Omaha post-game thoughts

Bayfield Gopher said:

After watching Stull's highlights and the second half of the Chicago Loyola game when he basically took over the game, I was excited to have him. Not only is he a good shooter, but can take it to the hoop. Not sure about his D and probably not much on the boards. If he plays like his highlights, my guess is that he will compete for PT with Gabe and give relief to McBrayer.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsuYafe2rWU

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Yep. I was expecting him to be another Springs type guy both in style of play and caliber of player when he committed.

Unfortunately he definitely does look like he's gained a bit of weight compared to his last two years at UW-Milwakee and doesn't seem quite as athletic.

A lot of people underestimating how good Carr is in this thread. He's the second best guard on the roster behind Coffey.

UpAndUnder43 said:

After a slow start the Gophers ramped it up offensively and defensively to dominate the end of the first half. Held and extended the lead in the second half. Saw a lot of the second unit, which was good.

Coffey looked really good going to the basket. Finished well and made free throws. Pushed the ball well and defended very well. Looks healthy.

Hurt struggled shooting BUT was aggressive and took shots. That is really nice to see. Had a nice finish in the first half, rebounded, competed. He is a role player but one with a lot experience. Solid defensive effort.

Final thought: this team is deep. They can score a lot of points. Defense is a process sometimes but Omaha hit a ton of tough shots inside and a bunch of deep 3s. Gophers can be a really very good team if they stay healthy and work on both ends of the floor.

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Mostly agree. Except on Coffey and Hurt.

Coffey, Expect more progress from a guy who might be on an NBA trajectory, without someone else handling the ball and allowing him to get open without the ball shows no signs of being able to dribble himself open. If he can't do it against Omaha, he won't do well in Big 10 play.

Hurt, looked like he regressed from last year. Also looks like they ran out of keys to the weight room when they got to him. If your a limited talent guy, you would hope to see at least physical improvement by year three. Still looks too skinny to be effective as anything other than a point guard and doesn't have the speed or skill set for that.

Omersa, Gabe, Stockman looked better than I expected.

Washington looked okay, but when he isn't on the floor I don't see a ball handler I'm confident in. Remembering Dupree falling apart against the press from Iowa, makes me nervous how this team will handle real ball pressure for an entire game.

Jaykay said:

A lot of people underestimating how good Carr is in this thread. He's the second best guard on the roster behind Coffey.

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I don't think we can say at this point that he is better than Dupree.

I do think he should be our starting PG though.

LakerFan said:

Mostly agree. Except on Coffey and Hurt.

Coffey, Expect more progress from a guy who might be on an NBA trajectory, without someone else handling the ball and allowing him to get open without the ball shows no signs of being able to dribble himself open. If he can't do it against Omaha, he won't do well in Big 10 play.

Hurt, looked like he regressed from last year. Also looks like they ran out of keys to the weight room when they got to him. If your a limited talent guy, you would hope to see at least physical improvement by year three. Still looks too skinny to be effective as anything other than a point guard and doesn't have the speed or skill set for that.

Omersa, Gabe, Stockman looked better than I expected.

Washington looked okay, but when he isn't on the floor I don't see a ball handler I'm confident in. Remembering Dupree falling apart against the press from Iowa, makes me nervous how this team will handle real ball pressure for an entire game.

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Coffey would be expected to see over/play over opposition at the point and not necessarily be a blow-by type PG. I think its an interesting and exciting experiment with the potential to work out. We will see.

Jaykay said:

A lot of people underestimating how good Carr is in this thread. He's the second best guard on the roster behind Coffey.

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Just curious what makes you say this? (given that nobody's seen him play a game yet) Sure he started a lot of games for Pitt last year, but that team was terrible. They somehow managed to go 0-18 in the ACC. If their PG was good you'd expect them to eek out at least a few wins.

And if you're just looking at highlight videos, well, nobody ever misses a shot or has a turnover in a highlight video.

WanderingGopher said:

Just curious what makes you say this? (given that nobody's seen him play a game yet) Sure he started a lot of games for Pitt last year, but that team was terrible. They somehow managed to go 0-18 in the ACC. If their PG was good you'd expect them to eek out at least a few wins.

