go-to guy in crunch time, and I don't know that we've identified that player yet.

[UltimateVUFan]

This is one area where I do really question the coaching game plan. Agree re: the need for Robbins to establish a post presence. I know the goal is to keep the middle/lane open for motion and playing 4 out 1 in. However, when the bigs aren’t pulling rebounds or putbacks because they’re so far out of position, and the team as a whole is getting outscored significantly in the paint, there’s a problem. Likewise, when Robbins is 1-5 from 3, he needs to post up and score some baskets inside to create a reason to leave him open outside, because he sure isn’t hitting shots to justify defenders guarding him on the perimeter instead of packing the paint to pull boards. 5 shots is a small sample size this early in the season, but Robbins is only a 28% career outside shooter. At his size, why isn’t he being posted up down low to test smaller defenders?

I think most of us assumed the post would be this team’s strength. Unfortunately, thus far we haven’t seen anything to indicate this is the case.

[Jason94]

This is one area where I do really question the coaching game plan. Agree re: the need for Robbins to establish a post presence. I know the goal is to keep the middle/lane open for motion and playing 4 out 1 in. However, when the bigs aren’t pulling rebounds or putbacks because they’re so far out of position, and the team as a whole is getting outscored significantly in the paint, there’s a problem. Likewise, when Robbins is 1-5 from 3, he needs to post up and score some baskets inside to create a reason to leave him open outside, because he sure isn’t hitting shots to justify defenders guarding him on the perimeter instead of packing the paint to pull boards. 5 shots is a small sample size this early in the season, but Robbins is only a 28% career outside shooter. At his size, why isn’t he being posted up down low to test smaller defenders?

I think most of us assumed the post would be this team’s strength. Unfortunately, thus far we haven’t seen anything to indicate this is the case.

Beyond that (I just posted in another thread), he isn't getting to the line at all, which means fewer opportunities for free points and fewer fouls on opponents.