Hans8891

I know it’s easy for some to continually look just at Brady. While I agree there are times I question whether he is who we should have out there as well. Then there are times when he makes hustle plays and gets hustle rebounds that are game changing. Regardless of his athleticism, there are times he brings an intangible that far far exceeds his talent level. In an offensive scheme that has damn little movement in the half court, Brady is probably our best option of off ball back door layups when he sees it open. Again, I’m not arguing with you completely but it is not that black and white. Sometimes coaches know a team plays better when someone is on the court regardless of that persons talent. The one thing you can’t argue is that Brady plays with heart. He busts his butt when he is on the floor and that is often contagious to other players. As for the SDSU game, the beginning of the end was the end of the first half when we had a lead, momentum, and the ball with 7 seconds left in the half. We threw away the ball, gave up an 3 point play, and went into the half with a 3 point lead instead of 8. We followed that with no movement for the first 4 minutes of the second half and dug ourselves into a deficit we never recovered from. Contrary to your assertion, Brady was not on the floor during that time frame. I would like to see Mara see some time as well, as I think he has a lot of potential, but the constant berating of Brady is misplaced. Sorry the game didn’t fit your narrative but we the reason we lost was inopportune turnovers, failure of pace, and faure of ball movement - not Brady Danielson…

South Dakota State is a very good team. They have good perimeter players that are all good shooters. They have strong inside game with Kyle and Appel, plus Appel shoots 40% from the 3. We did a better job containing their bigs than I thought we would. Mayo just did what Mayo does. He was good down the stretch. We looked good the first half. When they stepped up their d in the second half, we resorted to settling for 3s and no-passing possessions where we watch Tyree and BJ dribble through their legs until they drive and everyone else stands around and watches - but not with enough spacing to get a decent look at a 3. Our half court offense is god awful against good defense. We absolutely need to play with pace and take advantage of breaking pressure when it happens. Don’t stop and slow it down. Nobody stops Tyree, BJ, or Eli in an open court game. Whole lot easier to do so when Tyree and BJ are playing slow down and going one on 4. Did the same thing against the Bison. Let them dictate the game, rather than us. I was hoping we would learn after the Bison game, but apparently not there yet. The good news is that we know we can play with them. Now we just have to do what we are good at and that no passing half court offense is definitely not it.

Pemberton is the real deal. She will only get better. Schiller from Red River may be an immediate impact player next year. Ibriaham showed some real improvement. Hurst has real offensive skills but she is going to have to decide she wants to play defense. Her matador style defense will continue to put her on the bench with foul trouble, not to mention giving up way too many easy buckets. Beal is very athletic if we can figure out how to use her. She can raise havoc on defense with her length and speed. Davis is just too small and absolutely not a shooter. Aumer seems okay, but we really need to go find more length and speed, plus add a couple of good outside shooters, if we want to take the next step. Our outside shooting has been atrocious for years. On the other hand, shooting may improve if we find an offense that gets us better looks. Before we can take the next step, however, it is more than just the talent. Mal has to figure out how to get her players to play team offense and team defense. Our offense is almost entirely whatever Kacie and Hurst can create. There is no movement whatsoever. The lack of movement leads to a ridiculous number of turnovers. On Defense, nobody seems to know where to be. We don’t cut off drives and when we do help out after a defender gets beat, there is no rotation leaving wide open shooters- i.e. giving up 100 plus way too many times. Once may be a fluke. Giving up more than 100 points that many times is a systemic problem. Breaking a press has to improve. What I wouldn’t give to have Roebuck back to mentor Mallory for a few years. If Mallory is going to find success, she is going to have to figure out how to make a team a team. So far, that is just not happening.

Congrats to Kacie. Hanging 40 on your arch rival is a nice way to finish out her final series with the bison.

6 total fast break points for us and 2 for the bison. Exactly what they want to do and not the pace we should be playing at. Hats off to Richman. He got us to play their game instead of the other way around. When we see them again, get it up the floor and use our athleticism. Slow half court offense on the outside settling for 3s is not our game. Way too much dribbling going nowhere instead of movement with the ball. When we move with purpose we look like the best team in the summit. When we don’t attack and don’t play with pace, we are middle of the pack. Need to use our strengths and we will be fine.

We are making it respectable. Kacie is on fire scoring. If we could stop anyone on the drive we might make a run at this yet…. Either give up the layup - or double and leave someone wide open for an easy look. Had it down to 10 but can’t close the gap further.

Same lack of any team d whatsoever. No talk on switches and picks and someone is wide open. Hence 56 for the bison at half. On the brighter side, we have scored on the bison putting up 43 ourselves. Last game at home we didn’t break 20 until 12 seconds left in the half and had 18 turnovers at that point so this is a definite improvement for what that is worth.

Ouch. Scored 18 in the first quarter against the bison but gave up 34. At that pace, we will give up 135 for the game…

Unless both UND and ndsu knock off sdsu, we will likely see the bison in the summit semis. Need to learn from this game and not let them dictate how the game is played. Half court offense with 50 percent of shots being 3s is not in our favor.

He is when he can be a brute and nothing gets called. We don’t have the size and strength to match if they don’t call anything - and they didn’t…

Need to play through it. We are not going to get any calls. I just hope they don’t let Morgan lower his shoulder repeatedly down the stretch and call us for it.,.

