Rice @ UCF: Post-game Review (L 66-69)

Apparently we are not a mirror of Davidson University. Jermaine Taylor looked like Stephen Curry last night, just without the minimal scoring help Curry gets. I understand that most of our players are playing their first year in college (Rompza, Tyler, Sosa, Gaynor, Weathers, Baez from last night), but were they this scared to shoot the ball in high school? I can’t imagine that Kirk would tell them NOT to shoot, so I’m not sure what they’re afraid of. Not one starter other than Jermaine took more than 5 shots last night. FIVE.

AJ Rompza had a rough game last night, getting in foul trouble early. I have to say, we need AJ Rompza in the game. He seems to be the only player out there that doesn’t play like he’s terrified and overmatched. He plays with intensity and confidence, and that is exactly the thing we need this year. Our gears of our offense seem to grind to an immediate stop whenever Rompza comes out of the game. No one on our team has the speed or will to drive to the hole and either go up for the layup or kick it out for a shot.

Part of the deficit we incurred through most of the game had to do with our perimeter defense, the other part came from Rice’s incredible three point shooting. To begin the first half Rice had open shots on three pointers innumerous times, and nailed just about all of them. When we actually started to get a hand in the face of shooters, they STILL hit shots. I saw at least two incredible fadeaway shots sink from beyond the arc, and for that I will give Rice their props.

One other side-effect of having no one to drive to the hoop or play strong inside (plus a few terrible “no calls” by the officials), is a huge lack of foul shots. Jermaine shot 12 for 13 from the line, that’s awesome. No one else on our team took a foul shot last night. Not a single player. Seems like an issue to me.