I really don’t think we’re a bad team....

[tigerbrotha12 2,362]

....but it seems like almost every time we play, we have a bad, sloppy, “uncharacteristic” game. I can’t bring myself to say “maybe we’re just not that talented,” because I sincerely believe that statement is untrue. Are we unclutch? Do we have bad chemistry? It’s like this team has been in a funk ever since the UAB game, and they have their moments where you think they’re back, but then it’s right back to sloppy offense, bad passing, poor defensive rebounding, etc. 

It just seems like we come away from every game saying “we played terribly.” 

If we’d just play pretty average, it seems like we’d win these games. Would’ve beaten LSU if we play an average last 22 mins of basketball, and would’ve won tonight had we started out playing very average for our potential. Instead, we’re performing very poorly every game, and getting bested by just a few points. What is the deal? 

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,641]

I think if you have stints of good ball primarily enveloped around long stretches of poor shots and decision making (bad basketball), you’re probably closer to being bad than good IMO. 

Theres nothing that can really be done that shouldn’t have been done ten plus games ago. Bruce isn’t going to reign in Jared from shooting 35 foot Js when he’s shooting almost 0% from the floor. Bryce has largely played smarter the past handful of games granted. It’s just like if they’re going to be this team that does nothing but shoot 3s, you can’t only be able to do that for 5, 6 minutes then not do it ever again.

 

theres really not a realistic remedy that’s going to be made for the remainder of the season. They’re going to run and gun, other teams are gonna play zone, and they’re gonna have to shoot damn near perfectly to make up for the lack of 2s pt Js and lay ups. 

 

Hopefully we get a new system going into next season; Bruce curbs the nepotism and has someone other than his son help design a real offense

[cole256 17,039]

It's always easy to say if we would've just....that's the difference between winning and losing the little if only we had....we just need to and my favorite they are just playing the best they can

[jluvah 663]

Most good teams have a good big man. We don't. Need to recruit to that need badly!

[Sully to Beasley 643]

I am so disappointed in the 2018-19 basketball team. Auburn needs a big man who can dominate. When we can't consistently hit threes we lose. Our inside game is average at best. Wiley is a good player inside but he is too injury prone.

I agree Bruce needs to shake up his coaching staff.  I despise what Chuck Person did but the loss of his contributions as a coach is showing. We will be fortunate to make the NCAA tourney at this point. 

[gr82b4au 5,568]

8 hours ago, tigerbrotha12 said:

What is the deal? 

As a few have stated over the last few months, we are a flawed team. We are small and undisciplined. We take poor shots at times. Our big man Wiley has been hurt. Samir has been playing very poorly and brings very little at this point. Harper looks tired and his backup has been playing poorly. Truthfully Our starting five consists of a few players who would likely come off of the bench on their teams. We are a decent front runner but we do not have the ability to bounce back when things don’t go our way in a game. 

The truth is that we live and die by the 3. If we are on we can beat anyone. Ole miss had the perfect defense last night. Play Harper high, watch the pick and roll, and guard the 3 (brown). They were content in letting Okeke get his points - career high - but they did not let Harper and brown shoot easy 3s. 

 

[Tiger 8,817]

3 hours ago, Sully to Beasley said:

I am so disappointed in the 2018-19 basketball team. Auburn needs a big man who can dominate. When we can't consistently hit threes we lose. Our inside game is average at best. Wiley is a good player inside but he is too injury prone.

I agree Bruce needs to shake up his coaching staff.  I despise what Chuck Person did but the loss of his contributions as a coach is showing. We will be fortunate to make the NCAA tourney at this point. 

Chuck Person's absence from our program is part of why our team defense took a huge leap forward last season. I forget right now who was coaching the D last year but he did a FANTASTIC job. This season it's Flanagan apparently.

[Sully to Beasley 643]

1 hour ago, Tiger said:

Chuck Person's absence from our program is part of why our team defense took a huge leap forward last season. This year we lost key personnel that covered up some of our defensive weaknesses.

We will have to agree to disagree on your staement about CP. A guy who played and coached in the NBA for over 2 decades knows a good bit about playing and coaching defense. Just like Gus sent a couple of assistants packing after the FB season, Bruce needs to do likewiase.

[Tiger 8,817]

6 minutes ago, Sully to Beasley said:

We will have to agree to disagree on your staement about CP. A guy who played and coached in the NBA for over 2 decades knows a good bit about playing and coaching defense. Just like Gus sent a couple of assistants packing after the FB season, Bruce needs to do likewiase.

This isn't about knowing defense or being in the NBA. This is based in fact: We were atrocious on D with Person coaching that side of the ball. As soon as he left we became one of the best defensive teams in the SEC. Now Flanagan took over our defense and we don't look good -- but he's not working with personnel set up to succeed on defense. I believe it was Adler who was handling the D last season.

