Did anyone else find it odd that Michigan had more energy at the end of the fifth game of nine than we did after two in nine days?

Not really. It's pretty on brand for us to **** the bed at whatever we're actually good at when it matters.

I don't think this was a conditioning problem. In fact the opposite. I thought we had them gassed early in the second half but then we started fouling and all of the free throws and stoppages helped Michigan recover.

Rather, I think the issue is that it was like the third or fourth time that we let the officiating get to us. For a coach that loves bits and the bunker mentality and preaching about tuning everything out there were several games that we let the officiating cause us to absolutely unravel on both ends of the court. This team was just not mentally tough at times. Central Florida and the away Texas game are two examples that immediately come to mind.

All four of our collapses we didn't adapt to officiating well. They scored on like 13 of 15 possessions because we refused to stop fouling (some were admittedly super weak but still)

It wasn't a conditioning issue

Phrase harkens back to the memories of how it was the lack of Buzz Boot Camp that caused our early tenure struggles.

The things that some people will convince themselves...

Method Man said:

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Did anyone else find it odd that Michigan had more energy at the end of the fifth game of nine than we did after two in nine days?

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I didn't think it was odd, but I definitely noticed we were the more tired team in the second half.

Could also still be true.

I think part of it is buzz spreads the minutes out too much during season.

He needs to figure out faster who are better players are and give them the minutes for conference play- so they are ready when called on more in the tournament... Perfect example of failure with this is Payne. 2nd best to arguably the best player. Played the 6th most minutes on the season.

The spreading out of the minutes goes back to a problem we've had for three years now, and it's just a black hole of reliability at the three spot. Our minutes rotation at the 1 and 2 and the 4 and 5 were mostly fine,

Payne had some issues this season, and got better as the season went. By the end he was playing 20-25 minutes a game.

But we tried all kinds of things to fix our hole at the 3 and nothing worked particularly well. Solo, Garcia, Carter, Wilcher, Manny, Hefner, etc. We just never found anything reliable there. Everything was a massive tradeoff of offense for defense or just a roll of the dice to see if that player had it that particular night.

I thought we played with much less energy defensively in the last 6-7 games, including the Michigan game.

There is no way we give up 91 points to Michigan if we were playing with the same energy as earlier in the year when we were playing at a very high level defensively.

To be fair to buzz and the team, the energy and effort we played with earlier was super impressive.

Not sure if it was boot camp or what but we were not the same team defensively late in the season.

I'll just say…I don't know how recruitable I would've been at age 17-22 knowing I'd have to do daily 4 am wake up calls as a college kid. It's a bit much.

Aston04 said:

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I think part of it is buzz spreads the minutes out too much during season.

He needs to figure out faster who are better players are and give them the minutes for conference play- so they are ready when called on more in the tournament... Perfect example of failure with this is Payne. 2nd beat to arguably the best player. Played the 6th most minutes on the season.

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I had been scratching my head as to why it felt like a coming out party for Payne in the tournament. I was asking myself questions like..."Why are we just now seeing Payne get touches on most of the offensive possessions during the tourney?"...."Where has this been all season long?" In attempts to see the glass half full with Buzz, the narrative I had chosen was this idea that Payne was the ace up the sleeve. Give the opponents guard play tape throughout the year and then do a 180 in the tournament and orient the offense around Payne come tourney time? Curious to hear your thoughts on whether there is any merit to that? Do we know of any coaches that like to switch things up come tournament time?

LFerd12 said:

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I had been scratching my head as to why it felt like a coming out party for Payne in the tournament. I was asking myself questions like..."Why are we just now seeing Payne get touches on most of the offensive possessions during the tourney?"...."Where has this been all season long?" In attempts to see the glass half full with Buzz, the narrative I had chosen was this idea that Payne was the ace up the sleeve. Give the opponents guard play tape throughout the year and then do a 180 in the tournament and orient the offense around Payne come tourney time? Curious to hear your thoughts on whether there is any merit to that? Do we know of any coaches that like to switch things up come tournament time?

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Buzz trusted Garcia and Coleman a lot more on the defensive side of the ball in his system than he did Payne. Ironically, an early and extended injury to Garcia or Coleman could have made this team better for post season play although then our seeding could've been lower.

Bottom line is, Payne's usage rate will be the highest a frontcourt player has ever been under Buzz at A&M next year. Along with him clearly being the best big we will have / be able to get in the portal there is no reason for Payne to leave unless someone throws some lottery pick numbers at him.

Redfishag93 said:

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I thought we played with much less energy defensively in the last 6-7 games, including the Michigan game.

There is no way we give up 91 points to Michigan if we were playing with the same energy as earlier in the year when we were playing at a very high level defensively.

To be fair to buzz and the team, the energy and effort we played with earlier was super impressive.

Not sure if it was boot camp or what but we were not the same team defensively late in the season.

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Are we really blaming a September training week on no legs in March?

No. The explanation is actually pretty simple.

• We're a very bad passing team except for one or two guys, and one of them was very small. It's very hard for Wade Taylor to make a good entry pass if he's being guarded tightly at all.
• We're also a bad perimeter shooting team. At any given time we have a couple of guys on the floor that the other team doesn't even have to guard on the perimeter, so they can keep more bodies in the paint.
• Payne still needs to work on some fundamentals. Even sometimes when he was open, and we were able to make the pass, he then didn't have his guy sealed off correctly and it would lead to a turnover. This is also why he had a tendency to always be coming out toward the ball as it was passed to him, bringing him even further from the basket.
• SEC teams are, generally, very athletic.

When you combine all of those things, it's just very hard to get the ball to Payne near the basket.

But suddenly we play a team like Yale and everything is a lot easier. They were short around the basket and slower than most teams we play. Much easier to get him the ball. And then against Michigan they weren't short, but they were slow, and Garcia hit some threes early which made them have to come out from the basket and guard him, which opened up some more space. And even then I think half of the times he got the ball were off of offensive rebounds.

Now, all of those things we were bad at should be focuses this offseason. We just have to get better at spacing, shooting, and passing.

I thought subbing in and rotating more would help, but when the seasons on the line and your subbing in to make sure all your seniors play then it's hard to find a rhythm… Michigan figured us out and we couldn't stop them

bobinator said:

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The spreading out of the minutes goes back to a problem we've had for three years now, and it's just a black hole of reliability at the three spot. Our minutes rotation at the 1 and 2 and the 4 and 5 were mostly fine,

Payne had some issues this season, and got better as the season went. By the end he was playing 20-25 minutes a game.

But we tried all kinds of things to fix our hole at the 3 and nothing worked particularly well. Solo, Garcia, Carter, Wilcher, Manny, Hefner, etc. We just never found anything reliable there. Everything was a massive tradeoff of offense for defense or just a roll of the dice to see if that player had it that particular night.

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wilcher Payne and Manny didn't play enough and their roles weren't defined correctly (Payne and manny at least). Wilcher they should have figured out how to hide him on defense.

I'd argue Manny played entirely too much.

In his role, maybe. He's not a pg. Wtf buzz.

Payne also started to come online before the tourney, but still makes you wonder how it took over half the season.

I felt the same way. Payne scored 25+ in both March games and I was thinking "why haven't we been running the Wade-Payne PnR all season?"

Those alley oops they started doing were actually pretty money.

The ratio of posts where Bob agrees with someone / Bob disagrees with someone has to be < 0.10%