First off, let me say that I am thrilled that LSU played well in the second half and ran away from the Gaels. It was a great win and I like our chances of getting to the Sweet 16. Glad for Brady to get the win too. But I was concerned about how difficult it seemed for us to get the ball over midcourt against the press. I really didn't like our positioning and felt that we weren't prepared with a good plan on getting the ball across midcourt. TAM seems to have a pretty aggressive defense and I could see them pressing us given our problems last night. I barely get to see the Tigers on TV here in Dallas so I don't know if this is an anomaly or normal. Have we had this problem this season? Or was Iona just so quick that it disrupted us?
I too was shocked. Voogd made a bonehead mistake and Brady effectively took the ball out of his hands afterwards. In the second half it may not have been pretty, but we got the ball down the court for some easy points on a number of occasions.
it did show that we had no true point guard. i think the most success we had was giving it to glenn davis in the first half. i expect we will be pressed again.
While Brady's teams have consistently struggled against aggressive defenses and presses over the years, this years team is athletic enough to use that aggressiveness against the other teams. Once they were able to establish that in the second half last night, that really signified the turning point in the game. When Iona would play up like that, the Tigers were quick enough to find holes and distribute the ball accordingly. This is a team that, if allowed to fun n' gun, or get into a transition-game mode, becomes incredibly difficult to stop. I honestly don't know if there is another team in the tourney that could run and jump with us. Their athleticism is truly sickening.
Admittedly, pressing defenses give us fits and makes for anxious game watching, but, how many times did that cause us to lose a game this year? Not Tennessee, not Ole Miss, not Arkansas. The games we did lose were either early on to very solid teams or later when we got beat in the paint. It's not a big a problem as it might seem.
dont think there was a problem. most teams can choose to play that aggressively but they run the risk of being burnt. that happened to iona. you cant expect not to have a few turnovers. this team knows what to do and will only get better at execution as they get older (especially BV and GT)
Not to take anything away from Iona, and I'm not trying to defend our rather flat start, but I've noticed that in most cases between a high seed vs a low seed, the underdog comes out very aggressive while the favorite tries to play a little too conservative at times. Take the UCLA game for instance. Belmont came out swinging--seemed to take UCLA by surprise for most of the first half before UCLA just started to settle in and then blew them away.
