UTRGV

[SeattleJay]

Dropped to 56 in defense on Kenpom.

[CPJays]

Not to be a hater but this was bad. Big issues on defense and playmaking.

[chairclanger]

If anyone watches the possession in the 2nd half where UTRGV secured 4 straight offensive rebounds, while the Jays ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, 56 in the defensive rating seems a bit high.

[Jaybird]

This would be a nice time for someone to tell me that UTRGV recently moved to CUSA or somewhere and is projected to be good….

They're in the feared Southland Conference, and they're picked 12th. Maybe you're thinking "Geez, 12th. They gave us a real battle. There must be like 40 teams in the Southland if those guys are 12th". Well, there are 12. So, dead last. We play Houston Christian in a few days and they're picked 11th, so they must be a little better.

[Minnesota Jay]

This would be a nice time for someone to tell me that UTRGV recently moved to CUSA or somewhere and is projected to be good….

They're in the feared Southland Conference, and they're picked 12th. Maybe you're thinking "Geez, 12th. They gave us a real battle. There must be like 40 teams in the Southland if those guys are 12th". Well, there are 12. So, dead last. We play Houston Christian in a few days and they're picked 11th, so they must be a little better.

Ok it was obviously not a good game, but we don't need to make things up. They were picked 8th, and Kenpom/Torvik and have them ~6th.

HCU is in fact supposed to be clearly worse, so we'll see what happens there...

[wildjays]

Creighton basketball started the season off with a bang against UTRGV on Wednesday night. Ryan Kalkbrenner scores 49 in the victory.

Matt DeMarinis and Jacob Padilla break it all down in the Bluejay Beat podcast, exclusive to our Patreon subscribers.

Join today and support WBR

https://www.patreon.com/posts/bluejay-b ... =join_link

[Chicagojayfan]

Defensively we aren't really set up to stop these small 5-out teams anymore (not like the old days in the Valley for us), but we are also just a bit slow and sloppy on our switches/rotations and we are playing a lot of different people along side each other

Kalk dominating, but wish we'd find some more things to click on offense. Pop would help both offensively and defensively against these guys

Snap judgement - Davis is a player and looks like he belongs.

things didn't change much in the second half. Kalk had his amazing game.

Defensively, teams like this can negate what Kalk does to the game overall, so we are out of our element. Add in Pop being out, so we are asking our bigger guys to chase their little guys, and our bigger guys aren't all used to playing together and let them slip in too many easy 3's. Some was our fault, but they also played and shot well from 3 PT

Offensively, we aren't at a point where the offense flows well w/o Pop (small sample as I've only compared to the Purdue game). He and Ashworth together were making such good and quick decisions in that game that this was harder to watch, but this team also wasn't doubling Kalk so was putting us in a position to run the offense through him, and he was up to the challenge!

Ash did a nice job running the offense and he and Kalk have obviously been working on playing together (7 assists/2 turnovers for Ashworth), but as a team the rest wasn't goog -- 20 assists/15 turnovers is going to give the coaches a LOT to talk about on film today. Turnover rate from last night would have been top 5 or so from last year, and this wasn't a pressure D at all

Green looked out of the flow last night for most of the time. I think he was struggling to keep up with the little guys defensively and maybe it got into his head (he was out the first exhibition, right, is he banged up a bit or adjusting to not coming off the bench?). 4 turnovers, but had that very nice cut to the paint where he scored

Neal had some highlight plays - the dribble/dish to Kalk in the paint and the fast break finish, but also had 4 turnovers. Think his effectiveness will go up with more shooters around him to give him a bit more space

Miller - wish he was more aggressive with his shot, but only took his first shot (IIRC?) to avoid the shot clock violation, but was hustling to hit the boards and on D. Even with the leg injury looked quick. His defense was what got him on the floor for almost all of the second half

Davis/McAndrew - both had moments I liked. Davis looked more into the flow at this point and we needed his minutes as a smaller guy who could keep up with their guards

King - had some really good moments in Purdue, but really struggled last night. To be fair, this is not the kind of team where he can excel at all. If this were a team we played w/o Kalk, I'd play Traudt/Green at the 5

Traudt - struggled on D with their quickness, hit his open shots which we needed!, and even had the nice interior finish.

Ashworth - really solid game and what you expect of a Senior PG. held onto the ball, controlled the pace, got to the line (17 fts! and 17/17) and fed Kalk

Kalk - Player of the Game (obviously!)

D will look better. O will look better. And, it could have been a LOT worse -- Look at Villanova to see how bad things can go when a team has a bad night defensively!

[Jaybird]

Lindy’s picks UTRGV 12th and Houston Christian 11th. Do you want the whole damn list, 1-12? How about their all-conf team, POY, UTRGV’s returning starters, who to keep an eye on (it’s a DePaul transfer, just in case Torvik doesn’t mention him), everything else? Or do you just want to keep accusing people of making stuff up bc they don’t happen to use your source, jerk?

[Realhoops]

Good to see the message board is already in mid season mode after a win where Ryan Kalkbrenner gave everyone an absolutely historic performance.

[NUgradCUfan]

Good to see the message board is already in mid season mode after a win where Ryan Kalkbrenner gave everyone an absolutely historic performance.

Historic performance that was absolutely needed in order to beat a team you led by 5 with under 4 minutes left and should beat by 25+ even without Pop is justifiable concern.