Musketeer Madness

Once again, Miller had a great defensive game plan to stop the team's best player. Roberts was double teamed off every screen set for him. He simply had no room to operate. He can now join Gordon, Beasley, Lofton etc as very good players who were shut down when playing Xavier.

And Stan once again played great D.

XU 87 wrote:Once again, Miller had a great defensive game plan to stop the team's best player. Roberts was double teamed off every screen set for him. He simply had no room to operate. He can now join Gordon, Beasley, Lofton etc as very good players who were shut down when playing Xavier.

And Stan once again played great D.

Without a doubt. Great coaching. Great individual defense -- with particular props to Stan, Dante, and CJ -- and great team defense. Outstanding game.

Agreed. And I think that Miller feels this team still might not have one guy who's the undisputed leader, so he's trying to push them from the sidelines to be the best team possible. Kudos to him if so.

Did any one else notice after the first TV timeout, X beat UD out to the floor by about 30 seconds. It was X's ball at the UD end of the court and they set up the press break knowing UD would set up a press before UD took the court. Nice analysis by Sean and the staff.

Any time Lavender goes out, you have to expect some type of a change in defense or a press. Very similar to Finn trying to bring up the ball on his own against pressure.

Sean has made a number of adjustments in his press offense for the better. Again similar to changes made with Cage and Doellman, or going back a couple of more years--David West bringing the ball up the floor. He has gotten the ball into CJ's, Brown's or Burrell's hands on the first pass and then to Lavender. Makes all the difference having Drew in the open court as opposed to the corner. On a real tough press on the in-bound pass, I'd like to see it go into Brown (if we have to just throw it up high and he will get it), then to a streaking Lavender.

We will see a lot of that against UMass and Duquense. We then have to finish around the basket or hit the open 3.

Glad to see the tide turning more and more to recognizing Miller as an excellent coach.