by Chicagojayfan » Sat Feb 03, 2024 8:50 am
No real diagnosis for last night other than that while we didn't play great D, especially early on in the game, Butler was on fire and went crazy. It's not unprecedented for that Butler team -- they had an even better offensive game against Texas Tech earlier in the year (132.1 vs. 130.3 last night).
Nor is it unprecedented for us to have this kind of game defensively (UNLV was 127.4 vs. 130.3 for Butler or in 2022-23 Nova at 125.4 or in 21-22, Nova at 125.0 and Colorado State at 130.1). The defense in the UNLV game was somewhat hidden by the very slow pace, whereas this was the 2nd fastest game of the year for us, only behind Iowa
Despite everyone thinking we like to play fast, I think it's more precisely that we like to get opportunities to push the pace when we get stops, but otherwise prefer to play at a more moderate pace, which likely helps our defense. Extremely fast or extremely slow games seem to cause more problems for us
I guess it definitely hurts our chances to win the BE, but I'm really not as focused on that - UConn obviously accomplished all of their goals last year despite finishing 4th. I'm more worried about this team developing the way I think it can as the season goes on. Go into Providence and win on the road, then look to get back the home losses when we travel to Butler and Nova.. then we'll see
On the plus side, is this a formula that other teams can exploit regarding our defense? I don't think so, and I don't even think it's an exact formula that Butler can hope to tap into when we play them on the road.
I said last night that it reminded me of the way some of these smaller conference teams can light up a top seed during March Madness. Until another team shows that last night exploited some sort of fundamental defensive flaw (and nothing I can see indicates that), I'm going to chalk it up as one of those nights.
Sucks that it happened, but these things happen and that's why they play the games