Don’t worry, Beilein is super Catholic and will contest her abilities.
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Love it! Thanks, wolverheel!
Ben Richardson sporting a 141.3 Orating for the tournament. I wonder if it’s Richardson, not Custer, who will get the Z treatment
I saw that one coming. On another board I’m on, people were just ready to give up on Charles. I told them the MD game would be good for him, because it would be more free flowing and because MD doesn’t defend all that tenaciously. So his athleticism was likely to flourish. It didn’t happen until the 2nd half, but I had a strong feeling that game had unlocked something for him.
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notice the 13.6 percent usage
You can tell we’ve had some rough offensive nights in this tournament - not great ORTG for our guys, other than Duncan (didn’t realize he’d been that efficient)…
Who’s all making the trip? To be honest, I’ve booked for Monday only. The prices over Easter weekend are ridiculous and if we were to somehow lose to Loyola I’d hate to spend an extra couple days in San Antonio to watch them play someone else. If we do make the finals, shots on CoryR for whomever is in San Antonio before the game!
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Yeah, Richardson’s usage is low compared to Custer’s - remember, the former only had 14 points in the three games combined before KSU (although he did have a lot of assists vs Miami). It’s not like MAAR is a bad defender either, and he’s a good defender to chase Richardson around the perimeter.
One thing to note is that Custer and Richardson both had injuries at the beginning of the year. If you use barttorvik to measure just for games since they both were healthy (after their 1/3 loss, Loyola is 16 in efficiency rankings, a lot higher than 33rd overall. Also, they’ve both been on the court for only one Loyola loss this year, and two of their losses came with both injured. In other words, while you have to feel good with Loyola as the Final Four opponent, they’re probably even better than their overall numbers indicate.
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Notice that Loyola beat Illinois State 3 times this season, including the conference final. Hope that Yaklich’s familiarity with the Loyola program gives us an advantage.
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is Loyola a team we might see more Jordan Poole? Or, are his minutes a function of how well Matthews is playing? I think more likely it’s the latter and Poole’s minutes probably won’t reach double digits. With the way Matthews is playing it is hard justifying Matthews sitting for more than a couple minutes a half. MAAR will probably play a minimum of 35 minutes. This doesn’t leave much for Poole.
Are we at a point where it’s basically a 7 man rotation with Robinson and Teske off the bench? Were Poole’s 2 minutes against FSU an aberration or a foreshadow of what we can expect Saturday. He’s only played 30 minutes in 4 games, peaking with 11 against Houston and bottoming out with 2 against FSU.
I guess I can imagine a scenario where M goes small with Livers at the 5, Poole playing, and Teske sitting, but will be surprised if it plays out that way. Then again, this could be a scenario where Robinson minutes increase.
I think we’ll see more of Poole. Yes Matthews is playing well, but if you watched the FSU game, Poole was getting taken off the bounce every time the guy he was defending had the ball.
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At this time of tear I think you go with your most experienced guys. I think JB said he was able to rest the staters more because of the extra TV timeouts.
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Watched the NCAA extended 9 minute highlight of Loyola - Tenn (since you can’t watch any of the games online!). It really sticks out how few unassisted makes Loyola has. Gotta imagine we’ll do our best to switch as much as possible and dare them to drive by X, Rahk and Charles. Just gotta hope Duncan can hold his own.
Probably just want to outathlete them on the perimeter
I’m not sure if we’ll see more Poole. Loyola’s forte is ridiculously good ball movement and complex screening action, there’s a decent chance he’ll get lost as hell out there on D.
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It’s so frustrating that you can’t watch any of our first 4 games online! Or their games! Missed them all except part of the Miami game.
Driving me nuts!
I think Poole’s minutes at this point is determined by, how much could JP being lost on defense potentially cost us?
There’s just not much time for Poole with the way Simpson, Matthews, and Rahkman are playing. Plus with all the stoppages for reviews and timeouts they don’t need rest
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