Just for conversation's sake, let's say Wilson (and Gilder) can't play tonight, who do you start, and what's your gameplan? Obviously "pound the ball to Tyler Davis" is going to be part of it, but what else y'all got?

I think you have to play Tony at the 3 a lot more than you'd want. Despite his offensive struggles down low, he can actually move and defend on the perimeter, and his length may help on close outs.

You also have to turn Starks loose and just hopes he has a good game. Let him shoot, let him drive and don't give him the quick hook if he misses a bad shot. He is the guy that could fill it up if he is on, so we just have to risk it.

I'd also tell all the guards and Flagg to drive the lane every possession no matter what. Florida is weak inside, and if you can push the ball into the paint, hopefully we get some fouls called early.

I've been trying to decide this morning if I'd go ahead and give Tyler Davis the green light from beyond the arc. On one hand, you don't want him taking a lot of threes, on the other hand Florida is probably going to guard him with everyone on the floor if he ever gets it in the paint, and nobody else out there is a particularly good shooter to make them pay.

I agree on Starks, you sit him down before the game and basically give him a "this is your chance" talk. Attack at will and make sure you at least get the ball up and toward the bucket so Flagg, Davis and Williams have a chance at offensive rebounds.

I'd attack the glass with reckless abandon in this game, especially with Flagg and Williams. This is a terrible shooting group, but if we're getting a lot of the offensive boards then those shots might still have value.

bobinator said:

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I'd attack the glass with reckless abandon in this game, especially with Flagg and Williams. This is a terrible shooting group, but if we're getting a lot of the offensive boards then those shots might still have value.

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I'd like to see this every game.

We're a good offensive rebounding team without being psychotic about it anyway, and our defense really only works when everyone is back in time to set up so I sort of get why we don't just wildly go after offensive boards usually, I just don't see what choice we have tonight unless we're hitting shots at a pace this group hasn't hit them at.

I would put Caldwell at the 1, Starks at the 2, Tonny at the 3, RW at the 4, and TD at the 5.

I would get Caldwell the set up the offense and then have Starks running around a lot of screens and get him the ball to penetrate. I would tell him to penetrate for a lob to RW and if that is not there, then go to score.

If Starks isn't open, I would let play the triangle of Caldwell, TD, and Tonny with Tonny sitting on the 3 line waiting for the pass out from TD.

You can swap Starks out with Chandler and Tonny with Flagg, although I think it would work better with the starters I pointed out in line 1.

The thing that worries me is defense and foul trouble. With us missing 3 players, we are now pretty thin.

bobinator said:

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We're a good offensive rebounding team without being psychotic about it anyway, and our defense really only works when everyone is back in time to set up so I sort of get why we don't just wildly go after offensive boards usually, I just don't see what choice we have tonight unless we're hitting shots at a pace this group hasn't hit them at.

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Our entire offensive system revolves around making threes, and it has for the duration of Kennedy's tenure, and he's yet to demonstrate to me that he can adjust his approach in the face of shooting deficiencies.

Hell, he's gone entire seasons trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. I highly doubt he does anything to adjust his approach for one or two games.

I'm not sure that we can start TTM, RW and Davis because then you don't have any bigs on the bench unless we're expecting Jasey to get minutes tonight.

I'd probably start Flagg instead of Trocha just to have someone off the bench.

I think there's a conversation for later about how much Trocha is playing, but I don't see any way around it tonight.

Caldwell
Starks
Flagg
Williams
Davis

That would be my starting five. But hopefully we don't have to worry about this scenario.

And everyone should be prepared for more Chris Collins than anyone wants to see.

I don't see us playing much different than we have in the past.

There are two philosophies
1.) Slow it down to a crawl, the more possessions the more it favors the better team and Florida is the better team missing as many players as A&M is missing.

2.) Try to push the pace frantically and run in transition hoping to get easy baskets and playing motivated team defense on the other end.

As a coach, I have always preferred option 2 but that's because I think it's easier to play 3 on 2 basketball then it is to play 5 on 5. The only bad thing about this option for A&M is that Davis gets gassed and you can't win this game without Davis.

So we will most likely see #1, but hopefully, when Davis takes a breather we ramp up the pressure and play more transition basketball to help our guards and let them loose.

We are gonna build a lot of character.

Richierich2323 said:

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I don't see us playing much different than we have in the past.

There are two philosophies
1.) Slow it down to a crawl, the more possessions the more it favors the better team and Florida is the better team missing as many players as A&M is missing.

2.) Try to push the pace frantically and run in transition hoping to get easy baskets and playing motivated team defense on the other end.

As a coach, I have always preferred option 2 but that's because I think it's easier to play 3 on 2 basketball then it is to play 5 on 5. The only bad thing about this option for A&M is that Davis gets gassed and you can't win this game without Davis.