And the officiating fun starts up in earnest. Only about 8 bad calls out of 9 - all one direction. Welcome to bison land. UND 61 - bison 50 plus the bison stripes add of 12 for 62

Keep attacking the rim. We have the height mismatches in the backcourt and Morgan has 3 fouls. Wheeler Thomas gives up 4 to 6 inches on our guards…

Officiating is interesting. Some touch fouls on the drive but letting everything go down low.

Need pace and penetration this half. Playing at a snails pace plays right into what they want to do. Good start to the half. Going to the rack before the d settles and 4 points as a result…

Our shooting will improve when we move the ball. Too much holding the ball on the perimeter and settling for shots rather than creating them so far.

First 13 shots for UND 9 have been 3s and only a few have been good 3s. Need to Get back to penetration and movement.

Agreed. Tyree and Eli absolutely shutting down Brunner and McBride the last 2 games has been masterful. Phenomenal d against 2 high end scorers with multiple blocks each to boot. Eli starting to emerge as a scoring threat, along with Trey going low on mismatches is huge as well. Now have 4 great threats getting to the bucket plus can’t leave people to cheat on the drive if all 4 can drop a 3 with a kick out off the drive. Didn’t hit the 3 well in the second half last night but have proven now that we can. And when we do, we can score in a hurry - just ask Denver…

Anyone going to see the women play this year would have to look very very hard to find ways to compliment Mal. I have never seen worse unorganized chaos in a UND uniform than We have this year. My 8th grade girls travel team knew better how to beat a press than Mals team did today. 28 TURNOVERS in one game. She had them all bunched up in one side of the court wondering why there is no room to beat the press. Then we try to dribble through double teams. When we do finally get across the half, we ignore the wide open players ahead and don’t pass it to them to score. Instead, we wait until hurst and Kacie cross the half so we can hand it to them, and let them dribble until they throw it away or drive into 3 people. That is apparently our entire offense. We have been to every one of the women’s national championships including the beautiful Pine Bluff Arkansas, so it’s not like we aren’t diehard fans. We have been for years. But It is hard at this point to convince myself to go to this hot mess. I spend more time asking myself how Mal cant see what is happening on the floor. Her frustration with the officials today was laughable. I agree Kacie got 2 bad fouls and I certainly felt bad for her finishing a hell of a career at home the way it went today. But that does not explain 28 turnovers and a 50 point blowout. Maybe worry about what you can control. There was plenty of that to address today. They have no offense. They play no defense giving up a hundred every other game. They can’t break a press. There is no team concept whatsoever. This program is a mess. Period. Sad to say but it’s where we are at…

It was too bad. Decent crowd today and we just didn’t show up. The first 10 minutes, we could have been fine if we could have hit any shots at all. Tyree should have had 5 assists right off the bat and we couldn’t finish any wide open shots. After that, Kudos to KC coach. He took a page from the first St. Thomas game. They doubled us and took away Tyree, Trey, and BJ drives. We couldn’t or didn’t find the open guy when the double occurred. When we can’t penetrate, we have no offense. Trey, who should be our best outside shooter, finished with 0 points after 28 on Thursday. Need to find a way to get him looks. BJ made some nice drives but not due to the offense - just individual effort. Amer was a monster on the boards again and finished well, but we don’t really look to get him the ball. Eli finished with 6 steals and shot well. Those 2 were the bright spots, but not many others to talk about. Finished with a total of 47 points. That should say everything that needs to be said about the offense. Didn’t make any adjustments and don’t seem to have a half court offense that doesn’t get a look other than slash to the hoop or penetration kick. We aren’t a good half court offense team. They were physical and we played slow right into their hands. More concerning is when we were down 20 with 7 minutes left, we are still walking it up the court and letting them stall playing a sagging man to man with no pressure and letting them kill clock all the way to the end of the game. Not much heart shown out there today, which is not how we have been playing. Hoping this was a just a one off. We absolutely have to play with pace though. Our half court offense is non-existent without individual penetration.

Amer has gotten to be a monster on the boards. That was huge today. Nice to see T hit a couple from outside as well. Trey and BJ struggled to drive on much smaller defenders. Wished they would have just gone low and called for the ball. Would have been a bucket or a foul. To answer the question why Trey was out at the end of the game, that answer is simple. Eli was simply better. Eli was a game changer in the last 10 minutes. Blocks, steals, rebounds, defensive shutdowns, assists, and hustle plays. When Trey came back in, the first thing he did was give his man an open layup on an out of bounds play on the block. That was clearly the right move to get Eli back in. SU didn’t cheat at all on Trey. It was clear they were not going to give him any room on the 3 and he couldn’t get himself open. Granted, i would like to see a bigger effort to get him open on offense for an open look - but he didn’t have many today. If he is not serving as an offensive threat, Eli is hands down a better defender and playmaker. Regardless of a few issues to clean up, we showed a lot of grit to win a game when we were simply not getting much to fall. Congrats to the team and Sather. We will shoot better than we did today. When we do, look out.

Bison play good d, but if we even shoot 45 percent, it’s a different game. It’s a 3 point game shooting 35 percent…

The bison aren’t cheating off Trey. They are keeping him covered at all times. Need someone else to step up and hit an outside shot. They are there.

Getting open looks. Just can’t put them in. Need better than 33 percent shooting to put this away. Need the second half SD game shooting…. They get Eli for every touch foul and 10 for the bison should have assault and battery by now without a single call.,,.

I can’t believe Sather didn’t have them review the clock on the foul before half. The foul was as we caught it. No way a full second should have gone off. That was the difference in counting Tyree’s 3.