New Approach

[xxxbobxxx]

What is happening won’t work. I think kopp is a great potential 6. Plug in where needed.

I think we need Boo to recover without pressure - he’s nailing assists and rebounds.

Audidge it’s Ben Gordon. When he is hot and not tired, play him. Otherwise, no. It becomes obvious.

But I look at our stars (players, not ratings) and see issues compared to competition, not compared to NU history. Not sure how to address with portal so prevalent but;

Start:
Boo
Berry - no reason but potential for the future and as LG
Audidge or Beran - one is a polar scoring machine, one does a bunch of little things. Either way, both get minutes.
Nance
Young - he really needs to start. He has got it. He is that white, large center guy that hits the fundamentals. His BB IQ seems unreal. He’s limited by his physical traits.

We bring all this back absent transfers. We need to keep guys like Young and Berry.

Kopp should be a role player and late game player. He has bb iq too. But defensive liability.

We have horses. I’m curious what the advanced stats show.

 

[GatoLouco]

Good read. I find it interesting to read about specifics of what people think should change.

There's definitely not a right or wrong answer regarding the starting 5. I have stated my opinion on that anyway. Instead I just want to comment on the need to shake things up. Which I believe is obvious, now that being enamored by a 3-0 start is cooling off.

How long does a coach wait till changing the starting 5? Against IL we built our lead on bench players. Yesterday we got 0 points from 4 starters in the 1st half. It's not like CC never changed his starting 5, last year he sat Nance down in the latter part of the season

How much worse does Buie need to play to see less minutes? He played 35 bad minutes yesterday. Clear sign that CC trusts Greer to rest him, but not to run the team for any extended period. What does he have to lose in letting Berry run it for a while?

 

[NJCat]

Five of the 7 B1G games so far have been against teams currently in the Top 25. What is it a surprise that NU hasn't faired particularly well? They've won both games against non-Top 25 teams (IU and MSU) and beat a Top 25 team (OSU). Stay the course with respect to rotations, don't panic and start a true FY PG, and hope that when NU gets through this extremely difficult start to the B1G season they can win a couple more games. Face it, the B1G is loaded this year and NU is a bottom half team (6 B1G teams are ranked and 3 more received votes in the latest AP poll.....including NU!).

 

[GatoLouco]

Five of the 7 B1G games so far have been against teams currently in the Top 25. What is it a surprise that NU hasn't faired particularly well? They've won both games against non-Top 25 teams (IU and MSU) and beat a Top 25 team (OSU). Stay the course with respect to rotations, don't panic and start a true FY PG, and hope that when NU gets through this extremely difficult start to the B1G season they can win a couple more games. Face it, the B1G is loaded this year and NU is a bottom half team (6 B1G teams are ranked and 3 more received votes in the latest AP poll.....including NU!).

I see your point but wish I was as unconcerned as that logic (which makes sense) implies. But at the same time I lean to ignore if we play ranked or not ranked teams. Not that MI or IA are the same as playing IU. But it's the B1G, you can either win your home games, even against ranked opponents, or you will be bottom of the conference. And we blew it against IL. If we blow it against IA...

And if you told me, ahead of conference play, we'd be 3-4 through 7 games, I'd be delighted. But...

What I am worried about:
1) We won 3, but against MSU heavily due to Buie going mental. That happens maybe twice this season. Against IN due to Audige going mental at the right time.
2) We lost 4 straight. 2 blowouts. Against good teams for sure. We looked decent against a very good IA team. We arguably did not look decent against OSU. I felt OSU showed the lack of PG leadership. And we were always running behind hoping for a miracle turn
3) Our newly louded potent offense has produced 70 points a game. If you add the other decent team we played, Pitt, still 70. Last 4 games: 66. Don't know where the stats are, but at a point we were running the offense 4 seconds faster per possession. That's a lot more possessions than last year. 70, or 66 are higher than last year. But is 66 better playing that many more possessions?
4) Our defense, which was actually decent all things considered last year, surely not 2nd to last in the conference, allowed 77.6 per game, 83.5 in the last 4 games. Again, allowing more possessions as we are playing faster, but 83.5 is definitely not good.
5) Our starting 5 was, I believe, designed for offensive purposes. To jolt an offense that was bottom of the big. While still being tallish enough to maybe look ok on defense. Playing Nance at the 5 is surely not for defensive purposes. We were better last year with Young, and Nance played alongside him for a big part of the conference play. We even had starting lineups with Beran/Nance/Young. So maybe we stay the course and pray our offense comes to life? Or we try something different.

 

[NJCat]

I see your point but wish I was as unconcerned as that logic (which makes sense) implies. But at the same time I lean to ignore if we play ranked or not ranked teams. Not that MI or IA are the same as playing IU. But it's the B1G, you can either win your home games, even against ranked opponents, or you will be bottom of the conference. And we blew it against IL. If we blow it against IA...

And if you told me, ahead of conference play, we'd be 3-4 through 7 games, I'd be delighted. But...

What I am worried about:
1) We won 3, but against MSU heavily due to Buie going mental. That happens maybe twice this season. Against IN due to Audige going mental at the right time.
2) We lost 4 straight. 2 blowouts. Against good teams for sure. We looked decent against a very good IA team. We arguably did not look decent against OSU. I felt OSU showed the lack of PG leadership. And we were always running behind hoping for a miracle turn
3) Our newly louded potent offense has produced 70 points a game. If you add the other decent team we played, Pitt, still 70. Last 4 games: 66. Don't know where the stats are, but at a point we were running the offense 4 seconds faster per possession. That's a lot more possessions than last year. 70, or 66 are higher than last year. But is 66 better playing that many more possessions?
4) Our defense, which was actually decent all things considered last year, surely not 2nd to last in the conference, allowed 77.6 per game, 83.5 in the last 4 games. Again, allowing more possessions as we are playing faster, but 83.5 is definitely not good.
5) Our starting 5 was, I believe, designed for offensive purposes. To jolt an offense that was bottom of the big. While still being tallish enough to maybe look ok on defense. Playing Nance at the 5 is surely not for defensive purposes. We were better last year with Young, and Nance played alongside him for a big part of the conference play. We even had starting lineups with Beran/Nance/Young. So maybe we stay the course and pray our offense comes to life? Or we try something different.

I can't argue with any of your points. I just am not in the school of thought of shaking up the line-up based on the 7 B1G games we've had. To me, this is at best a 9th or 10th place team. No star player, no one consistently can create their own shot, and defensively challenged. Just need to keep chopping away and hope for better days next season........

 

[cats_man_too]

I like playing Nance and Young at the same time and mixing in Beran for defense and Kopp for offense. I think Buie and Audige are fine if they create for others more when they aren't on. Mix Berry in for offense and Gaines for defense, but Berry needs more rope as he has more upside defensively than Gaines does offensively. Even though I like Greer and I think he's solid, I don't know that he is a difference maker. I agree we need to try different starting rotations to see what clicks or what makes the most sense against a given opponent.