BeachedBear;842125086 said:
Shocky -
I enjoy your posts -have you ever coached any basketball (not intended as a passive-aggressive insult - but a serious question). From a coaching perspective it seemed VERY OBVIOUS how MM was using JP and hiding his primary weakness. That is - his ability to defend his man. In most man to man situations, JP would have been up against the opponent's most dynamic player. The result of which would have meant loss of tempo control for the bears. Monty loves to control the tempo of the game and would selectively use JP, based on the opponents line up. While jp is a smart player and great shooter - we often saw Monty use jp in only selective situations in order to maintain control.
Or out of desperation, due to injury, fouls or someone else with the 'yips' :p
Much of our second half surge was attributable to going to more zone which would mitigate much of that issue.
Moreover, when Crabbe was on the bench (admittedly as little as possible) we would usually go with Cobbs, Smith and Wallace and not surprisingly have a lot of trouble scoring. In that situation, I thought Powers would generally have brought more to the table than Smith.
When Kreklow came back at the end of the season and into the postseason, Monty played him a lot (1st guard/forward off the bench) instead of Smith. Hindsight is 20/20 but I think Kreklow was still hurt and Powers would have been better able to deliver what I think Monty was hoping to get from Kreklow--some size and outside scoring.
In those 4 games Cal went 1-3. Kreklow's numbers:
vs. Stanford 13 min 0-3 for 0 Pts, 2 Reb, 2 PF, 1 Assist, 1 TO, 1 Steals
vs. Utah 18 min 2-4 for 6 Pts, 2 Reb, 3 PF, 2 TO
vs. UNLV 14 min 0-3 for 0 Pts, 1 Reb, 2 PF, 1 Assist, 3 TO
vs. Syracuse 21 min 0-3 for 0 Pts, 3 Reb, 4 PF, 2 Assist, 3 TO, 1 Steals
Totals over final 4 games after coming back from injury:
66 min 2-13 (15%) for 6 Pts, 8 Reb, 11 PF, 4 Assist, 9 TO, 2 Steals
Undoubtedly Kreklow is a better player than Powers when healthy, but I do think Powers really could have helped us by providing another outside shooter, and thought so especially in our 6 point loss to Syracuse. Obviously Powers is a limited player, but our choices were few. Kreklow (like Smith) lost confidence in his shot and stopped taking open shots, allowing the Syracuse zone to focus on stopping Crabbe and Cobbs.