Yale takes on a moribund Albany team up in Springfield. I realize this is A Different Era of College Basketball, but Albany still misses Will Brown something fierce. A shame they’re not what they once were.
Certainly things to nitpick but 11-1 going into winter break is fantastic. Braithwaite and Fox is some firepower coming off the bench.
Alabama after nearly 3 weeks off will be brutal but hey we pull a shocker and all of a sudden we’re an at large team!
1 Like
not sure what to takeaway except some individual efforts like brathwaite who busted out on both ends.
I am concerned Abt individual defense still though I cldnt tell if albany just cldnt miss when we got up 19 and benefitted from street ball offense and Helter skelter d.
Our sub patterns were interesting.
Samson is now wrapping his knee. He doesn’t look as explosive to me as earlier in the year. He did have a double double and is rebounding better than ever.
I was fascinated by Albany’s defensive game plan and they are very athletic.they did a good job of pushing us off our perimeter spots and forcing us to work the baseline game.
When they get healthy and hit fts they could be a problem in conference
2 Likes
I went back and watched a few minutes of this game. The individual defensive effort is frankly kind of shocking. There were a lot of straight-line drives where the defender just didn’t stay in front. The backcourt got bullied whenever they did manage to stay in front. Samson needed help whenever he got posted up. The individual defensive effort needs to get substantially better, or this team isn’t going to have a very high ceiling. I hope they’re able to refocus and figure some things out during the exam break.
As a side note, I saw some discussion of Yale’s at-large chances yesterday. The consensus seems to be that there’s a possibility even with an Alabama loss, but they’d need to go 13-1 or better in conference. Torvik’s Wins Above Bubble stat supports that take, but I’m not sure 13-1 in conference would be good enough. (I also don’t think the defense is good enough to go 13-1 in conference right now, but that’s another thing altogether.)
2 Likes
agree, in general.
I don’t think Samson needed a lot of help. Their big scored 3 points after the first couple of minutes when Samson got burned by helping and he got one of his dunks
I don’t think Samson is moving or exploding as well on defense though. This undermines my argument that he can help mitigate drives as he didnt or can’t right now
Big departure from first few games. There is a chance they want him to board better and this is easier when you don’t contest everything as evidenced by last 2 games.
But who knows.
1 Like