St. John's Game Thread

[SDJay]

I watched Pitino's post game presser. The reporters really tried to goad him in to ranting about the refs, and he wasn't having it. I was impressed with his take. Essentially, he said (paraphrasing) " We needed to make better plays at the end to win". They wouldn't let it go. He chastised them for continuing to ask about the officials.
I came away impressed with his composure and take. Apparently, he's done this before....
I typed really fast to get this posted before the site crashes again.

[Venturajay]

Yep I saw Pitino's press conference, interesting guy. Puts the blame on his players, himself, and moves on. I could definitely see why he has been successful as a recruiter and coach.

[jaysfor3]

I was at the game and watched the replay last night. A few thoughts...

1. To answer a previous question, the crowd was at times too silent and at other times loud. We really turned it up quite a bit once Baylor was fouled and got a technical.

2. Although a bad ref call can determine the last few seconds outcome at the end to a end (regardless of the game), in totality, it's so much more than 1 call, e.g.; we should have buried St. John's in the 1H if we shoot anywhere near our average. We missed so many WIDE open looks. This would have been more of a factor as a whole than a potential bad call had we lost. And I am one that believes the ref's just haven't been good across many sports for quite awhile, thus you gotta control what you can control (make WIDE open shots) and not put it on the ref's to decide a game.

3. It was an ugly, "mud fight," as Mac said, but give Creighton A LOT of credit especially in the 2H adjusting to the rugby game STJ's played and getting tougher. We scrambled, fought and won a lot of loose balls, Baylor bodied up down low for some very physical low post shots, Trey drove into the STJ's "mosh pit" for shots (key one at the end for 2 FT's), the guard's scrapped for rebounds ..etc.

4. It has been said before, but whoever controls the music at time-out's needs their head examined. There were a few times after some momentum shifts in CU's favor that the DJ started off with the right tune to keep the crowd jumping, loud, then 1/2 through shifted the tune to something more mellow and consequently the crowd stopped going crazy, being loud and calmed down. WTF DJ... know how to read and play to the room, play off the frenzy, don't put it to sleep. Geez...

5. I've been on record criticizing Ashworth, but I gotta say, he's doing better on defense (never will be a shut down defender, e.g.; Khyri) and all around more into the flow of the offense.

[Chicagojayfan]

I watched Pitino's post game presser. The reporters really tried to goad him in to ranting about the refs, and he wasn't having it. I was impressed with his take. Essentially, he said (paraphrasing) " We needed to make better plays at the end to win". They wouldn't let it go. He chastised them for continuing to ask about the officials.
I came away impressed with his composure and take. Apparently, he's done this before....
I typed really fast to get this posted before the site crashes again.

He's a smart guy and he's not in the HOF because he doesn't know how to work the media, the refs, and the conference. By the time the press conference happened, he got what he wanted already, and he wasn't going to complain

I thought the first half was OK, even if being called in a way that was beneficial for them:
- 3 PF's for us and 5 PF's for St. Johns
- our fouls this year range from 16 to 4 in a game, and theirs coming in ranged from 30 (no typo!) to 9 with most competitive games in the 20+ range
While the refs weren't calling much, the game hadn't really turned into a rugby scrum at that point

Second half I thought was Pitino seeing that we were shredding their defense and just not hitting shots in the first half. So he ratcheted up the physicality to 11. And for the most part it worked, the game became an even bigger slog and until we responded and got to the point where the refs called enough to get us to the line, it worked perfectly for him

What did that do for him - it allowed his defense to limit our ball movement and kept us from getting into a rhythm where we might hit some shots, and while the refs called a lot of fouls in the second half, it was beneficial to Pitino because they were committing more fouls than were being called. As is, the number called against them wasn't in their top 5 games this year. A closer reckoning based on how they played the 2nd half would have been close to the West VA game where they had 30 fouls called on them

A lot of teams are going to do that to us in the BE (as we've already seen), so good we see could overcome it yesterday and get the win.

for the BE, this is a bad trend as officials from elsewhere are just as likely to call 30 on them and take them completely out of the game if they play that way - watch any B12 or ACC game and see how those games are called. SJU would have fouled out multiple guys yesterday if called like their games

[WBR Tom]

Here’s the postgame recap on WBR with highlights, quotes, key stats, analysis and more:

https://whiteandbluereview.com/postgame ... hns-66-65/

[Chicagojayfan]

Winning ugly is still winning. Team's bounced back from an 0-2 start to now go to 4-2 in the conference, putting us in a tie for 4th in the conference (5 teams jumbled up at the top now)

Offense:
- Obviously things weren't pretty on this end of the court, but in the first half in particular, the ball movement was great. We got all of the shots we wanted and likely go into half up by 10-15 if we'd even made a normal number of shots
- This was the first game of the year where we won while shooting under 30% from 3 PT -- in this case way under at 22%, but we still scored over 1 PPP for the game and found a way to win.
- It was our 4th worst offensive game of the year, but unlike the other 3 poor games we had we played with enough D and enough grit to win
- on a bigger picture, this shows how good this team can be offensively. Using BBall reference's game ratings, we've only had 3 games under 100 this year (roughly 1 PPP). So 3/17. Last year we had 10/37. While we may not have some of the options we had last year, we've also done a good job of finding alternate shooters and alternate ways to score
- Credit to Pitino for seeing what happened in the first half and for upping the physical play to very high levels in the second half (i.e., daring the refs to make all the calls.. which they didn't). And credit to our guys for finding ways to score, no matter what

