If you would have told me we would have beaten FSU with 17 turnovers, just two shots from Huff (following up his one from Sunday), Key not looking like himself still and just five three pointers I wouldn't have believed it before the game, but I think some keys are really starting to show up for us that give us a better chance to win.
The biggest ones last night to me were:
- Limiting the damage from turnovers. We obviously took potential points of ours off of the board with 17 turnovers, but severely limited the damage on the other end from them.
- Strong rebounding effort by outrebounding them 36-23 and only giving up five offensive rebounds. I would love to see us when we play big send two of the three bigs really crashing the offensive boards with our tendency to miss a ton of shots.
- Making free throws, 20 out of 23 is a great percentage as a team and won us the game
- Limiting the number of three point shots we take. It's great when TW can go 7 for 14 from deep, but not great to shoot 8 for 30 as a team as we did on Sunday. We are far more effective trying to get shots closer in and then looking for 3's when they are open (like Diakite's). I know the defensive played can dictate which shots are open (such as zone vs man), but the other key here I think is limiting those players that should take lots of 3s. It was nice to see Morsell and Key (our two worst three pointer shooters) not take any while Diakite took 3 official 3 pointers (and one long one he made with his toe on the line). Would like to see him out there more as he is one of better 3 point shooters. Clark can hit them too, but only if they are wide open. We should not be left with taking them late in the shot clock with a defender in his face.
Luckily those are all fairly controllable by effort and our mental part of the game.
The biggest ones last night to me were:
- Limiting the damage from turnovers. We obviously took potential points of ours off of the board with 17 turnovers, but severely limited the damage on the other end from them.
- Strong rebounding effort by outrebounding them 36-23 and only giving up five offensive rebounds. I would love to see us when we play big send two of the three bigs really crashing the offensive boards with our tendency to miss a ton of shots.
- Making free throws, 20 out of 23 is a great percentage as a team and won us the game
- Limiting the number of three point shots we take. It's great when TW can go 7 for 14 from deep, but not great to shoot 8 for 30 as a team as we did on Sunday. We are far more effective trying to get shots closer in and then looking for 3's when they are open (like Diakite's). I know the defensive played can dictate which shots are open (such as zone vs man), but the other key here I think is limiting those players that should take lots of 3s. It was nice to see Morsell and Key (our two worst three pointer shooters) not take any while Diakite took 3 official 3 pointers (and one long one he made with his toe on the line). Would like to see him out there more as he is one of better 3 point shooters. Clark can hit them too, but only if they are wide open. We should not be left with taking them late in the shot clock with a defender in his face.
Luckily those are all fairly controllable by effort and our mental part of the game.
