Looking ahead to Minny

[LUHoops00Participant]

Anyone else making the pilgrimage out to Minny? Would love to meet up!

[LUHoops00Participant]

How do we open the game?

Pitino wants to press and I think he opens up in three guard set so I think we open with MM CS AD in backcourt.

Up front I hope after two scrimmages that Reed know what he has and our two up front to start the game are from this group of 3: JG JC TK.

I am looking forward to getting there early and seeing warmups to get a better look at newcomers.

[LUHoops00Participant]

http://m.startribune.com/?id=230424211

Interesting read about playing guards and more guards.

[oldhoopsguyParticipant]

Hoops,

Are you (or anyone else) going to be puting out real time tweets from courtside during the game?

[toddcuddParticipant]

I’m thinking about a chat room for the game. I know I’ll be glued to the game on my PC; chatting with you guys at the same time would be fun. I’ve seen that feature on some live streams – don’t know if ESPN3 offers that or not. If anybody else is interested, I’ll do some sniffing around.
Directly related to that – if you haven’t watched games on ESPN3 I’d recommend checking it out in advance. You have to confirm your TV provider to get access; I had to log on to my Time Warner account to make it work. Might take some time, which could be frustrating if you start it up at tip-off time.

[gopherman23Participant]

Gopher Fan here. I thought I’d do a short preview on our team and an expected starting lineup:

PG Dre Mathieu: Junior JUCO transfer who was 1st team all NJCAA last year. Only 5’10 but very quick and has a 40 inch vertical. More of a drive and dish type of player and is very good in transition.
PG/SG Dre Hollins : One of the best scorers in the country when he’s on. Dropped 41 on Memphis last year and had two 25+ point preformances in the tourny last year. He’s a bit of a tweener. More of a SG in a PG body. Needs to improve his ball handling.
SG Austin Hollins: Son of NBA coach Lionel Hollins. Best backcourt defender in the Big Ten not named Aaron Craft. Pretty good 3 point shooter and just great all-around player. Averaged a shade over 10 ppg last year.
F Joey King: Sophomore transfer from Drake. More of a stretch 4 than a banger. Good 3 point shooter but struggles on the defensive side of the ball. 6’9 but needs to add more muscle.
C Elliot Elliason: 7 footer who doesn’t have a very good offensive game but is a solid defensive player who is in there to protect the paint and provide us some rebounding.

We are going to have to rely alot on 3 point shooting and pressure defense this year. Last year we were the best offensive rebounding team in the nation. However we lose Trevor Mbakwe and Rodney Williams, both of whom were our best rebounders and frontcourt players. And with Richard Pitino at the helm our whole team philosophy is going to do a 180. We’ll be a more guard oriented team and will struggle to rebound the basketball on many nights. We are going to be alot like Illinois from last year. Two very good guards who can score and a very unproven frontcourt.

[toddcuddParticipant]

Thanks, gopherman! I hope we can give you guys a good enough game to make it interesting. I’m hopeful, but we’re loaded with unknowns this year.
Good luck on your season – from Saturday on, anyway!

[LUHoops00Participant]

Thanks for posting, can you expand into the bench for us? It seems walker and Otto are next two bigs off the bench, who else is in guard rotation?

[toddcuddParticipant]

So I went looking to nature for a prediction…

[toddcuddParticipant]

ugh. i give up. was trying to post a countdown timer, but failed. So tip-off is soon.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by  toddcudd.

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