Ye Olde Green Wave Forum

Just a very poor performance other than Frazier who will play in the NBA. Some thoughts -

1. First basketball game in so long that I am pissed off. And that is a good thing because basketball matters again!
2. REBOUNDING - just atrocious - especially on the defensive side. I love MD, but we are going to have go big at some point.
3. Wasted performance by Frazier - just a great player and if he can consistently score form outside, he is going to be one of the best ever to play at Tulane.
4. Why is Ray Ona Embo playing man to man on anyone, especially on UConn's best player. He cannot play man. He is beat at the three point line every time. Keep the guy in front of you son and move your feet.
5. Daniels needs to start. He can help us on both sides of the court. We have too many one sided players on the court.
6. Coach, please sign two point guards.
7. Coach, if we cannot play man against more athletic teams, please play zone. I know you want to play man to man, but you can play zone in college. It is a strategy you can explore and use.
8. Clock management in the final 1:20 was flat out terrible. We cut it to 8 and have 7 team fouls and we don't foul on two consecutive possessions which of course they convert two lay-ups. What were trying to accomplish? Perhaps MD needed to make the 4th race at the Fair Grounds because nothing else makes sense.

This was a game we needed. Just a very lackluster performance.

I think the biggest problem is we have so many 2s and 3s but no true point guard and no center. I like Ona-Embo but I think he is a 2. There is just something missing. He doesn’t make the offense flow. I think we should let Cornish run the offense and take advantage of his size and strength. Our starting center had 2 points and 3 rebounds. We can’t go to a big line up unless we play zone because Sehic and Paul are too slow. If we had more depth I would say we go 40 minute of hell because our strength is athletic ability and scoring in transition.

I like Frazier a lot but he isn't going to play in the NBA. Most of his scoring today was from the inside which is where his game is. Glad he's finally realized it.

Paul isn't too slow athletically. He just doesn't have much court awareness.

We have Paul, Sehic, Ajang, and Koka. Find one combination that can rebound and can play zone. We cannot play the way we play against athletic teams. We can beat a lot of teams with our regular 5-7 players, but we have to try and do something different against a UConn, Memphis, Cinncy, Wichita St, etc. Today was a game we gave away. Ona Embo cannot guard PG's and maybe not even the off guard. Too many easy, easy baskets. Too many rebounds on the defensive end. Just a very poor game plan.

And Frazier will have a chance to play in the NBA. Great defender, great athleticism, can take anyone to the basket using either hand, can finish, and if he can improve his outside shooting there is no doubt he will have his shot.

Tulane shouldn't be favored to beat anybody with the exceptions of ECU and maybe USF. Any smart gambler loaded up today with the +3.5 with UConn.

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YOGWF - of all the Tulane fans in the world, we're the Tulaniest

He's had 3 years to improve his outside shooting. While he has improved some he is still far from a capable shooter. He appears to have finally realized that and is taking it to the hoop more. If he plays professionally it will be overseas.

We have no answer for the zone defense. Unless we shoot well over 50% from 3 point line we will not win. Any team that doesn't play zone against us is a fool. We also don't use the zone defense enough. U Conn was the worst 3 point shooting team in the conference , and the way we could not stop their point guard from driving the lane , he could score anytime he wanted to , we should have played zone the entire game. We would have had a better chance to win because we would have more people in the lane and it would be more difficult to drive the lane. rjc

If I remember the quote, from the UCONN coach, in the post game news conference, he said it was the first time they were 50% from 3 pt, since last January. It always amazes me when people come into our gym, and shoot better.

It has more to do with the defense guarding them than it does the gym they are playing in.

Everyone here seems on the right track. It was obvious early that our bombs were not going to drop. It seemed to me that in the SMU game the players realized it early and attacked the inside.. they developed some confidence with that success and then the long shots started to drop.

U Conn seemed to defense this better and deny the passes inside effectively in the first half. Enough so, that we never got into any rythem. Like all of you, I would like to see a guard that is adept at attacking the zone and creating some offense. A slasher to the basket etc. it will not happen this year.. Daniels might be a temp fix if you set him up in that role. Just a thought, as a stop gap measure. He seems to have the athleticism necessary to make the offense go.... but I am no coach so I may be offbase.

