by Chicagojayfan » Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:42 am
Good start for bouncing back. Figured we would win, but GT has always been a tough team for us to play on the road and they've played a bit better at home even coming close to beating TCU
Cooley got the pace he wanted about 60 possessions, got a poor 3PT shooting night from us (32%) and got the kind of officiating he wanted but it still wasn't enough for them to have a real shot in this game. Typically any one of these 3 things going this way against us could put us in a losing game, but not last night.
The big questions coming in were rebounding and turnovers:
- Rebounding - we had our worst rebounding game of the season vs. Marquette (43.7% TRB's) to our 2nd best (71.8%). It was also Georgetown's worst rebounding night of their season on a percentage basis (35%) and in raw numbers we outrebounded them 42-21. Pretty clear check box on doing the job there
- Turnovers - Ugly, and then better for this game, although we dropped from 20.6% to 18.8% (remember this game had 8-10 fewer possessions than Marquette had). But the team responded after the half, going from 11 turnovers in the first half to only 3 in the second half, and that really showed up in the way the offense moved the ball. I half joked during the game that they needed to hear Altman's old message "Simple Plays Fellas" and maybe Mac said the same thing at half. Team stopped forcing things as much and moved the ball much more effectively by not trying to make things harder than they are already
Big 3 all had their moments and we got nice contributions from the rest as well;
- Baylor was great again. He's been the best player on the team so far, IMO, and his first half bailed us out of what could have been a worse first half performance
- Alexander - the 5 first half turnovers were ugly and he was he was just trying too hard to make things happen, but outside of the turnovers he hit a 3 PT shot (something that hasn't been going down for him) and scored a bit. Then he exploded in the second half
- Kalk - we weren't good at getting him the ball in the first half, but in the second half we showed more patience and we got 4/4 from him in the paint. GT was also 7/13 at the rim vs us being 18/20 at the rim
- Ashworth - I saw signs of us working out the difficulties we've been having with the lack of flow between him and Trey last night. He ended up with 7 assists/2 turnovers and took a lead guard mentality more often than I've seen from him lately and he made some outstanding passes. That helped free up Trey for more shots and got the flow of the offence moving better, IMO. The shots will fall for him, but if he can keep passing like he did last night we'll be on the right route. I also thought the balance of minutes for him and Bello was better for the team and the offense
Some general thoughts on the Defense/Offense:
- 3rd worst offensive night of the year for GT for offensive rating (and the worst on their home court)/2nd worst in terms of TS% (47%). We held them to about 1 PPP, but part of that was us taking our foot off the gas at the end of the second half
- Worst defensive performance of year for them by offensive rating (122.2) and by TS% (62.7%) - and this was with a poor shooting night from 3PT range and we got the rim a ton all night. I thought I saw some different motion, especially with Baylor where we looked to get the ball to him headed to the rim
Team is still a work in progress, but they want on the road and did what they needed to do. Road games in the BE are always physical and tough and despite Cooley getting a slow game without a lot of whistles, we demolished them on the boards. Even in the first half we beat them on the boards 23-13. Turnovers were ugly in the first half (even uglier for a slow paced game), but we came out and dealt with the problem in the second half
Thankful that we are getting Providence at home next as I don't think the team is gelled enough to go on the road to play in that stadium just yet, but I like our chances at home and like our chances to keep building what we need to build