Sat Jan 25, 2025 3:11 pm
Jaysker12 wrote:Great to see Traudt continue to thrive.
Yup. He seems really focused lately. Greatly improved in conference play.
Sat Jan 25, 2025 3:20 pm
Kalk only needs 9 more pts to move into 2nd place in Jays history
Sat Jan 25, 2025 3:20 pm
Kalk and Ash with a quiet 40-12-11. I just don’t even notice it anymore.
Sat Jan 25, 2025 9:08 pm
What a gamer Ash is! Great to see him play/develop these two years, and yet sad that his time with us is ending soon.
Sun Jan 26, 2025 9:03 am
Kalk and Ash were the 2 awesome standouts while Traudt and Fedor also stood out.
Miller continues his impressive +/-
Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:52 am
Team continues to do what they need to do against the bottom half of the schedule (and the top half as well). Pretty amazing recovery since the GT game -- which I think was still mostly trying to figure out how to play without Pop
Since then: 7-1 record, including 4-0 at home and 3-1 on the road.
Using Basketball reference:
- over 1 PPP (100 for their offensive rating) 6 times out of 8 games. Exceptions were barely missing that number at Marquette and against St. Johns. Marquette's a top 20 D this year and plays very strong at home w/ only a loss to Xavier (a warning for our next game), and the St. Johns game was a traditional BE rock fight that we won
- Defensively, we've been up and down during that stretch, but appear to be clearly improving. Over 1 PPP 4 times and under 1 PPP 4 times. We gave up over 1 PPP to Nova, Marquette, Butler, and UConn. 3/4 of those were on the road, and only Nova was at home (and also the first game of that stretch. Nova's also a VERY good offensive team, even close to top 10 in the country, IMO -- Odd that Nova and UConn are so good offensively and so bad defensively this year)
That Stretch has changed the season and put us in position to go to the tourney (we were out after the GT game) and even into position to possibly win the BE regular season (what a stretch!)
Against Seton Hall we saw a lot of what made us 7-1 in that stretch:
Defense - 5th best defensive performance of the season. SH's been floundering lately, but has also had a few good offensive performances this year (vs. DePaul, Providence, Butler, for instance), and there was some concern about that in the first half where we gave up 1.2 PPP to their offense. While some of that was them hitting tough jump shots, we also weren't as active and locked in as we usually are, and even the stretch where we pulled ahead in the first half they were scoring effectively when they had the ball. Second half was completely different. .645 PPP and 28.6% shooting overall.
Offense - I thought our offense was poor to start the game and while we weren't shooting well, I thought the root cause was more that our ball movement, spacing and moving without the ball was poor. We compensated by going into Kalk against their smaller defenders and that kept us going until we got things going. I worry a bit that the starting lineup can sometimes look like it's a poor matchup versus certain teams, but Mac's been pretty quick to go to the bench when he feels like a lineup isn't producing (IMO)
On the court, it was Kalkbrenner and Ashworth again who really filled the boxscore - as Rolljays said "Kalk and Ash with a quiet 40-12-11" - they are starting to feel a bit like Doug was in that they are an anchor and are so good it just kind of sneaks up on you. Beyond the top level stats, they were incredibly efficient yesterday! the 40 pts were on ONLY 19 shots. It's encouraging that Ashworth seems to be fully coming out of the slump he had.
But it's not just them - Neal was hampered by foul trouble and had trouble getting shots to foul (SH is fairly athletic on the wing, even if lacking skill in some positions) and we got good minutes from Fedor. He's clearly still leaning and adjusting, but he's looking more comfortable on the offensive end. I think defense is still a work in progress, but he's athletic and he's competing
Traudt is becoming a more and more reliable weapon during conference play. He's not getting as many shots as he did in the Non-Con, but his shooting percentage has improved and he's been in double digits in scoring 3 out of the last 5 games while also showing more than just 3 pt shooting - the little turnaround against DePaul and a few plays at the rim as well
Miller is continuing his streak of big +/- numbers and to a certain extent it's not just random luck. He pulls defenders away from the paint and demands tight coverage. Even it he hasn't consistently been hunting and hitting shots, other teams look to be reluctant to be the team that dares him to make open 3's and gets buried by his shooting.
Let's face it, we won by 25 - pretty much everyone played well and we had plenty of minutes to help build some depth and to reward the hard working scout team guys - this has been a good stretch for us to get minutes for Fedor, in particular, but also for Davis and King and even Thomas, and it's never bad to have your deeper bench guys tuned up and ready to get into the game
Happy we have Xavier at home for this upcoming game as they come in playing really well and with a lot of confidence
Sun Jan 26, 2025 12:59 pm
Another nice win. Kalk continues to dominate. I can see what all the hype about Fedor is now, super smooth shooting stroke. Jays will surprise and make a deep run in the tourney this year if Kalk continues to play at this level. Go Jays!!!
Mon Jan 27, 2025 12:20 am