This is where my day job as an analyst and my night job as a basketball junkie meet. I love Tech basketball and wanted to share my thoughts on the 1st game Zach Lowe style. I may or may not continue to do this depending on reception and deal flow at work. I typed this quickly on my phone while working so please give me some slack on any errors. Nevertheless here are my likes and dislikes from game 1.
10 things I liked/disliked Northwestern State:
10 things I liked/disliked Northwestern State:
- Funneling players to Batcho- On D you could tell we have been practicing allowing players to drive at Batcho without giving up the middle of the floor. If executed correctly, this will look a lot like our Tariq Owens defense and that is quite exciting. Issues could arise from miscommunications here and allowing drive-kicks and dump offs to Batcho’s man but there’s no better guy to trust than Mark Adams to make sure that doesn’t happen.
- Obanor rushed shots- Obanor has phenomenal touch even with a quirky release. You can tell in the off season he worked on a quicker release for his shot and that should really add a lot to his game but he has a tendency to get sped up and when he does it just looks downright bad. I think he’ll continue to clean this up and hopefully he can eliminate this completely from his game. In any case I’ll take the good with the bad here all day long.
- Kerwin back cuts- Looks like Walton has a bit more to his game rather than just spot up shooter. He made a lot of timely cuts to open up the defense when his guy wasn’t paying attention or when his guy was playing him too close. He has good basketball IQ and that combined with his height will translate to minutes. If he can learn to play good team defense to hide his lack of lateral quickness and if he can be aggressive using his height to get boards, he will play especially when we have a the eraser batcho on the floor.
- Jaylon Tyson cramps- I about passed out when Tyson stood up limping. It looked bad and he is a key player for us this year as he is one of our only guys that can create his own shot. I have no doubt he’s in good shape but let’s get this man some water and pickle juice.
- Perimeter switching- they ran the weave which is notoriously easy to switch on but still I thought our guys did a good job of communicating and that bodes well for the rest of the season. The interesting thing will be when teams bring batcho to the perimeter to switch. I think they’ll find quickly that he won’t be easy to break down but we will have to really focus on team rebounding when teams do this.
- Harmon tunnel vision - this might be picky but there was a few times where Harmon missed some wide open shooters or drivers (namely Batcho who was visibly frustrated on at least one occasion). I like his aggressiveness and we need him to get to the rack on this team as we don’t have many guys that are that aggressive but with his speed if he can pick his head up he will really open up our offense. I will also add he finished with 4 assist to 2 turnovers… not bad.
- 3-point shooting- How do you beat the no-middle defense? Skip passes and deadly 3 point shooting. But what do opposing teams do when the team playing the no-middle D is a better 3 point shooting team than you are? We’ll that means you are playing Baylor. It looks like that is who we are modeled after though Fardaws should give us another look as we can go 5-out and rain threes aka the South Dakota Jackrabbits of recent years. We will be one of the best 3 point shooting teams in the nation, book it and that will spell trouble for teams trying to outgun us.
- Pop Isaacs bad passes- it felt at a few times Pop was playing for himself. He wasn’t the only one that was guilty of this but he tried the highlight pass 5 too many times and it hurt us. I know he wants to look good for scouts but the truth is he is probably too small to be 1 and done. His game and efficiency is really going to have to develop before he can make the jump to the pros. The nice thing about NIL is 2nd round money just isn’t worth it anymore.
- Batcho Rim Runner- think Clint Capela on the Rockets or Looney on the Warriors. The rim running big that gets boards with good lateral quickness so they can’t be broken down off dribble. Those guys are valuable members of good NBA teams and that is what Batcho could provide. I am not sure what anyone was expecting with all of the high praise but the modern game doesn’t call for back to the basket operators like Bryson Williams, Batcho could pull down 20 boards for us in big games and has the strength the finish at the rim or IQ to hit shooters after boards or rolls. He is absolutely our best and most important player this year on offense and defense.
- Fisher rawness- this dude is much more athletic than I thought but he has a lot of bad tendencies from playing guys he could just out run and jump. He has lateral quickness but doesn’t stay in front of his guy on the perimeter. This is usually because of a bad stance up top and he relies on his chase down to recover but against big 12 competition he will cost us a lot of buckets until this is fixed. He is 17 and could be our best player if he just developed more as a basketball player but it will take time. The defensive issue is why I think his dad pushed him to Tech. Hopefully by the end of the year he evolves into a very special player.
