Should be another close one. The keys for us will be: 1) taking care of the ball, 2) staying connected to their shooters on all their flare screens, and 3) running the offense through Hinton and, in particular, Batties.
We’re at our best when we’re getting Batties involved, but there are too many times where we forget about him. I’d like to see a more concerted effort to have Batties set ball screens for Hinton with Barbour on the strong side to make it harder to help. Force them to either switch so Batties gets a mismatch in the post or a good pick and pop shot from three; the Penn bigs don’t have the foot speed to contest on the perimeter, and Batties should get some open looks there, or some easy closeouts to attack.
In general, we just need to be smarter about getting shots for the guys we wanting shooting. At the Palestra, we had Nesbitt, Eisendrath, Quartey, Ace-Nasteski, and Mannino combine to take—and miss—seven threes. Those possessions are almost turnovers. We can’t do that again.
Last thing: Hinton and Pigge have to be smart about the doubles that will come every time they spin. They need to anticipate those, and try to find Barbour (who it would be nice to run a couple of plays for early to try to get him going sooner rather than later) and Batties for threes.
Keep their bigs from dominating the offensive glass, get deflections and turnovers and some easy fast-break points, and take care of the basketball (watch out for the strips in the lane and Levine gambling for steals), and the Crimson should be fine.
That hurts. I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that a lot of the fouls he’s been taking have been above the shoulders. At some point that goes beyond gamesmanship into “unsportsmanlike”.
I liked the way our defense forced Harvard to burn shot clock before taking contested shots today. The fact that Eisendrath was their second leading scorer says much, as does their 26% shooting percentage from beyond the arc.
It’s interesting that the last two buckets, one by Harvard, then one by Penn, were layups. I suspect that tight perimeter defense made this possible.
The last play by Penn, which looked like an impending handoff to Power, instead allowed Levine to keep the ball and drive to the rim. No help was nearby, clearly because the rest of the Penn team was stationed to keep defenders away from the lane.
TJ credited the coach who was the “Hinton scout” for this designed play. Apparantly the coaching staff knew that Hinton would not switch, but stay with Power,and the slight hesitation by Levine’s defender allowed Levine to get by him enough to get to the hoop. Although Levine’s layup was still very athletic.
