Learning to play with Bouknight again | The Boneyard

Learning to play with Bouknight again

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Hopefully the team and Hurley can learn how to play with Bouknight again over the next four games. It’s fun to watch him take over a game but hopefully a reliable second and third scoring option emerges. Looking to see Sanogo stay out of foul trouble. If Bouk draws three guys to him while taking it to the rim then that’s fine, just don’t want to see him feeling like he needs to split through three defenders to score out of necessity.
 
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Martin needs to be aggressive and play engaged throughout the whole game, otherwise he will behave in a way that makes him too comfortable with just standing around. We've seen it away vs DePaul, home vs Butler of how he can score if he just switches it on.
 
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I thought UConn was ge thing into a very predictable pattern before the injury where they didn’t do a lot offensively then gave it to Bouknight late in the clock to bail them out. They were doing exactly that against Marquette when he got hurt. Then for a few games they looked much better, moving, getting open shots for other guys. They did some of that against Xavier last week. Against Villanova the reverted to the old model in a huge way.
 
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Martin needs to be aggressive and play engaged throughout the whole game, otherwise he will behave in a way that makes him too comfortable with just standing around. We've seen it away vs DePaul, home vs Butler of how he can score if he just switches it on.
Not sure if he's trying to fit in on a new team, or simply deferring but its the end of February. He has D1 talent for sure. I blame the coaching staff for not lighting a fire in his arse. I say sit him one time on the bench at the start of a game and see if that works. He's our 2nd best player and when he disappears it creates a disadvantage and teams can then focus on Bouk without fear.

As for the coaching staff, recruiting is proven. Player development is still in the lab. However Martin, Sanogo, Cole and Jackson all have less than a year on the team. And they play significant minutes. That could be a huge contributing factor in our season's problems.
 
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Not sure if he's trying to fit in on a new team, or simply deferring but its the end of February. He has D1 talent for sure. I blame the coaching staff for not lighting a fire in his arse. I say sit him one time on the bench at the start of a game and see if that works. He's our 2nd best player and when he disappears it creates a disadvantage and teams can then focus on Bouk without fear.

As for the coaching staff, recruiting is proven. Player development is still in the lab. However Martin, Sanogo, Cole and Jackson all have less than a year on the team. And they play significant minutes. That could be a huge contributing factor in our season's problems.

This is what I meant.

The DePaul away game some player on DePaul said something to Martin and at that point he decided to just drive in and dominate the rest of the game. It's all mental with Martin in my opinion.

The coaching staff should be doing everything they can to flip that switch in his head so he can go out there playing angry
 

McLovin

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Something that I always thought Kemba & Bazz did well was get their teammates going early & taking over the game late. Bouk seems to play the opposite of this. Would love for Hurley to try to get Martin / Sanogo / Cole going early and then unleash the Bouk hammer in the second half to bury the Hoyas.
 
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Something that I always thought Kemba & Bazz did well was get their teammates going early & taking over the game late. Bouk seems to play the opposite of this. Would love for Hurley to try to get Martin / Sanogo / Cole going early and then unleash the Bouk hammer in the second half to bury the Hoyas.
Excellent post. That's basically the #1 recipe for successful teams with true bucket-getters no matter the level: NBA, NCAA, high school, etc.
 

Rico444

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Something that I always thought Kemba & Bazz did well was get their teammates going early & taking over the game late. Bouk seems to play the opposite of this. Would love for Hurley to try to get Martin / Sanogo / Cole going early and then unleash the Bouk hammer in the second half to bury the Hoyas.

Wasn't the big knock on Bouk last year that he wasn't assertive early in games? I remember him having some big 2nd halves last year after slow starts.
 

CTBasketball

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We’ll be fine if we hit our open shots. Rebounding and defense is a lot easier when you’re up.
 
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Wasn't the big knock on Bouk last year that he wasn't assertive early in games? I remember him having some big 2nd halves last year after slow starts.
Yes, agreed. I think that maybe had more to do with the fact that it was CV’s team last year.
 

Chin Diesel

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Martin needs to be aggressive and play engaged throughout the whole game, otherwise he will behave in a way that makes him too comfortable with just standing around. We've seen it away vs DePaul, home vs Butler of how he can score if he just switches it on.
Not sure if he's trying to fit in on a new team, or simply deferring but its the end of February. He has D1 talent for sure. I blame the coaching staff for not lighting a fire in his arse. I say sit him one time on the bench at the start of a game and see if that works. He's our 2nd best player and when he disappears it creates a disadvantage and teams can then focus on Bouk without fear.

As for the coaching staff, recruiting is proven. Player development is still in the lab. However Martin, Sanogo, Cole and Jackson all have less than a year on the team. And they play significant minutes. That could be a huge contributing factor in our season's problems.
This is what I meant.

The DePaul away game some player on DePaul said something to Martin and at that point he decided to just drive in and dominate the rest of the game. It's all mental with Martin in my opinion.

The coaching staff should be doing everything they can to flip that switch in his head so he can go out there playing angry

This is my second old man yelling at clouds rant in a week. I'm actually turned in to a characiture.

Martin's body language really sucks at times. He's a big, physical presense on the court but too often he has his head down and shoulders turned in when something goes wrong. Completely wild guess that he is getting down on himself too much.

As mentioned in this thread about Bazz and Boat, this team really needs someone on the court whose personality and attitude is attack and be aggessive and get their teammates to feed off that.

That needed energy boost is one of the reasons I want Akok in there for more minutes. I think he needs a leash to play through mistakes, any hesitancy or straight up being out of game shape. Give him 20 minutes and he will make a couple of really high level plays that gets his teammates flowing.
 

UConnSwag11

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Stop bringing the bigs above the three point line. It crowds Bouknight from being able to make any plays. Sanogo is back to the basket big and Whaley is only efficient passing on the offensive end.

Against Nova we had 10 players above the free-throw line a majority of the time
 

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