Cold Spells are going to happen MD has to get them in a position to dig out of the cold spells more effectively. Disappointing, with some chance to build on campus buzz postponed - again. But I am back as a MBB fan, nice to be able to catch them on TV. Thanks to AAC efforts. Tough to watch but still see the glass half full with a lot of potential to improve further.

This team, and/or MD's system, have a fatal flaw, and it is that they cannot penetrate a zone defense. Pure and simple. If it shoots well from the perimeter, we win; if we don't, we lose. Until they learn to get movement in the lane and points in the paint against a 2-3 or 3-2 matchup zone, these will be the results. It was evident in our first loss--GA State--and it is evident from yesterday. Broken record.

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Plan your work, work your plan.

Exactly. Memphis’ 50 points in the first half last week were the most in a half all season for them. Our defense is what struggling offenses look forward to.

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Tulane Greenbackers

"It's my job to prepare the coaches. It's their job is to prepare the players and the players' job is to play lights out." Willie Fritz

"If you want to win you have to have good players." Vince Gibson

This was one of the worst coached games of the Dunleavy era.

First of all, the guys really didn't seem ready to play and focused, shown at the beginning by UConn's quick 11-2 start, and then at the end with the whole debacle about not knowing it was 1-and-1 on the foul shot. It seemed like we thought we were just better than them and it wouldn't be too difficult.

Our rotations sucked. Samir was charmin soft. We were counting on him to provide offense in a defensive game. I know Blake was in foul trouble, but it's pointless to sit a guy when he has 4 fouls with 10 minutes left when you are down by 13 points. Play him. If he fouls out, so be it. Go down fighting with your best lineup on the floor. We also continuously sit 2 of the big 3 (Frazier, Reynolds, Cornish) at the same time in the 1st half, and let other teams go on runs. We aren't deep enough to be able to afford to do that. If guys need rest, sub them out one at a time.

We are not a good three-point shooting team, yet we continue to jack up threes against the zone to start off games. Cam Reynolds is a good three-point shooter. Melvin is not. Ray is not. Jordan is not. That's not their game. Those are not good shots for most of our guys, unless they are off inside-out touches on wide open looks. We continuously swing the ball around the perimeter and end up with bad looks late in the shot clock. A streaky shooting team cannot rely on the three-point shot as much as we do. Our press break offense continues to struggle, as well. You knew we might be in for a long game when UConn opened up in the press and fell back into the zone.

We let the same guy beat us the whole game. Jalen Adams had nearly 2/5 of their points, and was their go-to guy for penetration. When you throw in his 6 assists, he contributed on at least 43 of their 67 points. Now, he is a very good player and hit some difficult shots. However, we never once trapped him off a screen. We never once ran a double team at him in a late-shot clock situation. We played him the exact same way defensively the entire game and continued to let him carve us up. Not making an adjustment is inexcusable.

Then finally, our late game execution was bad. We were down 8 with about a minute left, and it looked like we might as well have been down 20. No sense of urgency. No plan on defense. It was just very disappointing.

As OP has said, we definitely laid an egg. UConn isn't good. If they would have came in here and shot really well and just played out of their minds and beaten us, then so be it. But instead, we played poorly and with no urgency, and gave away a game we desperately needed.

Hopefully the team has more intensity for the game against Houston. They're going to need it. Houston is no joke. If we aren't ready to match their physicality, they will destroy us on the glass and it will be a very long night.

Roll Wave.

All of this. I'd like to see more zone defense from us, as well.

UConn is a terrible shooting team. Just looking at their shot forms you could tell that.

Tulane is a weak defensive team and at best an average if not lesser rebounding team. Playing more zone may help the former but will almost certainly negatively impact the latter. Hate to say it but it's pick your poison.

Baywave, the analytics the team has comprised to date should tell them what works best. Problem is, we don't employ the zone so there are no analytics. We should be using all strategies at our disposal. So to answer your question, I don't think anyone knows what works best.

