Need to get the ball to Cam on the pick and roll for easy baskets.
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Cam has been open on at least two that went unnoticed by his teammates.
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Probably more than 2.
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Imagine if we hadnāt given away 4 pts in technical fouls
We were down by 25 at one point early in the second half (I think it was 58-33), so letās give credit to the boys for not giving up. But Iām sick of pyrrhic/moral victories. Iām really disappointed that this team was so sloppy and undisciplined. And I just donāt understand why it takes Sendek so long to make adjustments. Is it just stubbornness? The small-ball lineup, that LMU had ALREADY PROVEN in the prior game, is what got us back into this battle.
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Well I gave up early but the team played an excellent second half. Would have been easy to fold. If we can play like we did in the second half the rest of the season we will be okā¦ SMC had two baskets in the last 12 minutes and made all their points from the line. Many were fouls as we were behind but I thought refs let #11 get away with murder. Really thought Marshall should have got an and one on his layup. The disallowed basket and two free throws for SMC midway through second half didnāt seem important at the time but it was. After terrible start Iāll take the moral victory. Go Broncos!
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The pick and roll or lack thereof has been the bane of my existence this whole season! Cam is always there. Thank you Carlos for seeing it.
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Put up 55 in a half against St. Maryās. Fun to see the guys flying around. Only 2 turnovers in the second half. Letās see if they can build on that final 20 minutes and take care of business against USD and beat a solid USF team on the road.
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That would mean sticking to that same rotation. I dont see it happening.
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Iām glad they made a game of it in the end. The result moved SCUās NET rankings up, funny enough, and the Torvik game score is very high for SCU. Which basically means that Santa Clara played an almost statistically impossible game for the last ten minutes.
I think more and more that Ensminger is a key. It would be unfair to compare him to Podz, but he has little elements of Podzās toughness and tenacity in going after boards. He may be an even better defender than Podz or certainly has time to get there. He was the only consistent bright spot throughout the game. And he seems to be a steady and supportive teammate. He was able to take Saxen backing him down under the hoop and even got a clean block on their big guy. Ensminger wasnāt the main guy in the comeback, but I think he may have been the one who kept the bottom from falling out when it was truly dark.
Stay angry. And meet these goofs in Vegas. Iām sure they all want another piece of Barrett at the very least.
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I give credit to the guys for showing alot of fight in that second half. Itās definitely a confidence builder if we see the Gaels in Vegas. Nice contributions off the bench from Jake and Cam. BK and Bryan were absent offensively and Tillyās absence was felt too.
Defensively, the intensity was like night and day in the second half. Again, Jake and Cam really gave the team a spark.
Lastly, if not mistaken, in both contests against the Gaels, I believe that we did not score a single point entering the first tv timeout or under 16:00 mark. Thatās remarkable in itself IMO. Slow starts have been fatal against the Gaels.
Sendek needs to find ways to get SMC to play from behind for a change. We will see come Marchā¦hopefully!
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55 points in the second half against St. Marys. Is that an all-time record? I agree that Cam and Jake had the intensity that changed the game and put St. Marys on their heels, giving Carlos and Adama space to do their thing.
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Throw in not scoring for the first several agonizing minutes of that Pepperdine game and I have serious slow-start concerns.
Thereās a slow start, and then thereās straight up not scoring for like 3-5 minutes of game time out the gate. Brutal.
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I donāt want to spread a lot of sunshine on a game that was so bad for the majority that I turned an SCU game off for the first time in years. But thereās truth to this thatās worth at least acknowledging. If you sort the data on Torvik to drop SMCās rocky November, they jump to a fringe top-10 team with the 4th highest defensive efficiency in the country.
This SCU team can beat that SMC squad. And this SMC squad is, actually, quite good. And the predictions that they would be better than Gonzaga are going to bear out, I think. But the Broncos canāt start out turning the ball over constantly, missing layups, and letting Marciulionis go easy to the bucket. Let alone take weak sucker punches where 6 different camera angles are capturing the action at any given time.
Itās easy to find the 6 points in this game that would flip the resultātechnicals, preventing backdoor cuts, putting actual bodies on Marciulionis to intimidate him out of easy drives, fouls be damned. Or going to small ball before thereās 10 min left in the game, something that @92bronc predicted would be an effective strategy long before the tilt started.
So itās both āSanta Clara came up a little short against an elite team on the roadā and āSanta Clara repeatedly shot themselves in the foot that it required heroic effort just to be competitive.ā
My one hope is that we can get a real rivalry back with SMC. But that will require playing a lot more like they did in the second half if they get another shot in Vegas.
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I was sorely tempted to post something at halftime to unload on the coaching, the strategy, the players, you name it. Despite having racked up some impressive wins, this team has spells where it looks just awful, particularly at the beginning of the game. At least half our losses were games that were basically over at halftime, none more so than the absolute ass-kicking SMC administered recently at Leavey. I was beginning to think that Randy Bennett had HS completely figured out, the way Mike Montgomeryās teams just toyed with the Broncos years ago.
Then came the second half, and it was like night and day. Did the Gaels, up 22 (!), let up a bit? Perhaps, but they didnāt let up on UOP or Portland recently, and they certainly didnāt want to see that lead shrivel to a two-possession game. No, SCU played well, outshooting, out defending, and out-hustling SMC, looking as superior in the second half as the Gaels did in the first.
In the end, I donāt know what to make of this Jeckyll and Hyde team. Basketball is a game of runs, and no team plays well for 40 minutes every night. If only this team could reduce the bad stretches to 5-10 minutes per game instead of 15-20. Do that, and they can win the WCC tournament.
