Familiar pattern. Good first half. Good Defense. Good interior scoring. Competitive on the boards. Poor shooting from outside.
They now have a short bench and JJ is the only rotation player who can muster any real threat from three.
Player attrition is obviously a big factor. At this point, with the current roster, they simply don’t have the personnel to solve this problem. Could give more minutes to paragon and O’Sullivan who have good percentages, but MM sees an unwelcome tradeoff.
Langham seems like an anchor going forward. Can they keep him?
I would imagine that the game plan for today is a preview for what we’ll see the rest of the season. Slow down the game, play tough defense, get gritty offense in the paint and by cleaning up the boards. Paragon and O’Sullivan are better shooters, in theory, but I think they both represent downgrades on the defensive end. Bruno held Princeton just under a point per possession and still lost by 10, so they don’t have a ton of margin of error to work with on the defensive end.
You can see the faint outlines of what might be a decent Ivy team comprised of potential returners Jenkins, Loughlin, Langham, Rochester, and Dabo. Who knows who sticks around, who comes in, etc. Plenty of basketball to be played before that becomes a real topic of conversation.
I like kinsman’s notion that there could be an answer in the squad already. That does happen in the Ivies. But NIL and the portal also cut deeply in this league. Lesburt alone is the solution to Brown’s problem. If he were on the team, they possibly have a winning record in Ivy play and are well in the mix for at least a playoff spot or even a nice seed after Yale. The margins are slim in this league. A team like Brown can’t sustain losing top players in-season like we have the last two years.
Brown seems to lose players where it can least afford to do so. Last year, it was Nana. This year, with outside shooting a question mark, Brown lost its outside shooters – Lesburt and Brady Loughlin to injury and then departure, and not even Luke Paragon played today. Uchidiuno was great earlier this year but has struggled recently. Hard to win without outside shooting.
I think Uchidiuno needs to come back off the bench. It’s hard to believe but all the numbers say he not only shoots better when coming off the bench, he shoots WAY better coming off the bench. For whatever reason. He shoots 28 pct from the field when he starts, and 46 pct when he comes off the bench. With a pretty substantial sample size. He’s 9-40 in his recent three starts. Have him come in off the bench.
The problem is Langham has also been better off the bench than he has been starting. He is in a rhythm now that he’s going hard to the basket more.
Today was just ineptitude shooting the ball. There were way too many good shots - including a number of layups - that were just missed. Princeton helped by being similarly awful for most of the game. But very hard to have your two best shooters not playing. A little surprised Paragon didn’t see time, but the rotation was shortened. I know MWJ is the only other ball handler but he was maddening to watch on offense today.
Game was tied 41-41 with both teams struggling. MM got a tech and it cost them. Princeton saw the ball go in twice and all of the sudden in those last 7:30 they scored 23 points.