Butler/Gonzaga
Thanks to my new, dual-tuner Tivo, I was able to watch about a million basketball games over the past two days, but I'm going to devote this post to the game that mattered most: Butler's upset of Gonzaga that capped their stunning run to the preseason NIT championship.
1. It was extremely refreshing to see Butler put the game away despite losing their magic touch from the field. The Bulldogs were patient, never pressing on the offensive end despite things looking a bit tenuous down the stretch. Butler runs an extremely patient offense that is well-equipped to protect large leads, like the one they had. The kids ran it to perfection, and even though the good looks they got didn't fall, they ate enough clock and played well enough on the defensive end that it didn't matter. A.J. Graves and Mike Green deserve a lot of credit for their poise on the free throw line, too.
2. Speaking of Green, what an interesting and important player for that team. He doesn't have the same skill set the rest of the perimeter players do; I remember him passing up a number of open looks from the three-point line, for instance. But he can break his defender down with the bounce, a skill that, of his teammates, only Graves has.
It's not unusual for a team that runs a perimeter-oriented offense reliant on the deep ball to have a player like Green. Every so often, the set is stagnant, and you need someone who could put it on the deck and create a shot, either a floater in the lane for himself or a three-pointer for a teammate when a defender sloughs off to help. The problem arises when said player doesn't understand that his dribble penetration is the last option; he begins pounding the ball into positions around which the offense isn't designed, and the end result is usually some sort of wild heave.
Green seems to understand when it's appropriate to break the set, and that makes him ever more valuable.
3. It was nice, Derek Raivio, to see you come alive a little bit in the closing minutes. Alas, where were you the rest of the game? With Josh Heytvelt, Gonzaga's top offensive option, saddled by early foul trouble, someone needed to take over, and Raivio, an offensive-minded senior, was the obvious answer.
None of the Gonzaga guards -- not Raivio, not starting point Jeremy Pargo, not Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespides, not freshman Matt Bouldin -- stepped up, but it's Raivio's lack of leadership that is most glaring. He continues to make bad decisions (he had a very poor game Wednesday vs. UNC in that regard) and his attitude is poor. He seems to have regressed over his career at Gonzaga.
(And 1) I was pretty disappointed in the officiating in this contest. I'm sure Gonzaga fans will complain about Butler flopping (and there's probably some merit there), but I think the refs just plain called it too closely. Heytvelt got slapped with two fouls in the first 100 seconds and was never much of a factor. Both alleged missteps were on the offensive end, and neither were terribly egregious. You could scrutinize the tape of both infractions and surely find something that was against the rules, but the officials had the opportunity to let the contact go and dictate that they'd be overseeing a hard-fought basketball game worthy of a tournament championship.
Instead, we got a bit of a whistle-fest, with the number of stoppages and touchiness of the officials clearly benefitting the smaller, slower-paced Butler team.
What was even more frustrating -- to me, at least -- is that on Gonzaga's first two possessions of the second half, Sean Mallon committed two much more blatant offensive fouls than the ones Heytvelt committed on the Zags' first two possessions in the first half. How about some consistency? At the very least, give the benefit of the doubt to the more important player.
1. It was extremely refreshing to see Butler put the game away despite losing their magic touch from the field. The Bulldogs were patient, never pressing on the offensive end despite things looking a bit tenuous down the stretch. Butler runs an extremely patient offense that is well-equipped to protect large leads, like the one they had. The kids ran it to perfection, and even though the good looks they got didn't fall, they ate enough clock and played well enough on the defensive end that it didn't matter. A.J. Graves and Mike Green deserve a lot of credit for their poise on the free throw line, too.
2. Speaking of Green, what an interesting and important player for that team. He doesn't have the same skill set the rest of the perimeter players do; I remember him passing up a number of open looks from the three-point line, for instance. But he can break his defender down with the bounce, a skill that, of his teammates, only Graves has.
It's not unusual for a team that runs a perimeter-oriented offense reliant on the deep ball to have a player like Green. Every so often, the set is stagnant, and you need someone who could put it on the deck and create a shot, either a floater in the lane for himself or a three-pointer for a teammate when a defender sloughs off to help. The problem arises when said player doesn't understand that his dribble penetration is the last option; he begins pounding the ball into positions around which the offense isn't designed, and the end result is usually some sort of wild heave.
Green seems to understand when it's appropriate to break the set, and that makes him ever more valuable.
3. It was nice, Derek Raivio, to see you come alive a little bit in the closing minutes. Alas, where were you the rest of the game? With Josh Heytvelt, Gonzaga's top offensive option, saddled by early foul trouble, someone needed to take over, and Raivio, an offensive-minded senior, was the obvious answer.
None of the Gonzaga guards -- not Raivio, not starting point Jeremy Pargo, not Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespides, not freshman Matt Bouldin -- stepped up, but it's Raivio's lack of leadership that is most glaring. He continues to make bad decisions (he had a very poor game Wednesday vs. UNC in that regard) and his attitude is poor. He seems to have regressed over his career at Gonzaga.
(And 1) I was pretty disappointed in the officiating in this contest. I'm sure Gonzaga fans will complain about Butler flopping (and there's probably some merit there), but I think the refs just plain called it too closely. Heytvelt got slapped with two fouls in the first 100 seconds and was never much of a factor. Both alleged missteps were on the offensive end, and neither were terribly egregious. You could scrutinize the tape of both infractions and surely find something that was against the rules, but the officials had the opportunity to let the contact go and dictate that they'd be overseeing a hard-fought basketball game worthy of a tournament championship.
Instead, we got a bit of a whistle-fest, with the number of stoppages and touchiness of the officials clearly benefitting the smaller, slower-paced Butler team.
What was even more frustrating -- to me, at least -- is that on Gonzaga's first two possessions of the second half, Sean Mallon committed two much more blatant offensive fouls than the ones Heytvelt committed on the Zags' first two possessions in the first half. How about some consistency? At the very least, give the benefit of the doubt to the more important player.
posted by H.S. Slam, Ph.D at 3:35 AM
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