As I watched from the VZ Center the final seconds tick off as we secured another victory over the hated Georgetown Hoyas on Saturday, I turned to high five all the people I was with and we celebrated yet another BE victory to push our record to 16-2; 6-0 in conference. I thought to myself, yet another truly special year in store for us die-hard Cat fans. Just so amazing what a terrific game coach Jay has become. We don't discuss it much, but he has improved over the years to become a truly special basketball coach.
However, with all the victories and the high rankings that go with it, I can see our fan base - and I can be as guilty as any of us - starting to raise expectations again about what can happen in March. I do see this being a wide open year where there are no dominant teams like Kentucky last year where you thought no way we can beat them. But I also see that we are essentially the same team as last year - talented, play really hard, well coached and defend like crazy (perhaps even better this year). The down side is we still need to make lots of 3s to beat really good teams or teams that have an explosive guard with athletic bigs. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Now that we are into full conference play and moving further and further from the OU and UVA games, I think we believe we've solved many of our deficiencies, or at least found other ways to overcome them - and perhaps we have - but I also think there aren't many tournament teams in our league to give us the true tests we need or with which could help us down the road.
Example #1: - Are we now good at stopping quick guards with good dribble-drive games from getting in the lane? UVA absolutely killed us with that as did NCST last year. Have we gotten better there or have we not faced many good guards since that game? I'm afraid it's the latter. Georgetown is very weak at the guard position and DSR doesn't dribble-drive that well. Nobody else on Georgetown does. Creighton had the one guard, Seton Hall's are solid and gave us some problems. Even X's strength isn't quick explosive guards.
Example #2: - Teams with size and athleticism in the front court - Can we rebound effectively vs. teams like that? Can we stop inside scoring? Again, UVA killed us on second shots and inside scoring (much coming off dribble-drive). Had Marquette had any decent guard who could get in the lane or make open 3's, would that game have gone to the wire? Their bigs were hurting us for a while, then we sagged off their guards to help down low, but their guards couldn't make open shots to make us pay.
Look, I think we are getting better and better and are putting ourselves in a position to make a deep run, but I think it's important to keep our PERSPECTIVE as this season progresses and we continue to roll to another BE crown. Is our conference truly better this year and giving us the tests we need or not?
Let's keep enjoying the ride and appreciating what Jay has built. We are a top 10 national program now and can beat anyone. I still am cautious in my enthusiasm in that there a a good number of teams that have a talented, quick, play-making guard(s) with athletic, active bigs that can give us a problem come March, especially if we aren't making 3s.
