Hoops tonight

[pics]

Utes leading the Huskies by 4 at the half. Utes have given up 8 steals in the half. Totally unacceptable and I’m sure coach is chewing them out in the locker room.

[Tony (admin)]

They had a 14 point lead a few minutes ago.  Now the lead is 1.  Still turning the ball over and not playing very good defense. 

[Tony (admin)]

Holy gag job.  Now we are down by 6. 

[Tony (admin)]

OMG this is infuriating and frustrating to watch. 

[Tony (admin)]

Man that was a painful 2nd half. Utes lose. 

[AZUTE]

Really not impressed with Smith at all. Team is getting worse and with his inability to recruit
not hopeful.

Defense rebounding and not turning the ball over are all about effort and hustle. I would expect at least that much from a talent poor team but we are not even getting that

[Rick]

Smith should take responsibility for this one. The lead goes to 14 he pulls Anthony and Carlson and doesn’t come back with them until the lead was four. By then the momentum was all Washington’s. The Huskies also went from zone to man and we couldn’t handle it down the stretch.

 

To the point on turnovers – 19 for the game, at least 12 of them unforced. By that I mean our players simply being careless. Case in point, we should have had the last possession of the half but a careless turnover turns into an easy three for Washington at the buzzer. Washington had us in athleticism and talent (most teams do) so you’d think taking care of the ball would be improving at this point in the season.

 

[Ute Dub]

A motto for my daughters 10 year old basketball team, “a bad shot is better than a turnover.” There’s so many turnovers. 19 turnovers could easily be cut in half with 9-10 aggressive shots that might be not your best look. We need someone to get those shots going. Carlson can’t have 8 shots a game. He needs 12-15 shots a game.

[GameForAnyFuss]

I’m with you. I’m starting to sour on Craig. I’ve been to every home game this year and what I’ve seen is no improvement in the things that have plagued us all year (rebounding, taking care of the ball, and shooting), while the defense seems to be regressing. Washington’s big run wasn’t them catching fire and hitting insane shots – they were just getting tons of easy looks due to poor defensive rotations and softness down low.

Craig is going to have to start showing some tangible improvement with the team. As we learned from Jim Boylen, being loud and enthusiastic and jumping around is not by itself indicative of good coaching.

[UTman]

Actually, rebounding was one of our better stats last night. For the game we outrebounded Washington by 18. This game was completely lost by not being able to take care of the ball.

[utefansince79]

Stats were quite remarkable in that we had a rebounding advantage of 18 and fewer field goal attempts.

 

[Ute Dub]

As far as rebounding from last night Utah clearly won that battle 44-26, which is even more of a head scratcher as to how you could lose that game and give up so many points and dominate the boards. Utah’s 19 turnovers to Washington’s 6 is a punch in the balls.  

[chinngiskhaan]

Do we have any momentum with any recruits at all? When do basketball recruits normally start committing? I have heard ZERO buzz regarding recruiting since Smith lost Chandler (who would have been our highest rated recruit ever, and was a life long Ute fan) to BYU.

Smith either needs to get extremely lucky with a couple of no-name guys like our previous coach, or he needs to be let go, and we need to hire someone flashy in order to get recruits to commit.

So far his recruiting commits have all been guys who were or already had left Utah, but not the ones that we actually wanted to stay, transfers from his previous coaching stop, Dusan Mahorcic, and a handful of ineffective transfers from nowhere.

Here is how I rank his recruits so far:

Marco Anthony – a very good role player that would be in the NBA if he was a better shooter. Our best defender and rebounder. At 6 ft 5, that is not a good thing.

Dusan Mahorcic – A very tough big man, something we were sorely lacking the past few years. Plays angry, doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. Again, not a good offensive player at all, but at least not a turnover machine.

Rollie Worster – Essentially Rylan Jones in a bigger body. Not a terrible player, but not athletic enough to stand out in the Pac12.

Both Gach – Athletic enough to succeed in the pac-12, probably the only guard on the team that can claim this distinction, which is bad news for this team going forward. Can be great sometimes, and utterly useless sometimes.

