Seton Hall Game Thread II

[Chicagojayfan]

Wish we'd had a bit of this shooting for the SJU game

Team shot well, but IMO this win began with playing tough, locked-in D and on hustle

Turnovers / Offensive Rebounds:
While we gave up a few offensive boards, we got just about as many ourselves and won the rebounding versus SH last night. We gave up 10 second change pts, but got 8 ourselves, so pretty much a wash. Particularly good for a team like SH that depends on hitting the boards to win (lowest Total Rebounding% of the year for them 44.4%).

Similar story with Turnovers, we turned it over quite a bit (17.1% - in our dangerous range), but we got quite a few back against them 15.1% (second highest of the season for us)

Defense: 11th best of the season for us by defensive game score (92.8), but we held them to 0.667 PPP in the first half and that has to be one of the best halves of the year for us defensively. For SH it was the 7th worst offensive game of the year for them

Offense:
I was a bit worried we were having another cold shooting game, but once Traudt hit the two 3's in a row, and then Ashworth hit one, things felt a lot easier. Shouldn't have worried too much as we were moving the ball really well and getting tons of clean looks from all over. Overall 9th best Offensive game score of the year (123.2), 7th best eFG%

For SH, second worst defensive game of the year, just behind Baylor, 2nd worst eFG% of the year behind Nova

Individual stuff:
When our front line guys play as well as they did, we are tough to beat. So not a lot to say there - Baylor, Kalk, Trey were exceptional, and I'll add in Ashworth. Not a great shooting night for him (although OK), but his D was excellent and I love the way he's pushing the ball and getting the offense into their sets - and I'm not going to add it up, but it feels like he's gotten to the rim more in the last 10 games than he did the entire year before that

But we also got great bench contributions and Miller finally looks like he's getting healthy again.
- Bello gave up that one 3, but I thought his D was good last night and he does what he does which is not make mistakes and get to the right spots
- Miller got to 19 minutes after being sick last game, and they were good 1/2 from 3, 4 boards, assist, block, and steal
- Traudt was a huge spark that came at the right time. He may not always shoot that way, but BE teams won't be able to ignore him on the scouting report as we wrap up the conference schedule/tourney. Also big for me was how he defended Bediako (was it their backup in then?) on a play right around the 3 pt shots. If he can do that, he'll keep getting minutes and add another option for this team
- Green - he looks good at the FT line normally, so no idea how he missed both, but great hustle on D and on the boards again. 6-8 guys with strength and 7 ft wingspans don't grow on trees!
- Even King came in and probably looked the best he's looked since very early in the year

Team had a huge game at a critical moment. Mac's got them peaking at the right time, IMO. Keep up the intensity and consistency and this will be a fun rest of the season

[Realhoops]

Does Baylor have a bad back? He grimaced a couple of times tonight and I saw mouth to someone on the bench about his back. But they didn't take him out at that point. But he did sit in the first half which he doesn't normally do. Looking at him at tip off, he looked like he was under the weather. I hope we all get well for MU

He went down really hard in the second half when Dre Davis decided to try to take him out while he was in the air and going for the dunk. I can get not wanting to get dunked on, and Baylor has shown he'll poster people and was going for it, but it honestly didn't look like Davis even tried to make a play on the ball and Baylor was in a really vulnerable position in the air when he made contact and caused Baylor to go down really hard and into the basket support.

Given all of the constant monitor checks on things all year, I was honestly surprised that they didn't at least go look at it. If it had been the other way around, Hollaway would have been jumping up and down and screaming and running all over the place laying into the officials about it.

[go_jays]

It was bush.