He might not do a ton of shooting off the dribble this year, but his potential in that department could be huge for next season. I think @umhoops just pointed out in an article how little shooting off the dribble we’ve gotten. Dwalt’s ability to do it made last year’s offense so dang beautiful.
Noticed he caught a few passes 7 feet behind the top of the 3pt line, when he would’ve had wide open 3 if he positioned himself on the 3pt line, instead.
Team’s still a work in progress, but good to get the win; turn the page and move on to the next game. Good to see Wagner find his scoring touch. Good to see Livers string together back-to-back strong games. Good to see Simpson make adjustments to a different style of defense thrown at him.
Free throw shooting and 3 point shooting are trending up, which is a very good sign.
Livers and Poole both hit double digits in under 20 minutes, with no fouls and no turnovers, which is quite amazing. Robinson was 1-5 on 3s, and it looks inevitable that he will keep losing minutes to Livers. At what point will Beilein give Livers the starter’s job? Hard to imagine that it won’t happen sometime before the end of the season.
Robinson also had that turnover where he threw it back into the backcourt for an over and back. If Livers did that I think he would get pulled instantly. It seems like Duncan has the ultimate trust of the staff to play through mistakes that the freshmen just won’t have this year
Agree that the team, for all its promise on so many fronts, is still a bit of a fragile construct. Mo’s terrible D worries me as does the idea of Teske against more experienced talls. And I could easily see X getting overwhelmed against a good team, especially if forced to play a lot of minutes. It’s really a shame that Simmons hasn’t emerged to take some pressure off.
To be fair, that call was fake news.
I love Teske, but his shift also started to deteriorate (Dylan picked exactly the word I had in mind for poor Jaaron). He’s just got to keep moving those feet on defense. When he does, he is such a beast to score over for an offensive player, but smaller Illinois players started to score on him last game, as he stopped moving his feet and wasn’t in his normally good position to contest those shots.