Vandy Guard Play

by bloggywo on Dec 17, 2009 2:14 PM EST Comment 3 comments

Whenever I hear the words "Vanderbilt Basketball" and "guard" mentioned in the same sentence, I usually get a feeling of calm, of comfort, and most of all, warm fuzziness. Obviously partly because of this and definitely this, most definitely the first minute of this, and finally of something like The Artist formerly known as Jermaine Beal.

This season, however, Vandy guard play has given me a deathly cold feeling of dread and trepidation, as if I expect a turnover or a brick to happen every possession. Now, I know it's early in the season, but these are things that need to get worked out sooner or later or it's gonna be a long SEC road.

Let's take a look at some numbers. Brad Tinsley is averaging close to 29 minutes a game. He is only contributing 6.5 points a game, with 3 assists and 2 boards. Most distressingly, Tinsley is missing open three after open three, going 33 % from beyond the arc. I love his quick play, quick drives, and willingness to take an open shot, but if Vandy can't get the inside / outside game working with Brad, defenses will gobble up A.J.

Now, this is not all on Tinsley. Golden boy John Jenkins, (How many times have we heard on broadcasts that he was the leading scorer in the country last year) is hitting only 37 percent of his threes (15-41), and has missed open threes consistently in big situations. The one saving grace for John is how big he came up at the line in the Missouri game.

Jermaine is probably the most distressing, seeing his attitude during the WKU game (I'm not sure if Kevin's message was a good one to send), and more importantly his performance. Jermaine is only 17-53 from beyond the arc for a 32 % clip. I think all this great player needs is some confidence, and that is not provided by a benching in Nashville vs. WKU.

Hopefully Saturday will be a start to a recovery for our three point ills. As we hear all the time, shooters need to keep shooting. I agree, but eventually some need to go down or we keep losing games that we should win vs teams like Illinois and Western Kentucky. Gross.

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3P%

In all honesty, 33% really isn’t a terrible number from beyond the arc. It’s not great, and I’m sure we’d all like it to get closer to 40%, but 33 you can live with. What I thought we were supposed to expect out of this team was stronger frontcourt play from Ogilvy, Taylor, Tchiengang and Ezeli. So far, except maybe for Taylor, we really haven’t seen that. If there’s no threat inside, you can play harder perimeter defense. Zone defense has been good against the Dores all year long, too, and no, they haven’t been able to shoot their way out of it.

I’m glad Stallings is reportedly working on defense because that always leads to easier offense, but I haven’t seen a well run half-court set out of the Dores yet this year. Hopefully the 8 free days of practice will have helped. We’ll find out soon enough.

Anything but Gatorade - yet another SEC sports blog

by Anything but Gatorade on Dec 18, 2009 9:37 AM EST reply actions

Shan's 42 against MSU

Deserves it’s own post.

But I agree with the concern that the Beal/Tinsley/Jennings trio isn’t getting it done. At least Jennings can be called streaky in his shooting – Tinsley has yet to put enough shots together to constitute a streak.

I feel like if we’re relying on Beal to score to win games, we’re in trouble. He’s at his best when he’s setting it up for everyone else and scoring at his own pace. Maybe that’s been the problem so far – he’s put the burden on himself and clogged up playmaking across the board. I haven’t seen enough of him this year to really expand on that though.

by Train Island on Dec 18, 2009 11:45 AM EST reply actions

I Think You're Right

I feel like if we’re relying on Beal to score to win games, we’re in trouble. He’s at his best when he’s setting it up for everyone else and scoring at his own pace. Maybe that’s been the problem so far – he’s put the burden on himself and clogged up playmaking across the board. I haven’t seen enough of him this year to really expand on that though.

Jermaine needs to be our PG first, look to score second. I don’t think it will adversely affect his average too much, because I think that will open things up for our offense which will open things up for him. He’s putting the horse before the cart (excuse the hackneyed phrase).

Anchor of Gold

by KingJamesIV on Dec 18, 2009 12:49 PM EST up reply actions