David Jenkins – Looked to be the go to scorer we needed early on in the season, has all but completely disappeared lately. He’s gone from our best scorer to a guy who hasn’t scored a single point in his last two games, with over 30 minutes of playing time. Seems to be a good shooter, something we desperately need more of, yet he goes ages without even attempting shots. Not sure what is going on with him.

Lazar Stefanovic – A promising young player. Seems to be pretty solid all around but nothing special in any particular category. He looks like the future of this team, which is a sad sad thing.
_____________ That’s it for the good ones, onto the second tier Smith recruits

Riley Battin – The fact that a player like him gets significant minutes on a Pac12 basketball team is an embarrassment to our program. Terrible athlete, terrible defender, terrible ball handler and passer, streaky AF shooter, timid on offense. The proud owner of the ugliest shot on the team. Holy s**t… he’s 6 ft 9, has played significant minutes if not starter minutes every year since he’s been here, and he has a total of 8 blocket shots, EIGHT BLOCKED SHOTS! for his entire career at Utah. Oh yeah, and he’s shooting 27% from three this year. Honestly a 6 ft 9 inch cardboard box with arms would be roughly similar in production.

Bostyn Holt – demonstrated some amount of potential against bad teams early on in the season before his season ended early due to injury.

Gabe Madsen – Transferred here because he couldn’t get any PT on a mediocre Cincy squad. Seems like a decent shooter, but doesn’t have the athleticism or ball handling to create his own shot, much like all but one or two guys on this team.

Lahat Thioune – I like Lahat, but he isn’t a good basketball player. This many years of collegiate level coaching and he still looks lost half the time he’s on the court, and doesn’t seem comfortable with the ball in his hands.

________________

I will say this, Smith did an admirable job of putting together a basketball roster with some decent pieces in a very short amount of time. That being said, this team is deeeeeeeply flawed, devoid of athleticism and shot creation. Too slow and small on the defensive side of the ball. A team that has such a dearth of athleticism really needs to have an abundance of three point shooting prowess and/or size. Unfortunately, we are sorely lacking in athleticism, length, and shooting.

[AllInUteFan]

Worster, Anthony, Jenkins, Madsen, Thioune and Battin all lack the athleticism necessary to play PAC 12 bball. Against the Beavs (who are terrible) Anthony was beaten baseline side off the dribble multiple times. To his credit he give a full effort and boxes out. Worster (and most of the Utes tbh) struggles getting the ball up the court one on one. This leads to early termination of his dribble and negatively alters passing angles, which disrupts the offense and too often leads to turnovers.

Smith had to get a roster together and this is it. The cupboard was bare. It’s hard to scheme when you have a slower team with marginal offensive skills. That said, the lack of correction and improvement stands out.

I’ll give Smith a couple of years to get some recruits in the door and show he can coach.

 

[Rick]

Spot on.  I think our guards are not up to snuff for PAC 12 play and hence the turnovers.  We are a turnover machine and it has gotten worse not better since the season started.  Not a good sign.  

[chinngiskhaan]

It’s getting worse because we are playing tougher competition and more meaningful games… Not necessarily because the team is getting worse.

We don’t have the horses to play offense effectively in this league.

[Utephoria]

This team struggled occasionaly during non-conference play and now that the real conference competition has begun, the team is not ready for the athletism, bigger players and faster players. Smith has Mountain West Conference players playing in the PAC12. Even Battin, Carlson, Gach and Thioune who have been part of PAC12 play through the past few years are not true PAC12 players. Coach Smith has never coached at this level and is quickly learning the desparity of talent between what he has recruited in the past and what he needs to recruit to compete in the PAC12.

It may take a couple of years, but if Coach Smith does not start understanding the type of talent to play and win the PAC12 through recruiting then we are going to have the same product for years to come. It all starts with recruiting and I hope Coach Smith is realizing this. Hopefully, he can get some PAC12 talent to come to Utah in the very near future.  

[Author]

Posts