A Few Notes from McCaffery Teleconference this Morning

[ChosenChildren]

I think this is one of the toughest parts of the job for a coach - managing players who are not consistently performing at this point of their career. One game, Uhl has 5 blocks as he protects the rim (then gets injured), then Kreiner starts hitting shots and making plays while getting more minutes, and then Wagner has a great game off the bench with his energy. Who he decides to play and for how long will ebb and flow as the season continues.

Agree 100%. We have a ton of promising players, but can you put it together to win games?

 

[Hawk5656]

I think this is one of the toughest parts of the job for a coach - managing players who are not consistently performing at this point of their career. One game, Uhl has 5 blocks as he protects the rim (then gets injured), then Kreiner starts hitting shots and making plays while getting more minutes, and then Wagner has a great game off the bench with his energy. Who he decides to play and for how long will ebb and flow as the season continues.

I feel like we just have a bunch of role players which makes it hard to play our 8-9 best but we've got to figure it out. With Dom available is Fran really going to play 12 guys tomorrow? That's unheard of

 

[WindsorHawk]

Agree 100%. We have a ton of promising players, but can you put it together to win games?

Well let's take a look. We are 3-4 in the conference and 1 game out of 5th place. MD and WI are tied for 1st with 1 loss. NW and PU are tied for 3rd with 2 losses.

We play a total of 6 games against the (current) top 4 teams in the conference. We have already played 4 of those with 1 win (PU). We were competitive in another (MD) despite only playing about 15 minutes of good basketball and with our star player limited by a bad back.

So our 3-4 record includes 3 losses against the (current) top 4 in the standings. The other loss was on the road in double overtime against a hot (at the time) Nebraska team.

So based on which teams we have already played and how many games we have left against the (current) top 4 a 5th place finish is not out of the question. This is not a prediction just an observation. And I believe very strongly that our freshmen and sophomores will continue to improve over the remaining 11 regular season games. So I'm not ready to give up on my 11-7 prediction just yet.