Reply To: Game 12: Bryant

Forum Forum Lehigh Sports Lehigh Men’s Basketball Game 12: Bryant Reply To: Game 12: Bryant

#8661

TMH
Participant

Took a little bit of time to digest this game. I’ll take part of the blame for this loss since Lehigh was winning 7-5 when I took my seat. Over the next 90 or so seconds Bryant hit 3 treys and a layup and suddenly we are down 9. The rest of the blame IMHO goes to the fact that we significantly outcoached. Here is the player by player breakdown.

CJ McCollum…Cj looked just a bit hobbled but played his normal extraordinary offensive game. Here is my problem though. If I had a player who was a likely lottery pick in the NBA draft, I would want the ball going through him nearly every time down the court. That doesn’t mean he has to shoot the ball but in the first half, he never even touched the ball about 60% of the possession. Perhaps it is to promote unselfish play. Maybe it’s to rest him while on the court. When he did become the centerpiece of the offense in the last 5-6 minutes, he was constantly double and triple teamed.

Gabe Knutson…We have all acknowledged that Gabe is a very good post player. The problem tonight was that he only seemed to get the ball in the high post perhaps 1 or 2 times in the 1st half. I couldn’t tell if that was just good defense or if there were simply no plays designed to take advantage of a relatively small team. They began feeding him early in the 2nd half but then abandoned it again. He still rarely leaves his feet.

Holden Greiner… he had some defensive lapses but I still give him the hustle award. He rebounded well, shot well and scrambled after loose balls.

Mackey McKnight…Same critique as always. When he is good..he is really good. Sometimes he still tries to do too much. Tonight though 7 assist and 2 TO.

Anthony D’Orazio…He is not going to give you a whole lot offensively but he hustles. He had 2 nice stuffs.

BJ Bailey…he does not have his offensive game together at all. However, he may techically be the best rebounder on the team and probably played the best defense

The rest of the bench..no comment

Team….we played NO perimeter defense. Bryant seemed to get open 3s at will and they can make them. Although statistically the stats were similar, Lehigh seemed to have to work much harder to get their shot than Bryant. We needed to man up on them tight and it never seemed to happen.

Side note: Even though the referees were not an issue for the majority of the game, they were certainly critical at the end. CJ was called for a walk, I personally didn’t see as time expired with 6 seconds on the game clock. Instead of pressuring the ball, Lehigh played some loose defensive scheme where the guy taking the inbound pass drove straight to the basket uncontested. With 1.6 seconds remaing, either McKnight or Bailey (couldn’t tell from my seats, threw an absolute strike to Gabe under the basket who was molested but no call.

The game is over though and we move on.