Phil Pressey
Phil stunk. Not sure why he thought he needed to keep shooting. Not only were his shots dumb, but they weren't even close to going in. Yet he kept shooting and shooting. His poor shot selection contributed to the first half deficit. This was definitely a disappointing outing from him. Grade: 2/10.
Laurence Bowers
Bowers finally put two decent halves together and looked like a star going for 26 and 9. I also liked the way he fought for boards (but I could probably say this about everyone on the team). Grade: 10/10.
Alex Oriakhi
Oriakhi just did not have it tonight. He really struggles to score and thought it was interesting that Haith elected to start the second half with Oriakhi on the bench. It is demoralizing to work the ball inside and so close to the goal and yet come away empty on multiple occasions. Grade: 3/10.
Negus Webster-Chan
Webster-Chan also started the second half on the bench (more on this later). Again, not much to say about him as he is statistically almost a non-entity (3 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist in 24 minutes of playing time), yet he clearly struggled on defense in the first half. Grade: 4/10.
Earnest Ross
Speaking of no-shows, I don't remember Ross much in this game other than him getting lost on defense and shooting up a guarded 3 (which was the only FG he took). From my vantage point, I thought he was the worst defender during that horrific first half as it was usually Ross that was caught in the lane on the screen giving a SEMO shooter a wide-open shot. However, Haith did start him in the second half and it seemed to work. Grade: 2/10.
Keion Bell
Bell started off rough, but really made his presence felt and is slowly becoming a nice piece of the rotation. I really liked how tough he was going for the rebounds which is what I want to see him do in every game. He ended up with a solid 12 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal and a block. And both of his free throws were as pure as could be. Grade: 8/10.
Tony Criswell
This may have been a breakout game for Criswell. He is showing that he can be quite a weapon on offense and he just needs to be as committed on defense as he is to scoring. I thought it said a lot that he got the second half start and really delivered during those first ten minutes when Mizzou really destroyed SEMO and took the game over. Grade: 7/10.
Ryan Rosburg
Rosburg continues to get minutes and but one for one sequence, didn't look half bad while he was in. He still seems a little intimidated at this level and I hope he works through that and becomes a player that can be counted on. Grade: 4/10.
Overall Thoughts
I really thought it was interesting that Haith went to a line-up of Pressey, Ross, Bell, Criswell and Bowers to start off the second half. It seemed to work and I think that with Bell slowly but surely coming along that this is a line-up that offers plenty of athleticism and offensive firepower. Oriakhi is a bit of a conundrum right now with how poorly he has been shooting and doesn't have the quickness to defend on the perimeter that this line-up does.
A few positives that came from this game were the emergence of Criswell and the nice results that came from the line-up that started the second half. I think Haith may have stumbled upon something that will work nicely in the future.
Funny stat: Mizzou's forwards were 3-3 from behind the arc, while the guards were 1-10.
Next up: Tennessee State on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment