Newell?

[SoonerBounce13]

13 minutes? I don't think he came in to the second have until it was almost half way over. Any reason? Too much shooting? When he finally got in, he shot a three right away and stayed in

 

[thebigabd]

OU was getting kind of stagnant and the lead was slipping from 10, 12, up to around 15 and I kept thinking, "any minute now, they are going to put Newell in for some offense" and he just never came.

 

[CMSOONER]

Because he was off tonight. Forced bad shots, was dribbling into double teams. He looked a little like the Newell of last year, appeared to be a little out of control.

 

[StatGeek]

Because he was off tonight. Forced bad shots, was dribbling into double teams. He looked a little like the Newell of last year, appeared to be a little out of control.

agree completely

 

[Soonerman]

Tonight was bad 40 Cal night (and a bad night for the whole team in general). Like I've said, when he's on his game and shots are falling, he's so much fun to watch and is a great spark. When he's off? It's gonna be rough, because you know he's gonna keep shooting. There will be more of these nights to come, I just hope not too many of them!

 

[BoulderSooner]

he was 2-4 ... its not like his shot was crazy "off"

 

[SoonerBounce13]

he was 2-4 ... its not like his shot was crazy "off"

yeah he only played 13 minutes. I didn't see the first 12 minutes of the game but I didn't see anything bad about his play when he was in there while I was watching

 

[CMSOONER]

There wasn't anything bad, but there wasn't really anything good either. He did knock down 2 shots. Early in the game he forced up two bad threes that SLU capitalized on to stretch their lead. I think Kruger is working on getting some of these guys out of Bad habits. Last nights game looked like last years team.

 

[AdaSooner]

Newell's limited minutes is a mystery to me as well. If you'll think about it, though, our rotation from the time Osby went to the bench with his second foul took on a totally different look than what we had seen in the first four games.

I'll add a few thoughts that are related to the outcome last night, but not necessarily on topic with this discussion:

_Fitz only played 17 minutes and didn't play well when he was on the floor. He has to improve on his four points and 2 rebounds, even in limited minutes, if OU is to be successful going forward.

_Pledger scored in double figures with 11, but he took 13 shots to do it, making only 4 (1 of 4 from three). That was nothing like what we saw from him before last night.

_Blair caught a lot of heat for his performance, and rightly so. His 4 turnovers (at least 3 were unforced) were not what anyone wanted to see in our back up point guard. But for some reason no one seemed to notice that Grooms had only 1 assist, 2 turnovers, 2 rebounds and didn't score a single point in 24minutes. I still want him on the floor as much as possible. But that was not a good game for a starting point guard by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm hoping OU's performance against SLU was an anomaly. One thing is certain, LK and his staff have a few key things to work on in practice.

 

[Mr.B!!!]

My thoughts:

- I think that Arent could be the starter by B12 play, Fitz was just getting killed defensively.

- Pledger is still streaky.

- Grooms will still be good, Blair will still be the back up.

Best thing is that we are still relatively new into the CLK era and have already seen major improvements, no reason to think that will change over one bad loss to a pretty solid team.

 

[WTSooner]

My thoughts:

- I think that Arent could be the starter by B12 play, Fitz was just getting killed defensively.

- Pledger is still streaky.

- Grooms will still be good, Blair will still be the back up.

Best thing is that we are still relatively new into the CLK era and have already seen major improvements, no reason to think that will change over one bad loss to a pretty solid team.

Disagree with you a little bit.

Arent isn't very good at all right now. Terrible on offense, and only a little better on defense. The defense will improve. The offense.....I don't think he'll get any better. We cannot afford to start another guy that cannot score the ball.

I'm not ready to call Pledger streaky, because he wasn't getting many good looks yesterday. And yes that is one of the knocks on him.....that he has trouble creating for himself. We have to do a better job of screening to get him open, and also just maintaining spacing on the floor. We were far too jumbled up last night.

Also disagree on Grooms. What you saw last night when he was on the floor was a player that offered nothing at the offensive end. Practically no penetration and creation for himself or his teammates, and a hesitant shooter. And while I won't say he played poorly on defense, he certainly didn't stand out. There are going to be a several games like this for Grooms, especially once conference play begins. PG's like Grooms are perfect when you have overflowing talent to place around him. When you don't, you get games like last night. JMO.

 

[CMSOONER]

I'm gonna go slightly off topic too on Ada's post. The one glaring point that jumps out at me is that, of no fault of the players, there is no senior leadership on this team and the Juniors aren't leaders. Clark, Newell and Neal who are seeing significant minutes so far are sophomores who are going to still have growing pains. There is not an upperclassman that the younger guys can look up to because Fitz is in no position to give advice and Pledger still hasn't proved he can be consistent and the go to guy. Osby is really good, but he looks like he's still getting comfortable with his own game right now and Grooms is still growing comfortable with D1 ball. This season IMHO is going to be an up and down season as we all expect, but because of the leadership factor. Once these guys get comfortable and confidet in themselves, that's when we're going to start seeing major improvement on team aspects of the game. That's why next year looks so much more promising, more so than the additions of M'Baye, Henry, Hield and Hornbeak.

 

[Mr.B!!!]

Disagree with you a little bit.

Arent isn't very good at all right now. Terrible on offense, and only a little better on defense. The defense will improve. The offense.....I don't think he'll get any better. We cannot afford to start another guy that cannot score the ball.

I'm not ready to call Pledger streaky, because he wasn't getting many good looks yesterday. And yes that is one of the knocks on him.....that he has trouble creating for himself. We have to do a better job of screening to get him open, and also just maintaining spacing on the floor. We were far too jumbled up last night.

Also disagree on Grooms. What you saw last night when he was on the floor was a player that offered nothing at the offensive end. Practically no penetration and creation for himself or his teammates, and a hesitant shooter. And while I won't say he played poorly on defense, he certainly didn't stand out. There are going to be a several games like this for Grooms, especially once conference play begins. PG's like Grooms are perfect when you have overflowing talent to place around him. When you don't, you get games like last night. JMO.

I don't disagree with everything you are saying, but Arent is about 3 months in to D-1 and Fitz is now entering his third year. That said, bad match-up for OU, Saint Louis had pretty good size across the board.

As to Pledger, I agree, it is probably to early to call him streaky. I still think that he is a good player with a chance to be really good at some point, and I really like him posting up.

I'll stick with Grooms as being a solid point guard by B12 play, if for no other reason than I think the team as a whole will be more solid.

 

[quick release]

One of the problems i had with Grooms last night was him picking up his dribble at inopportune times. Hopefully the coaches can work with him to correct that because he will be a key to this team this year.

 

[j2d2]

If I had to guess I would say that, even without St.L's good defense, we were about 20-25% off our game. Add to that very good defense by a veteran , good team and down we go. Osby struck me as the only OU player that was playing well.

 

[DenverSooner]

I would guess Kruger wanted to keep Pledger in for his size when he had both Osby and Fitz in foul trouble.

Also, Clavin blew it on a defensive play when he cheated into the lane too much giving up one of the first made 3 point shots (if I am recalling things correctly, the play definitely happened but I could have it out of sequence). Good coahces often have short leashes when it comes to blowing a defensive assignment.

 

[campbest]

I would guess Kruger wanted to keep Pledger in for his size when he had both Osby and Fitz in foul trouble.

Get this logic out of here.

 

[MNsooner]

I would guess Kruger wanted to keep Pledger in for his size when he had both Osby and Fitz in foul trouble.

Good point. It is hard to give up his size in that situation, especially when Newell isn't clearly an offensive upgrade.