Defense:
- This was a real star of the game. We held them to at or just under 1 PPP, and that was with them hitting some very tough shots in the lane
- Their offense has really been on a roll for a month now (or more likely for almost 2 months now). They had a couple of ugly games back in November, and another ugly offensive game against Fordam in Dec (but were so far ahead, I'm guessing the poor numbers are more to do with blowout garbage minutes - they won by 22)
- In BE play their offense has been great -- until yesterday. We did our usual game plan, run them off the 3 PT line and make them decide how close they want to get to Kalk before shooting
- Kalk did a great job versus Soriano. More credit to Pitino for using the guards' drives to get Kalk's attention and then dumping it off to Soriano, but in basic head to head matchups we not only didn't double Soriano, Kalk mostly shut him down.. that meant no passing out of doubles, limiting their offense considerably

Rebounds and Turnovers (these get a special category now!):
- After 4 bad games for turnovers, we seem to have reverted to holding onto the ball the last 2 games. TOV%'s 19.1 (Nova) - 20.6(Marquette) - 18.8 (GT) - 17.7 (Providence) - 8.0 (DePaul) - 7.9 (SJU)
- SJU turns people over at a high rate, and this was the LOWEST rate of the year versus them
- We've been a good to very good rebounding team this year, except for Alabama and Marquette, and yesterday we did the job, holding even with them on the boards. 3rd lowest offensive rebound rate of the year for them and a ton of credit to the team for blocking out and matching the war zone that it was in the paint whenever the ball went up

Individual notes: - lots of good moments from almost everyone
- To me Kalk's the player of the game. Played almost every moment, dominated Soriano when clean one-on-one matchups, scored enough to keep them honest in the paint
- Despite having shooting struggles, Baylor and Trey both had huge moments that helped us win.
- Bello had the huge steal, offensive board at the end, and the defense as well.
- Miller was incredibly active early in the game and that cut to the basket and finish when Kalk was doubled was great, while the dribble,fake, step back 3 shows some of that we have to look forward to with him
- Need to also mention Ashworth. On a poor shooting day he got 9 for us in the first half, handled the ball a lot with no turnovers, and continued to show he's bought into the kind of D we want to play

I keep saying this team is a work in progress still, and they are, but this game showed a lot of grit and toughness that we maybe saw signs of but hadn't seen result in a win.
More tough games ahead, but I also think there's a lot of improvement we're going to see from now until the end of the season

[SeattleJay]

Chicagojay, great comments as usual.

Two additional thoughts:
1. Kalk really dominated Soriano in the first half. For anyone that missed the halftime comments, the female commentator basically said that. Give credit to Soriano for playing better in the second half, although I felt Kalk was still better but a bit less dominant.

2. Last year, Baylor playing with 3 second year players took half a season to seem more comfortable with his role. Ashworth had a very decent game yesterday and is starting to look more comfortable. He is getting a little bit more penetration, and is hitting a few short shots lately. He is not turning the ball over and while he didn’t have a ton of assists yesterday, the trend line has been good. Of course, he is also not picking up his dribble at inopportune moments. If he can continue to improve, it would really open up the offense.

I was surprised that Pitino didn’t try to ISO Ashworth ala Villanova. I doubt that it was an oversight by coach Rick.

On the last play, with Kalk coming out on the guard shooting, the key was whoever dropped and smacked Soriano hard so that he couldn’t gather the rebound.

[SDJay]

Chicagojay, great comments as usual.

Two additional thoughts:
1. Kalk really dominated Soriano in the first half. For anyone that missed the halftime comments, the female commentator basically said that. Give credit to Soriano for playing better in the second half, although I felt Kalk was still better but a bit less dominant.

2. Last year, Baylor playing with 3 second year players took half a season to seem more comfortable with his role. Ashworth had a very decent game yesterday and is starting to look more comfortable. He is getting a little bit more penetration, and is hitting a few short shots lately. He is not turning the ball over and while he didn’t have a ton of assists yesterday, the trend line has been good. Of course, he is also not picking up his dribble at inopportune moments. If he can continue to improve, it would really open up the offense.

I was surprised that Pitino didn’t try to ISO Ashworth ala Villanova. I doubt that it was an oversight by coach Rick.

On the last play, with Kalk coming out on the guard shooting, the key was whoever dropped and smacked Soriano hard so that he couldn’t gather the rebound.

It looked to me like it was Trey that blocked him towards the baseline

[Ethanfor3]

Didn’t see anything anywhere, unless I missed in this thread. What happened to King? Why no PT other than 1min, and from warm ups it looked like they had no intention of him playing.

What’s up?

[3ontheway]

I don't think he is hurt. I think Mac feels like bad things are going to transpire with him on the court.