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SOME INSIDE FEEDBACK ON THE GAME. I am sure everyone else was as curious about the āpunchā heard round the world.
I am not advocating that it was OKAY - it was not. (A hard hit to the shoulder walking by is always effective to make a point). Saxen SOLD IT. Apparently Saxen had committed a couple hard/dirty plays PRIOR to the jab. (NO shocker there) - and it was supposed to be a ācut the crapā sort of jab to Saxen from JB. Watching it unfold on television last night and now the replays, Saxen def has a career in acting. ANYONE who knows JB knows that he is a good kid.
I asked Cam why he tossed 33 like a rag doll to the corner. Cam told me āI had just hit him with a pick prior to the play, and he wasnāt happy about it and told me in so many words. I knew he was going to gun for me, and I could see him coming in for the hit in my periphery. So, I literally turned my body outward and extended my arm to toss him aside vs absorbing the side hit he was intending to make. I was FINE accepting a foul for it.ā
Cam said 33 was talking A LOT on the court. He said 33 got chirpy with Ensminger - hence the altercation between the two of them.
For me, the Saxen chokehold was ridiculous! If anything, that was a double foul. Cam said he was trying to cut inside baseline, took an elbow to the face from Saxen who then extended his arm around Cams neck. Cam said when Saxenās arm was around his neck and he was already ticked about taking an elbow to the face, he purposefully pushed underneath Saxen to force Saxon off his footing. And sure enough, Cam takes the foul. I told him I was proud he just started heading down the court vs throw a tantrum.
These guys are like gladiators going into battle when out there with St Maryās. And I agree that the combination of Ensminger and Cam was integral. Those are the two unselfish players who sacrifice their bodies, play tough D, and clear the floor for the others to score.
Takeaway on offense is always same grievance: The pick and roll is STILL painful. Cam TRIES to give an option on the pick and roll. He gets hit for it once on a good night. I think Carlos and BK look (in fact it was Carlos who hit Cam for it last night) - but often, we have guards who look playing with bigs who donāt want a pick and roll, and then we have guards who donāt look playing with bigs who do want a pick and roll. Gotta know the guys who work the pick and roll and the ones who donāt. Maybe pair them up more often?
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A couple of additional and random thoughts:
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Iāll reiterate that I really think all of the fouls in the 2nd half, Tās, video reviews, etc. worked to our favor as it took away SMCās momentum and sucked some of the energy out of the gym. That really isnāt a strategy, more good fortune than anything, though yes, enabled by some solid contributions from several. Everyone was sleep walking for a stretch and we kind of quietly and gradually cut the deficit from 22-25 (early 2nd half) to 13 (at the 7+ min mark). Then everyone including the announcers all of a sudden notedā¦āhey, maybe we have a game hereā.
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A working theory on many very slow starts to games (SMC x2, Pepperdine, etc.)ā¦IMO we are not a great defensive team, play rather soft and donāt have many great 1on1 defenders (there is an exception or two), nor are we able to consistently apply much ball pressure or create turnovers. That same defensive MO is who/what weāre going up against in practice. In practice our offense maybe flows and and performs fine, doesnāt turn it over much, etc. because theyāre practicing against a soft defense. Then at game time we are initially thrown off by game level intensity especially against physical, tight and sound defense of a team like SMC. Our offensive timing suffers, we have a hard time initiating any offensive sets, we canāt generate quality shots and turnovers add up. It takes us 8 to 10 mins of game time to adjust and then after that we are decent to good offensively.
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Finallyā¦taking a step back from X and Oās, individual performances, etcā¦this is one of the strangest Bronco games Iāve witnessed. The horrific start with the pendulum swing to 55 2nd half pts., at least three Bronco techs, one player thrown out, numerous stoppages and video reviews, heroic late game 3ptrs by Bal and Marshall and so on. Strange game.
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If you can, go back and look at the first minute or two of the game. We were playing a very high-energy, strong pressure defense out of the gate, but somehow really softened soon thereafter.
I donāt think Caffaro is really suited for that style of defense, I think he is much more suited toward the slow, deliberate style that his alma mater Virginia played. On top of that he either has terrible hands, or his reaction times are really slow. Either way, he is a turnover machine (at least one of Balās turnovers shouldāve been charged to Caffaro). I do appreciate his defense, though, against half-court sets.
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To be clear, were I a Gaels fan, I would feel nearly as embarrassed about Barrettās behavior as anything Jalen Benjamin did. And the āpunchā was clearly soft and nothing like what Saxen sold it as. But the nature of college basketball on ESPN+ is that you have to communicate with hard (but not flagrant) fouls, not the stuff that will get picked up on camera in the dead moments. The difference between Saxen and Barrett/Benjamin is that the former made his aggressive hits during play. That set a narrative up perfectly to get SCUās backup PG thrown out on the retaliation. Thatās an annoying part of the game and not a particularly honorable part, but it is part of the game. Benjamin has to be smarter than that. He got baited.
Barrett, for his part, got caught on camera (though not by the refs) standing over Bal on the floor in a tough guy stance and taunting him. Then again taunting Ensminger prior to the first tech. Thatās why the officials had to throw the tech at Barrett on āillegal contactā that really didnāt occur. More nonsense after the whistle that the camera picks up and needs to be handled.
Camās tech was a good one if there is such a thing: rough play on a guy who wanted to play rough and chirp all game. Jalenās was not.
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