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Tonight will be the first of a new series that will follow up to my “things to watch for” posts before the games. I will post my thoughts on how they fared against what I was watching for, although I may mention a few others as they pop up. After the 88-56 win over Samford, here are my thoughts:
*Intensity from the start
Does any big man in the country play harder than Nerlens Noel? He may not be the most polished big, but he brings effort every night. The team started out and played the first half with their hair on fire. They came to clamp down on defense and did a great job holding Samford to 14 points in the first half. The effort continued to the offensive end and it was a much better effort on the boards. The effort waned in the second half, but after leading by 30 at halftime that is to be expected.
Overall grade: B+
*Wiltjer getting his groove back
Wiltjer struggled most of the night on the offensive end again. He went only 1-5 from three even though he had mostly open looks all night. He went 3-9 overall from the field and was blocked a few times trying to get a shot off down low with no lift. Unfortunately, the poor shooting from Kyle has not gone away yet.
Overall grade: C-
*Poythress getting up shots
I asked for 10 or more shots from the freshman that is averaging 67% from the field and he took 9. Oh yeah, and he made 7 of them. He still looks like he isn’t fully in attack mode on offense, and when he did look to attack he had the ball stripped a few times. He is a guy that when he decides to go on the attack, he is the best player on the floor. He just doesn’t do it enough. He did have an incredible dunk though in the first half.
Overall grade: B
*Cohesion
I wanted to see this team make some extra passes and really look like they were having fun playing together. There was a play in the first half where the ball was dumped to Harrow under the basket and then he flipped it to Poythress for an easy layup and I jumped and screamed “finally!” Those are the kinds of plays I want to see from this team. There were also some nice extra passes from Wiltjer and Mays that led to wide open layups. The team had 22 assists tonight and I thought they shared the ball better than they had all year.
Overall grade: A+
*Bonus
Willie Cauley-Stein had 12 points, 12 rebounds and 4 blocks. I think it is safe to say that he is trending upward.
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