Re: impressions of the first game

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 11:30 AM 11/3/00 -0500, Jamey Rallis wrote:
>Rebounding.  Why was it 4 on 1 so often, with only V or Batgirl going for
>a board?  I blame Pitino on this one.  If Twon is supposed to be getting
>back on defense, someone else should be crashing the boards.  Griffin did,
>although he was outmatched at times, but
>Stith/Williams/Moiso/Pierce/Walker were all running back on defense, or
>fast breaking on offense.  SOMEONE has to rebound, and preferably more
>than one.  It's not much more effective having 3 or 4 people running
>immediately instead of 2.

I have a feeling that this was a specific strategy for Detroit, and not
what we're going to see every game. Pitino was describing Detroit as a team
that would want to fast break at every opportunity. They have a few guys
that don't have much offensive ability in a halfcourt game -- Wallace,
Jerome Williams, and whoever they decided to use at center. Pitino was
probably willing to give up some offensive rebounding opportunities to
prevent them from getting those easy fast break opportunities that their
team is designed for, instead restricting them to a halfcourt offense
(which was terrible). At the same time, Detroit sends the same people to
crash the offensive boards so they were easy to run on -- plus they were
tired from the last game. It probably wasn't in the game plan to give up
quite so many offensive rebounds but we had some nice fast breaks that got
easy baskets for Walker and Battie. Detroit's kind of like the Celtics in
Pitino's first year. We actually got quite a lot of offensive rebounds but
it wasn't because we were a good rebounding team. It was because we shot a
poor percentage, giving us a lot of opportunities to rebound, and sent a
lot of people to the boards, which made us pretty easy to run on.

Anyway, the strategy worked well enough to win =) but I think that Jamey
and others have made a good point, rebounding will be an issue with this
team. By the way, on the subject of team rebounds, we probably don't want
to read too much into it because it's kind of a weird statistic. Among
other things you get a team rebound when the opponent misses his first free
throw. But the rebounding will definitely have to be a team effort, much
like it was early last season before Fortson got healthy. And we're
probably going to need a lot of rebounds from the center position.

Alex