What a perplexing game. At one point, I really thought I had entered another dimension... something from the Twilight Zone. I can understand most road losses. But this one... UCF is bad. And they didn't have one of those "miracle games" where a player or two went off for 30 on 75% trey shooting.
I thought we did show up for this game... especially after running out to a 16-point lead. Then what happened? We went soft. And with every soft possession, we lost momentum while UCF gained momentum. That was like watching a game played between turtles.
Where was the team that played UCONN tough for 40 minutes? Hunter had a bruised knee... so... Hunter and all of our guys are going to face nicks during the season. We just went soft. We need more from Juan. In previous years he never really had to be the general of the team, but he needs to be the general now. It is one of the duties of being a PG.
What does that entail? Communication. Cheerleading. Hustling. Directing.
Our bench wasn't great in this game but our bench was about as good as our starting 4 we count on. I'm talking about AFTER our 16-point lead... when we lost composure and never got it back again.
Hopefully, this will be the "chip" we need to finally buckle down every game. I don't believe this was a trap game. There are signs of this being a regular occurrence if we don't make significant change. I mentioned before that I could see us losing up to 3 of our first 10 games. I'm adjusting that to 4+ unless we make changes.
PLAYING SOFT:
OFFENSE: Our guys do everything they can to avoid contact. Contact is a part of basketball, and if you don't realize that at this level... wow! We shot few free throws on a poor team. Our offense only hummed in the open court, free of contact. When it came down to half-court offense, it sputtered and half the time lead to turnovers as UCF would turn up the heat as the shot clock wound down. Only Kevin, on rare occasion, would drive the ball hard. We need our guys to drive the ball hard and put their chests into contact. Yes, UCF has a reputation for blocked shots. So what. Draw contact and get to the FT line. KJ should become a prime weapon for driving hard... not just when he sees a clear path for a dunk. Juan... same.
DEFENSE: UCF drove at will. Every single player on that team was able to turn the corner on our defense. Pathetic. And that's not how we played UCONN so I know we should expect more! UCF did not have much of an offense, and we never disrupted their flow. Jet lag? Playing in a weird place? We should have forced more TOs leading to runouts. It wouldn't have taken many more to make this game a "W."
I hope this is like the UK beat down we took a couple of years ago and we respond. I'm not certain of it...
