Good win tonight for our Bucks. Dominating performance, and even though I think Indiana is going to end up as one of the worst teams we play all season, we owned them in every facet of the game except trash talking when your down by 20 points (more on that later). They only reason they even got to 53 was because we got bored out there and didn't hustle after rebounds like we should have late in the first and in the second half. A few more thoughts...
Diebs had an amazing first half, and then didn't do anything in the second half besides get a couple of assists and a couple of steals. Not that we needed him to do anything at all in the second half. Love seeing him with some confidence in his shot and I still think he is one of the best passers I have seen. In the second half all I was thinking was that if he could develop a dribble-drive with his left hand he could be so much better. Watch, defenders always play him a step to his right because they know he is uncomfortable putting the ball on the floor with his left and taking it to the hole, and this prevents him from being able to drive with his right because defenders are overplaying it. If he could learn how to go left and open up the dribble drive facet of his game (to both sides), and give himself a little more space cause defenders have to play off him a little, wow.
Buford- excellent game, he is so smooth, and he is playing much better defense than at the beginning of the season.
BJ looked ok, he is improving but I was disappointed I didn't see much of a back-to-the-basket game from him tonight, especially considering the size advantage he had over Pritchard. Oh well, those dunks were pretty, especially that last one.
Dallas- no points? Wish we could start to see some consistency out of him on offense. He was playing angry the whole game too, that play where he and Pritchard got tangled up and went down, I was watching it the entire time, he could have easily disentangled himself from Pritchard, and instead decided to throw him to the ground. And not get called for a foul.
I love seeing 23 assists on 28 made field goals (82%). This is a facet of the game that we have struggled with some, especially against Minnesota where we had 8 assists on 18 made field goals (44%) and Michigan State, where we had 12 assists on 23 made field goals (52%). Granted some of that high number was just a result of us shooting unbelievably well, but still, those are very good numbers. 5 players in double figures is also a pretty good number to see. I was very happy with tonights game...
All that said, I am almost scared about some potential backlash from tonights game. We shot very well, especially from three, and I am honestly kinda worried that this game is going to give our team the mentality of, well its ok we are a great shooting team lets just keep shooting. Especially in the first half, it was all we were doing, and when your hot there is no reason to stop. I am just a little worried about what happens when we go cold, and do we say ok we aren't hitting right now lets run our offense and get our bigs involved, or do we say but we are a great shooting team we will hit eventually lets just keep shooting, and dig ourselves a big hole. If we take this game for what it was, a particularly good shooting night in which we did a lot of things pretty well, and build on it then it will be good. But I'm worried that the team, which has been struggling with an identity since we lost Lighty, is going to take this game and say look what we did to Indiana lets make that our identity, and when we are only shooting 40% from the field and 30% from three then its going to get us in trouble. I'm hoping that doesnt happen.
Last thing, I can't express how glad I am now that we got Jeremie Simmons over Devan Dumes. Beginning of the game I was pointing Dumes out to my friends and saying yeah he almost came to tOSU he is supposed to be pretty good. After watching that game, I can't think of any way to describe Dumes except punk. Talking trash when you make a bucket and your team is down by 15? Really? Get back and play some fucking defense already, you clearly haven't yet this half. He was constantly instigating conflicts, and it looked to me like Dallas and Evan both wanted to kill him. I swear the explosion we saw out of Turner late in the second half was a direct result of him wanting to embarass Dumes as much as possible. I was half hoping Thad would put Peters in with the sole assignment of going in and fouling Dumes really, really hard. Not impressed, at all.