MBB vs Auburn

[app97]

Pros from today:
Turnovers, only 7 TO's against an SEC team. Very good

Free throw shooting: 80% today and got to the line 11 more times than Auburn did

Michael Almonacy, 15 points today. The way the Sun Belt is played, you need to significant contributions from JuCo and Grad transfers. O'Showen last year was one of our three best players (Forrest, Issac the other two) and Almonacy seems to be have taken over everything Williams did for us (consistent perimeter shooting, good ball handling, and solid defense)

Cons, which have been consistent throughout non conference play
Rebounding: outrebounded 38-21 today, Our leading rebounder on the season is 6'0 Almonacy. Somebody is going to need to step up in conference play, Isaac and Seacat were tanks in the post last year. right now we only have Priuses....

Perimeter shooting, 26% tonight...30.8% on the season. Needs to improve in conference play because we have no interior scoring right now

Free Justin Forrest. He was pre season 1st team all conference for a reason. Now he's not starting and isn't even playing 18 mpg. I don't care what he did get him out of the dog house please

I agree with perimeter scoring being an issue, but we've only been out rebounded by the bigger, more physical SEC teams. We've been pretty evenly matched in rebounding against comparable talent (Bowling Green, Charlotte), and have dominated the boards against the weaker competition. I've actually been more impressed with rebounding this year because it is spread out amongst the team, not just a couple big guys getting most of the boards. It's not a bad thing to have multiple guards who are good rebounders...these lead to extra possessions. Delph, Gregory, and Almonacy are all good rebounders for their size. We just happen to have more evenly distributed rebounding this year across the team.

[asu66]

For those of us who have followed our team's player personnel closely through all of the zillions of rags and the miniscule riches (so far), it's clear that our HC is spending a lot of time attempting to communicate with JForrest. What's not so clear is whether JF has his WI-FI logged in to the correct network.

We'll get chances to see if JF has begun to receive official communications on Fri and Sat afternoon.

As for the competition, Troy looks like all Scott Cross teams on paper...loaded with JuCo guys and a couple of D-I transfers looking for some/any PT they can get. Troy's first team (2019-2020) under Cross won just 9 games--this for a coach who averaged 19 wins per season in his 12 seasons as the head coach at UTA.

Cross will place high hopes on two Tyler, TX JuCos to help him right the ship...6-4 junior Kieffer Punt (The Bronx, NYC) was a 46% shooter from behind the arc at Tyler...while 6-9 junior Rory Pantophlet, a forward from the Caribbean isle of Saint Maarten, led Tyler in rebounding at 9.1 boards per game and ironically also averaged 9.1 points per game.

Cross can't afford to put too much pressure on his new guys in the early season; but he absolutely has to hit the double-digit win column by season's end.

For the record, Troy is predicted to finish dead last in the SBC's Eastern Div.

East
Georgia State 131 (1)
South Alabama 98
Coastal Carolina 86
App State 79
Georgia Southern 55
Troy 22

[asu66]

Why does Duhart have the green light on 3s? I don’t think he’s hit one this year

Duhart hit the trey sufficiently in his single JuCo season to register a couple of game-winning buzzer-beaters. Apparently our staff thinks that's a part of the kid's game that can be developed. He's just a soph, so he's got plenty of learning yet to do. Assuming he plays against Troy tomorrow, he'll be all the way up to having minutes played in 10 D-I collegiate basketball games. On a positive note he's shooting 15 for 32 (47%) from two-point range. making him one of the team leaders.

Oh, he's just 3 for 16 from behind the arc so far. That 19% has to get way better in Sun Belt games or the green light will get extinguished.

[asu66]

Why does Duhart have the green light on 3s? I don’t think he’s hit one this year

Duhart hit the trey sufficiently in his single JuCo season to register a couple of game-winning buzzer-beaters. Apparently our staff thinks that's a part of the kid's game that can be developed. He's just a soph, so he's got plenty of learning yet to do. Assuming he plays against Troy tomorrow, he'll be all the way up to having minutes played in 10 D-I collegiate basketball games. On a positive note he's shooting 15 for 32 (47%) from two-point range. making him one of the team leaders.

Oh, he's just 3 for 16 from behind the arc so far. That 19% has to get way better in Sun Belt games or the green light will get extinguished.