So we will most likely see #1, but hopefully, when Davis takes a breather we ramp up the pressure and play more transition basketball to help our guards and let them loose.

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I actually disagree with this. If you go option 2, you play right into Florida's hands. They have probably the best back court in the league with loads of experience. If we were to start running and trying to push pace, that is turnover central for us with the inexperience guards, and that gives those senior guards for Florida the chance to get steals, push back in transition and get open 3s, which is basically their game. If we do that, we will get run out of the gym.

We HAVE to be patient on the offensive end. I'm not for just holding the ball to slow thing down, but we need to set up offense, get the ball inside, attack the basket and not take stupid shots 5 seconds into the shot clock. We can't volume shoot our way to a victory.

With a bunch of freshman guards, you can't play pressure/transition basketball because they will turn it over and lose their man in transition defense. If we had two of Wilson/Hogg/Gilder in the game I would completely agree with you, because we could get out and run, hit the open man in the wing or go inside to a trailing big, and not be as worried about transition defense, but we are going to be spending a vast majority of the game with 2, even 3 freshmen on the perimeter. That is a recipe for disaster if things get fast.

Richierich2323 said:

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but hopefully, when Davis takes a breather we ramp up the pressure and play more transition basketball to help our guards and let them loose.

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Oh my god this. That was one of the most annoying things of last game is that we didn't even try it until the game was already over. Would pressing have worked? Who knows, but it couldn't have been worse than what we were already doing. Plus like you said sometimes you can feed off of the energy.

That's probably my biggest hope tonight is that if our normal game isn't working, let's try something new instead of just being waves crashing on the beach over and over again.

If we're hot from 3, we'll win.

If we aren't, we won't.

In Kennedy's entire tenure we haven't shown that we can run a competent half-court offense. Hoping that we're finally going to pull one out of the hat tonight is foolish.

Florida hasn't played a true road game yet -- so we have that going for us.

austinaggie2008 said:

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Richierich2323 said:

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I don't see us playing much different than we have in the past.

There are two philosophies
1.) Slow it down to a crawl, the more possessions the more it favors the better team and Florida is the better team missing as many players as A&M is missing.

2.) Try to push the pace frantically and run in transition hoping to get easy baskets and playing motivated team defense on the other end.

As a coach, I have always preferred option 2 but that's because I think it's easier to play 3 on 2 basketball then it is to play 5 on 5. The only bad thing about this option for A&M is that Davis gets gassed and you can't win this game without Davis.

So we will most likely see #1, but hopefully, when Davis takes a breather we ramp up the pressure and play more transition basketball to help our guards and let them loose.

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I actually disagree with this. If you go option 2, you play right into Florida's hands. They have probably the best back court in the league with loads of experience. If we were to start running and trying to push pace, that is turnover central for us with the inexperience guards, and that gives those senior guards for Florida the chance to get steals, push back in transition and get open 3s, which is basically their game. If we do that, we will get run out of the gym.

We HAVE to be patient on the offensive end. I'm not for just holding the ball to slow thing down, but we need to set up offense, get the ball inside, attack the basket and not take stupid shots 5 seconds into the shot clock. We can't volume shoot our way to a victory.

With a bunch of freshman guards, you can't play pressure/transition basketball because they will turn it over and lose their man in transition defense. If we had two of Wilson/Hogg/Gilder in the game I would completely agree with you, because we could get out and run, hit the open man in the wing or go inside to a trailing big, and not be as worried about transition defense, but we are going to be spending a vast majority of the game with 2, even 3 freshmen on the perimeter. That is a recipe for disaster if things get fast.

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I agree, which is why I said that we would most likely see #1 although I would like to see us run in transition more and then work on understanding when to slow it down and when to attack. Too many times even with a full roster we slowly bring the ball up the court when we could put pressure on the defense by at least ACTING like we were going to run in transition and maybe get them stuck in a bad position.

I don't understand why we're so bad at setting screens. To me at least half of our problems on offense stem from the fact that our screens basically never work. Trocha is especially bad at it.

Yep, I'm with you.

It's like we let the other team dictate. Against WVU, when they started to press, we pushed and got easy baskets for Williams and Hogg. Not sure why, when at full strength, we don't do that more.

Pound it to Tyler Davis.

Just kidding. I start Caldwell, Starks, Flagg, Williams, and Davis and play pressure defense the whole game. Offensively I rely on the two guards to create off the dribble and get the ball to Williams and Davis.

bobinator said:

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I don't understand why we're so bad at setting screens. To me at least half of our problems on offense stem from the fact that our screens basically never work. Trocha is especially bad at it.

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Basically he just tries to run to the spot in the offensive set and rarely sets a good screen.