Person had the same personnel that we had last year and the contrast in our team D was night and day. Also, Person isn't some wiz of a coach. He was coaching in freaking KOREA after being phased out of NBA coaching until we saved his butt.

 

[Sully to Beasley 643]

No need to debate the merits of our shamed former assistant coach. I just know that this team is not playing up to its potential and something has to change. Bruce is a great recruiter and head coach. He needs to find someone for his staff that can coach defense and help recuit talented big men.

[Tiger 8,817]

19 hours ago, Sully to Beasley said:

No need to debate the merits of our shamed former assistant coach. I just know that this team is not playing up to its potential and something has to change. Bruce is a great recruiter and head coach. He needs to find someone for his staff that can coach defense and help recuit talented big men.

No arguments from me there. I like all coaches on our staff but I do think Steven Pearl may be the Rhett Lashlee of this staff. In a much higher position than his resume indicates he's qualified for.

[ArgoEagle 1,767]

To me it is pretty simple. Our lack of a dominant big man makes us a team that relies on our speed and shooting. The games we have looked the best this year, we have sped up the pace of the game with tight pressure defense and running our offense where we make a couple of good passes and shoot early in the shot clock. I cringe every time we run the shot clock inside 10 seconds; it is usually ended with a prayer shot. On the flip side, you will notice the teams we look the worst against hold the ball the full length of the shot clock have made us look the worst ( uab and Ole Piss). I believe from here on out, BP needs to emphasize speeding up the tempo of the game on both ends of the floor as much as possible. After that we really need to get some more physical tall players inside. The ones we got are tall enough, just get pushed around too much.

[nixtosanders94 2,180]

Auburn athletics has caused me to now reach a point where I will go into every season with ZERO expectations...good or bad. I will just watch and be pleasantly surprised or not surprised at all.  I thought this bball team was the most sure thing Auburn has had in a long time. I would have bet my salary we would be in the tournament and right now if I had made that bet I would be very nervous...

[AU64 10,122]

19 minutes ago, nixtosanders94 said:

Auburn athletics has caused me to now reach a point where I will go into every season with ZERO expectations...good or bad. I will just watch and be pleasantly surprised or not surprised at all.  I thought this bball team was the most sure thing Auburn has had in a long time. I would have bet my salary we would be in the tournament and right now if I had made that bet I would be very nervous...

  gotta be careful about believing the hype around here.....JMO but it's been that way for quite a while.....As you note, best to just "wait and see"... 

As for basketball...BP is a heckuva salesman and has done wonders for developing student interest....but as a game coach?     the jury is still out on this season and today's game is really important.  We are sliding down the board for tourney seedings and another couple losses to teams like Vandy and we might fall right off.  Every game from here on truly matters to get us to .500 ....and yet maybe only three of the last 7 are truly winnable and Vandy is one of them.   Winning more than 3 might get us in I guess. 

[AUpreacherman22 3,876]

What does AU football and AU basketball have in common?

Both started in top 10, then moved up after some early wins.  

Both then dropped completely out of the top 25.  

Both currently have a losing league record.  (basketball has a chance to improve)

The player that was supposed to be our best player, turned out to not be.

Both have had an epically disappointing season.  🤦‍♂️

A couple of things they don’t have in common.  I have a tremendous amount of confidence in our basketball coach!  I feel good about the future of our basketball program.  

#wareagle

#warbruce

[AUwent 3,747]

51 minutes ago, AUpreacherman22 said:

What does AU football and AU basketball have in common?

Both started in top 10, then moved up after some early wins.  

Both then dropped completely out of the top 25.  

Both currently have a losing league record.  (basketball has a chance to improve)

The player that was supposed to be our best player, turned out to not be.

Both have had an epically disappointing season.  🤦‍♂️

A couple of things they don’t have in common.  I have a tremendous amount of confidence in our basketball coach!  I feel good about the future of our basketball program.  

#wareagle

#warbruce

Make no mistake, Bruce is the best coach we could possibly get.

[doc4aday 1,887]

After a win today at Vandy is what this team needed. We need to get hot the next coming games. This is not a bad team whatsoever. A pretty good competitive team, yes; a great team no. Still can make the NCAA with some good wins. Gotta win at least 20 games to have that opportunity.  We are still light years better than we were before Bruce came aboard.

WDE & play ball with a Corgi today!

 

[Gene Loblaw 636]

On 2/15/2019 at 10:54 AM, Tiger said:

No arguments from me there. I like all coaches on our staff but I do think Steven Pearl may be the Rhett Lashlee of this staff. In a much higher position than his resume indicates he's qualified for.

