1. Rebound - everyone will say size is the issue. But we gotta box out. Teams beating us get offensive boards and second shots.

2. Press - I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, but there is a time and place for the press. I'm a fan of it. But IF an opponent is elite with speed, passing skills, and scheme (ie Florida) and breaking it is a breeze each time, we gotta adjust and make it only situational. We gotta get back in our half court set and stop spotting the other team wide open easy buckets while we struggle to get a shot our side of the court. We have very solid half court defense. We can't be so stubborn (hallmark of Aggie basketball) to think the press works for 40 minutes if the entire time it doesn't work against a particular team.

I would say that Bucky has shown that he will back off from a full court trapping or man defense if he sees that we are in foul trouble or if teams are having consistent success against it. He has said multiple times that the idea is to have multiple full court defense looks, everything from full court trap to a token man.

The only reason we were pressing late against Florida was because it gave us our only chance to win. He is never going to completely abandon it, and I don't think I'd want him to. It is the style he runs and believes in and it has been shown to work well against some teams.

I'm still pumped about this season, but because we've exceeded expectations so much, I'm more excited to see what happens in the portal and what we look like next season. Hopefully the press is more consistently effective.

Regarding rebounds, the guys definitely need to be better about boxing out. I'm wondering if the consistent message of playing fast on offense is in their heads with rebounding and we aren't as focused on securing the defensive rebound first.

I am sure Bucky McMillian will read this thread and take everything you said into consideration!

I think people aren't using "press" correctly. We absolutely do not do the same thing defensively all game every game. Phrasing it like you did makes it sound like come hell or high water we're running some kind of do-or-die full court trapping scheme.

We do pick up full court on defense all game, but that doesn't mean we're really "pressing" the whole time.

The Florida game is actually a perfect example. We weren't getting turnovers, but our defense was good in the first half. Florida scored less than a point per possession in the first half of the game.

Problem was our offense was terrible and we were scoring even fewer points per possession. So Bucky had a decision to make (he talked about this after the game and at his coaches show.) Do we stick with what we're doing, which is working defensively, but we can't do anything offensively, and just let them choke us out? The score might be semi-close, but we have absolutely no chance to win the game. Or do we try and dial up the defensive pressure, see if we can get some turnovers by trapping full court and help our offense and give ourselves a chance even if that chance is very small? Bucky chose the latter (and said after the game he'd make the same choice every time), it didn't work, and Florida absolutely ripped us apart for 1.4 points per possession in the second half.

Missouri was kind of a different situation. We tried pressing, we tried backing off, we tried man, we tried zone, we tried every kind of defense you can try and we just could not keep them out of the lane or off the boards. We couldn't defend them full court, we couldn't defend them half court, and when we did we couldn't get the rebound.

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I'm wondering if the consistent message of playing fast on offense is in their heads with rebounding and we aren't as focused on securing the defensive rebound first.

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This is possible but I think the larger issue is that, for multiple reasons, we just aren't a very good rebounding team.

- We have some guys that are good at getting into position but are small and/or not very strong (Dominguez, Hill, Isaacs, Lane). Like Dominguez is good at getting into the right place, but absolutely awful at actually getting rebounds because he has no hops at all and he gets pushed under the basket all the time. Hill is actually a good rebounder for his size, but against some of these teams everyone on the court is bigger than he is.
- We have tall guys that are terrible positional rebounders, in practice I wonder what happens if Federiko and Vinson are both going for a rebound at the same time, I assume they just phase through each other like ghosts.
- Vinson also has the same affliction that Pharrel Payne had for the first half of last year where he comes to help on plays and tries to make blocks that he has absolutely no chance of getting, which then not only doesn't impact that play, but gets him out of position for the board

All true, there are definitely multiple issues fighting against us and people (including myself) just need to get over it because we're going to be an okay to bad rebounding team all year.

When we have two 'big' guys on the floor, we should be better though. That is just on Vinson, Fede, and Clemence somehow figuring it out.

BTW tonight I did think we trapped a little too much. I get the urge to do it because we were trying to catch ANY kind of momentum but they absolutely ripped us apart. Outscored us 23-0 in fast break points. Though we did make them waste a couple timeouts and got a couple ten second calls.

How many games have we won now in the last 5 minutes? Although those points where they break the press so easily make me cringe, without it, I think we have at least 3 less wins in conference. We have to use our depth as a weapon.

txag72 said:

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How many games have we won now in the last 5 minutes? Although those points where they break the press so easily make me cringe, without it, I think we have at least 3 less wins in conference. We have to use our depth as a weapon.

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Losses UCF, SMU,Tenn, Bama, Mizzou,
Wins LSU, Ou, Aub, Tu, Miss
5-5

I meant in conference. 5-3. And if we lost in the last 5 minutes to Tenn and Bama, I'd say something was working.

I just cant believe we press a team all game and they lead us 23-0 on fast break points. Stunning.

But we won!

I especially didn't like pressure trapping tonight any time Agee was in the game. I thought our normal full court defense was fine but they got way too many just wide open looks when we trapped because of blown assignments or Agee just not being able to keep up with the guys on the court.

We looked tired and slow until the last 5 minutes. I hope we aren't wearing down.

I was trying to decide if I thought this about everyone or if it was mostly just Agee and then the downstream effects of him being slow.

Agee definitely. All those crap passes looked lazy, but maybe some of it was guys just not getting there before the other guy.Standing, waiting.

Live and die by the press. Much more concerned with our own turnovers. Pop played his worst game of the year and Griffen lost his cool in the 2nd half with some stupid fouls. Agee seemed gassed and seemed to press too much therefore giving up the ball way too much.

Positives tonight: Fede. We need that version of him. Still wasn't a presence defensively, but at least he seemed cognizant of his role. Clemence seems to be getting more comfortable down low. And of course Dominguez. Him hitting 3s seemed to open the offense in the 2nd half.

A lot to complain about but man, we needed that win and somehow got it and still not sure how.