Hello Followers.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the Washington State University version of Black Friday. Brutal, huh?
Before I get into the ins and outs of what Thursday night means for Saturday, I want to say a word or three about Klay Thompson.
Followers, please do not interpret this take as me condoning Klay’s actions. Clearly, he made a very big, damaging, and tragic mistake.
At the same time, I want you all to put yourself in Klay’s shoes. While I am sure that some of you were mature and responsible college juniors, many of us were not. And, if any of you fell victim to “Scooter” and his boys hiding in the trees/bushes waiting to pounce on any student carrying a brown paper bag (I never did, but that was luck, many in my fraternity did), well, you know how EASY it is to get caught doing ANYTHING in Pullman.
Now, lets take a look at Klay: He made a big mistake. In so doing, he probably cost his team a birth in the NCAA’s. And that, quite frankly is enough. But, on top of that, Klay just had his father rip him a new one in the Seattle Times as well as sports radio in his home town. As if getting ripped by your father in private isn’t enough!
Klay has also been featured on the front page of ESPN.COM, was featured on SportsCenter by Doug Gottleib, and has appeared on the Huffington Post of all places.
Honestly, at his age, I would be borderline suicidal if this whole thing happened to me.
So, trust me on this one, Klay more than you or anyone in America is more than humbled and humiliated by this whole ordeal. So, when Sunday comes, I hope that everyone will support him as he tries to move toward redemption. And, as bad and untimely as his actions were, he deserves to be treated for what he is: A good kid who, like many of us, fell victim to a horrible lapse of judgement and perspective. Let us not do the same.
Now, click on the jump to read about my thoughts for what the Cougs do from here.
(As I went to write this, I noticed that Brian Floyd at Cougcenter beat me to the punch on both the topic and substance of the post. So, as a consequence, I wrote a paragraph about how great his analysis was. But then, as cosmic fate would have it, Joomla cut out that part of post when I inserted the jump in the preceding paragraph. So, we’ll just go with my (semi-duplicate) keys to the game.)
Point #1. The Cougs should play zone all game long tomorrow.
In essence, the name of the game is as follows: Allow UCLA to take a ton of threes. And within, hope to holy hell that they miss.
Point#2. The Cougs need to play big tomorrow.
It was one thing looking toward tomorrow without Reggie. Its another to look toward tomorrow without Klay. But, when you take Reggie AND Klay out of the game, you reach a painful conclusion: WE HAVE ZERO BACKCOURT DEPTH!
So, if I”m Bone, my starting lineup tomorrow would consist of Abe, Motum, Casto, Capers, and Aden. Play the 2-3 as active as possible up front, and pack the paint like there’s no tomorrow. While that isn’t a sexy approach, the good news is that it also may not be effective either. But, if we’re in the game tomorrow, it will be because UCLA shot a lot from 3 and didn’t make many along the way.
So, Bone, put our boys in that zone and stay there. If they make 15 3’s in the first half, stay there. To win tomorrow, we just have to stay out of foul trouble and hope to holy heck that they miss. (did I just say that twice? “MISS!!!!!!!!!!! MISS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)
Point #3. The Cougs need to score.
Honestly, I really have no idea how that is going to happen. And, while I’m hopeful that I am over-reacting to the loss of 31 points, a big part of me thinks we’ll be hard pressed to score 50 points tomorrow.
So, how do we get beyond 50 to the 55, 60, or 65 point threshold we need to be competitive?
Point #3a: Slow the game down.
I’m not talking about a snail’s pace, becuase we need to try to push the ball up the floor and create transition opportunities whenever possible. However, once we get into the half-court, we’re going to have to run that shot clock WAY down. In this respect, its gonna feel like Bennett ball–in the “Dick Days.” Recognizing that we’re going to have difficulty scoring, we’re going to have to be really efficient. And, we’re going to have to hope that they are unable to take advantage of THEIR limited opportunities.
Point#3b: Capers must go Off.
To be sure, for us to win, Abe/Motum are going to have to combine for 15. Casto is going to have to get 20, Aden is going to have to score 20. And Capers? He’s going to have to score between 15 to 20 points as well.
What we know about UCLA thus far is that Smith is typically HORRIBLE at defending the ball screen–he generally stays back in the paint. So, while Aden is going to have to take advantage of his mid-range game BIG TIME, Capers is going to have to be masterful at taking the ball to rack. Toward this end, with bigger guys (on our side) on the court, I’m looking for lots of back screens and back-cuts from Capers after he makes his first pass. Is this too much for Marcus? Sure. But, if Marcus doesn’t jack up 10+ shots and/or get to the line at least 10 times, we have NO CHANCE. So, welcome back to Florida, Marcus,cuz tomorrow, its high school all over again. CHUCK UP THE ROCK agent zero !!!!!
Point#3c. Simon must be Simon. Dre must be the Doctor.
Tomorrow, Simon is going to have to give us 15 minutes of great defensive effort and he’s going to have to give us 2-3 bombs from the perimeter. And Dre Winston? Well, he’s going to have to give us 10 minutes of great ball tomorrow. Simply put, if ANYONE thinks that Aden can handle the point guard load, they’re kidding themsleves. So, while Diiorio may be able to spell Aden for five or so minutes tomorrow, Dre is going to have to give Capers his blow. The plus minus for the 10 minutes or so that Dre will be in there will be crucial. He MUST step up and play the opposite of how he played on Thursday..
In the end, describing what needs to happen in this game feels EXACTLY like trying to explain what our 2004-05 Football team needed to do to beat Matty L,Reggie B, and the rest of Conquest Nation. We need to score every time down and hope to gosh that would turn the ball over 4 or 5 times. Well, we all know how those games turned out:
UCLA 81 WSU 49
Finally, recent talk around ESPN.com land had us IN THE DANCE if we win tomorrow and then beat CAL in the tourney’s first round.
So, assuming that Reggie can come back next week (which I doubt), then it makes sense that TWO wins next week would still do the trick. In short, Beat UW on Thursday, and then Beat UCLA IN LA on Friday, and I think we sneak back in the discussion.
Will we do it? Nope. I don’t think we beat Washington again with Moore any less than 100%..
But, when tomorrow’s slaughterfest ends, know that we still have a shot.
But we’ll need Klay to get back and get right in a real, real hurry. In the meantime:
“Run the Pickett Fence, Hickory Boys!”
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