Many of the top players in our league are point guards. Could we let Frazier guard them? He certainly would have got over the screens against UCONN and his size would have given Adams fits. I’d like to see him guard Rob Gray of Houston and test my theory by letting him guard Shake Milton at SMU.

If we are not going big and playing zone, I agree with you. It can't hurt. What we witnessed on Saturday could have been mitigated had Frazier been on Adams.

These are all good thoughts. I'm sure we'll see modifications but not sure about major changes for reasons noted above. MD is converting Frazier to an ironman for a reason. It would not surprise to see him become central to both offense and defense. (That's not MD's style. He hates "me versus we." But losing underachieves more.)

Meanwhile back to the original thought. This team is physically limited. My humble guess is the only way out of the slump is shooting out of it. Won't happen on defensive or rebounding or ball handling aspects.

We are not in a "slump". We are trending toward the truth of what we really are. We're a team that is much improved but "not there yet." That's exactly where most of us expected to be before the season started. We're better than the national pundits expected, but that's only because they don't pay enough attention to notice (think we get minimal attention from the press in football with 130 teams?... try basketball with 300+).

Those who follow basketball expected we'd win more games than last year and beat a lot of the teams we should beat, while minimizing losses to teams we should beat, and also occasionally beat teams we are not expected to beat. So far that's exactly what has happened. The problem is every time we win one of those shockers, human nature is to think we're "that good" and can win those types of games consistently. That's why we're "not there yet"; because we can't. Yet.

Before the season I compared this year to the 1990-91 season. Some big wins against good teams, losses to both good and average teams. Minimal losses to bad teams. Ended the year barely over .500 and midpack in conference. It felt like a win compared to the year before and felt like a harbinger of good things to come (which it was). The difference is that back then after we won at Cincinnati, people weren't jumping off bridges because we didn't follow with a win at Louisville. After we beat Florida State and Virginia Tech, people didn't assume we'd beat South Carolina and Memphis State. Today there is probably a deeper urgency to get back to being good since we've tasted it before (and this whole internet thing amplifies it)... but we all need a dose of patience.

My $0.02.

Amen on every point except at any level when you lose three in a row, you're in a slump. Let's see it broken tomorrow night (along with my water pipes! Nothing's changed. We don't handle real winter well here.)

Pete, I think your analysis is very good and probably what most people thought would happen. For God’s sake, we only won six games last year and every AAC team is very well aware we can beat them this year. With that being said, I am disappointed with our defense, rebounding, and time management. I have not watched every single possession this year, but I have not seen us play any zone at all. Why not? Using both Paul and Sehic or Ajang in the zone at the same time to rebound on the defensive side would help on the defensive boards. We lost both the Tulsa and UConn games because we could not rebound. Secondly, why wasn’t Frazier guarding Allen the other night. Put your best defender on the best offensive player who continually abused Ona Embo. And clock management was nonexistent against UConn and Memphis. I don’t know if we win any of these games, but we play the same style every single game and that should not be the case.

You are right on. This season has been a lot of fun and will continue to be. My only complaint is that I think defense and rebounding are effort things and we have lacked in those departments in most of our losses.

MD is doing a great job. It's a lot of fun watching us run plays that lead to open looks which we never had before.

He needs to work on our zone offense, understanding that playing a zone in college can be effective and clock management. Most of those things are because of his NBA background. For the most part teams don't foul in the NBA to stop the clock figuring there is a 24 second shot clock and the players won't miss from the line anyway. He will improve on these things as time goes by.

It's fair to quibble with not trying a zone to stop the driving to the goal by their PG, not fouling to stop the clock, lack of rebounding in both ends, coming out with a lack of intensity in some games and so on but the bigger picture issue has been the same for years, even under the previous regime. Most of the games we lose it's mainly because the other team has better players than we do.

Dunleavy upgraded our talent this year but to get to the top of this league we need to add better players. We shoot well we win or stay close, when we don't we don't. That said UConn was one we could win, it seems like thinking the group of teams including us, Memphis, UConn, Tulsa, are all kind of similar.

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The Tulane University of Louisiana