I don’t really know Steven’s coaching merits or what can be directly attributed to him on the court, but he has proven to be probably the best recruiter on the staff sans Bruce himself. He’s earned his spot imo unlike Rhett

[KolchakAU85 430]

On 2/15/2019 at 10:54 AM, Tiger said:

No arguments from me there. I like all coaches on our staff but I do think Steven Pearl may be the Rhett Lashlee of this staff. In a much higher position than his resume indicates he's qualified for.

Yeah, that's the reason Patrick Ewing had to agree to "fire" his own son when he took over at Georgetown (his son was the Director of Basketball Operations). Georgetown's "nepotism clause" prevents the head coach from having his own son on staff.

I have little respect for anyone who works for "daddy".

[AU64 10,122]

4 hours ago, KolchakAU85 said:

Yeah, that's the reason Patrick Ewing had to agree to "fire" his own son when he took over at Georgetown (his son was the Director of Basketball Operations). Georgetown's "nepotism clause" prevents the head coach from having his own son on staff.

I have little respect for anyone who works for "daddy".

Won't go so far as to say that but I have my doubts about what SP's value is and Flannigan is a rookie...just seems that BP's staff might not be up to the task...especially on the issue of defense. 

[cole256 17,039]

Look at what these guys have to work with. I know some were upset when I said this but I wasn't saying it to be spiteful but the higher you go as far as levels playing basketball it's like football. The athletes are bigger and faster. With our roster the starting perimeter players has size equivalent to athletes I faced in middle school. And on top of that they aren't freak athletes. Well I guess Harper is but my point is there's no strategy you can come up with to stop a guy that's bigger, stronger, and faster than you.....it's not intimidating, it's easy for people to talk, critique and think something should happen on paper and then be disappointed. How would you expect for any job to be a top 25 rated company nationally from employees that doesn't have the basic qualifications for the job? You'll probably be lucky and catch a few guys that perform at a high level but more than likely you don't be as productive as a company that seek out specific individuals with a more rigorous qualification seeking process.

 

I don't know what you expect coaches to do defensively. We play press defense AND an up tempo offense. We're not a deep team, and we're a very small team, on top of that we don't take care of the ball on offense. What do you expect a coach to do to be great on defense with those variables?

[AuburnNTexas 7,127]

You can afford to have one small guard on the floor who brings something like Harper but two puts you at a defensive disadvantage. When both are hot we can sometimes overcome this by out scoring the other team.  Last year Mitchell could come in as a defensive stopper and Heron, Murray and Mac were quick to rotate when somebody got beat. Chuma is starting to do the quick Rotation, Wiley is not quick enough, and Mac is a little hesitant. Without the quick Rotation getting beat out front gets exaggerated which is what is happening.

We need to see more of Purifoy and Dunbar at the 3 and less of Samir, we need to see Chuma to continue to be more aggressive as we have seen recently, we need Mac to get over the psychological hurdle from his injury and we need to feed Chuma, Purifoy and Dunbar more as they have match up advantages.  Our offense doesn't take advantage of areas where we have match up advantages. As others have said we live and die by the 3.  Dunbar and Purifoy are both big powerful 3's who are quick enough to drive and strong enough to overpower inside against most teams 3's. Chuma  has shown in last few games that the 4's are not fast enough to cover him and if they back off he can shoot the 3.  Scoring this way also keeps the guards out front so it is harder for other teams to get fast breaks off of rebounds. 

[mustache eagle 2,388]

Samir at the one as a spell for Harper?  I don’t think we’ve seen that this year but I thought he was brought in as a combo 1/2 originally?  I don’t know if Dunbar can defend a 2 but a second line of Samir, Dunbar, DP would be interesting to me.  It seems like Samir can handle the ball well enough ?  I know this is early December kind of discussion but it seems like we are there.

[WeagleTheBeagle 60]

I think we all have come to the same conclusion.  Something needs to change in the lineup.  If there is ONE thing that I would criticize Bruce for, it's not taking a chance and changing the starting lineup by at least one or two spots.  This starting lineup seems incapable of hot starts like last year.  Dunbar and Purifoy have done enough to take minutes away from Doughty.  Same goes for Spencer.  Time to mix it up a little.  

[cole256 17,039]

15 hours ago, mustache eagle said:

Samir at the one as a spell for Harper?  I don’t think we’ve seen that this year but I thought he was brought in as a combo 1/2 originally?  I don’t know if Dunbar can defend a 2 but a second line of Samir, Dunbar, DP would be interesting to me.  It seems like Samir can handle the ball well enough ?  I know this is early December kind of discussion but it seems like we are there.

As athletic as Dunbar is I couldn't imagine him not being able to. I know we play small ball and it seem to be a pretty wide spread thought that we want that at every position. I don't believe that at all though, but anyway we play small ball but most places he'd would be looked at as a 2 guard, but he DEFINITELY would have to guard 2's.