Mikesyracuse1

I'm thinking Florida is gonna play some zone to neutralize Davis and Williams down in the paint. The good thing is that offensive rebounding will come easier that way.

Believe it or not, our best offense might be to just chucking the ball from deep and letting Davis/Williams/Flagg crash the boards and get some easy put backs.

Yeah, that's why I said those shots might have some value even if they aren't going in. Flagg especially has some sort of supernatural knack for getting rebounds on the backside of the basket. Reminds me of Jalen Jones a little bit that way.

Junkhead said:

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And everyone should be prepared for more Chris Collins than anyone wants to see.

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Racist.

Junkhead said:

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And everyone should be prepared for more Chris Collins than anyone wants to see.

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Agreed. BK plays him way much. He should be a last ditch option. Much better to go with a shorter bench, if possible. But inevitably we will see him too much on nights like this (if wilson/gilder out).

bobinator said:

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I don't understand why we're so bad at setting screens. To me at least half of our problems on offense stem from the fact that our screens basically never work. Trocha is especially bad at it.

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Poor, lackadaisical screens have been a staple of the BK era.

Aston04 said:

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Junkhead said:

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And everyone should be prepared for more Chris Collins than anyone wants to see.

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Agreed. BK plays him way much. He should be a last ditch option. Much better to go with a shorter bench, if possible. But inevitably we will see him too much on nights like this (if wilson/gilder out).

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He didn't play on Saturday until the game was all but over even though we were getting run off the floor, so I don't think I agree with this.

And I'm not sure what choice we have tonight unless Caldwell, Chandler and Starks are playing exceptionally well. If they're all playing well, then maybe you can get away with just having three guards, but I doubt it.

Well to me, you stick with your teams strength and try not to be something that you're not.

With that being said, I think one of the keys to tonights game is the rebounding margin. It's hard to win a game when you're getting beaten at the glass. The only way we can win this game is by winning ugly with the pace being slow as molasses. You lull Florida to sleep, get their bigs in foul trouble early and hope they don't get hot from the 3 point line.

They don't commit too many turnovers because of their experienced guard play but you beat them down low in the paint where it will hurt the most.

This game is Williams to shine.

Aston04 said:

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Poor, lackadaisical screens have been a staple of the BK era.

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Yeah, it's been one of my complaints for years.

Northern Kentucky clearly saw it on tape, they blasted right through every screen we even remotely tried to set. Setting good screens and picks isn't something difficult to do, but it takes good fundamentals and it takes toughness to hold the screen/pick if someone is running right at you. Northern Kentucky's guys were like kamikaze's running at our screens and we didn't hold them and it completely destroyed our offense. That and they were letting their guards grab our players.

Frankly I'm not sure why more teams don't do that to us.

AggieBaller98 said:

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Well to me, you stick with your teams strength and try not to be something that you're not.

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I definitely think you don't do anything crazy to start the game. It's not like we're playing Duke or something, I figured this thread would be more about what you try to do if that doesn't work.

I'm sure we'll at least attempt to play our usual game out of the gate and see how it works. I mean hell, we got within striking distance a couple of times against Alabama even with our poor effort and complete lack of shooting.

This is too much actual basketball discussion for this board. Can someone ask if we have a chance to win tonight?

bobinator said:

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Aston04 said:

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Junkhead said:

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And everyone should be prepared for more Chris Collins than anyone wants to see.

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Agreed. BK plays him way much. He should be a last ditch option. Much better to go with a shorter bench, if possible. But inevitably we will see him too much on nights like this (if wilson/gilder out).

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He didn't play on Saturday until the game was all but over even though we were getting run off the floor, so I don't think I agree with this.

And I'm not sure what choice we have tonight unless Caldwell, Chandler and Starks are playing exceptionally well. If they're all playing well, then maybe you can get away with just having three guards, but I doubt it.

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7 man rotation (which a lot of teams go with in big games) is:
Caldwell-Starks-Chandler-Trocha-Flagg-Williams-Davis

The only problem is we are short on guards- which are the more versatile pieces to move around.

Play Jasey (posts) and Collins (guards) on as needed basis (in other words be strategic about their minutes). Throw one in coming off the break of a tv timeout and get them out a few whistle(s) later. Too often that's not the case when our bench becomes shorter (like giving Collins a 5-6 block of minutes near halftime, etc). Ride Caldwell-Starks-Chandler hard unless foul trouble comes or one goes off the rails bad.

I'm confused as to why everyone thinks BK will change the gameplan now that we are missing 3 key players. Hasn't happened the past 4 years we've had him, so why do you expect him to change it now. We are not going to win unless Starks or Flagg drops a 30 number on em.

The stat that will determine the outcome of the game is number of threes shot by Florida and number of threes made by Florida.