And if you're just looking at highlight videos, well, nobody ever misses a shot or has a turnover in a highlight video.

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We can all argue whether he's the 2nd or 3rd best guard on team, but in Pitino's blog he says Carr is a game changer! Competes on both ends. Battle tested. Winner! Sounds to me like i want this guy in uniform ASAP!

Block M said:

Coffey would be expected to see over/play over opposition at the point and not necessarily be a blow-by type PG. I think its an interesting and exciting experiment with the potential to work out. We will see.

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I'm excited to see how the Coffey at PG experiment works out as well. If he can get it done he will be a matchup nightmare for teams with his size. The starting lineup we ran out there last night didn't have a player under 6'4" in it.

Hopefully guys can stay healthy and Curry can get healthy. The roster is already fairly deep but with Curry and Carr in the mix we would have depth unlike anything we have seen around here is a long time if ever.

Coffey has a history of not doing a lot in weak non-conference games, then scoring like 30 vs St John's as a freshman.

Keep in mind people who aren't happy with Coffey's game last night:
He scored 18 points on 7 shot attempts. He made plays all over the court. He isn't a natural point guard but he provides a different look and gives us a huge starting lineup.

Note: If we averaged 18pts per 7 shot attempts, the Gophers would have scored 160 points last night. He was our most efficient scorer.

I reviewed the complete box score after being at the game last night and was surprised by a few stats that weren't evident while watching:

1. We had 18 turnovers in last nights game. That's a tad high, and certainly something that gets better over the season, but we could be even more efficient offensively is awesome.

2. I wrote Matz Stockman's rebounding ability off last night because on the offensive boards he was getting pushed right out of the way by the opponent and assumed we'll have some difficulty with him rebounding because of his size. In reality of opportunities he had to rebound he was actually as efficient as Oturu (@ 28.8% TRB), but Stockman was even more efficient in defensive rebounding (@ 40% DRB vs. 15%). Oturu is going to have a big presence with Murph and dominate, but in reflection I liked how Matz positioned himself for rebounds on the defensive end.

3. I had questions on how Stull would perform against D1 caliber teams because he looked slow against UMD. I thought: how could he possibly create separation to create open quality shots. He took two 3s last night one was a quick release off a dish and the other was an opening caused by a pump fake. Both looked good in respects to Stull playing to his strengths.

4. It was interesting to see that our 3pt% was at about 20% at the end of the first half. In fact up until the last 4-5 minutes we struggled heavily on producing points with the perimeter locked down. I want to see how the team will adjust when the 3 isn't going our way and how quickly we can make that adjustment effectively to maintain control of the game as best as we can. In that first half our players attacked the baseline by driving falling into a baseline trap which yielded several turn-overs, how do we mitigate that risk where the opposition was coached to encourage that option for the trap.

5. Our team did a better job picking up on the slashing guards in the second half. Dupree and Isaiah both got into trouble getting peeled off by picks and navigating traffic in general. It seems like both tend to follow the guard around the obstruction rather than trying to consolidate the opposite way. The first half lead to considerable amounts of points, but Murph (I noticed the most) adjusted well to that in the second half. How can we prevent against that better moving forward without compromising other aspects of the D.

GopherCountry said:

IMO Coffey is still lefty dominant in his dribbling and driving and still struggles to go right. The Big Ten teams will expose this. Hopefully Carr becomes eligible and/or Washington plays well. Murphy's lateral quickness is has not gotten any better and still has no jumper. He is a standstill outside shooter. If both have aspirations to make it to the NBA, how do you not improve on those areas as these have been their weaknesses now for over two years.

Hopefully both can continue to work during the season and improve throughout.

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Points are right on. Coffey should tie his left arm behind his back and dribble three hours a day under pressure. That’s really his main weakness. Murphy is a great player but turns it over too much when he dribbles around excessively. That happened last night several times. The real nugget so far is Washington. HUGE improvement thus far.


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