Not trying to be a smartass. Did NMSU and Depaul find two-way players or are they 25 points better on just one side? I realize that those are just two games, but right now, I see us as catching UT before they came together, needing overtime to squeak past teams we used to use as warmups for the serious play in conference, and getting pounded by decent mid-majors. I could be wrong. Happens all the time.
Has the game changed to more of an offensive game? Yes. But everything is relative. Forty Minutes of Hell might be more Forty Minutes of Heck. Football or basketball, it is the same with both, you can have great defense, but it is hard to win if the offense can't score any points. It holds true the other way, too. If you have a great offense but can't stop the other team at all, well you get Mike Price bad football. Coaches make choices and that has a lot to do with it. Price was offense. But he had defensive coordinators and they recruited players. Ergo, you get Kugler and Dimel wanting to hold the ball the entire game whether they score or not-and that will lose games in a most boring way, but still lose them without points. So, coaches make choices.
Now, there are smart ways of being strong one way or the other and dumb ways to be strong one way or another. I have no problem with pounding the football-if you can pound it all the way into the end zone AND win doing it. I loved watching Price's fly circus perform, but hated that other teams went through us like crap through a goose.
Haskins won with defense. I love it. But his offense played just as important roll in it as did the defense. He was willing to bet that if he gave you his defensive Hell he could stop you, but it also wore on his players legs to do it. So, he made sure that his offense rand the opponents defense around to wear their legs out, too. He figured out that if he could take the skill out of the game it came down to stamina and will. He ran his players until their feet bled. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. BYU could always get more talent. What pissed them off so much was that Haskins and his teams were tougher. And it drove them crazy.
Barbee was all offense but he made sure he had great shooters outside and a whole army of leaping, board crashing guys that could put it back up and in. Then play good defense.
So far, from Golding with his players, from what I have seen, offensively we just don't seem to be able to shoot the ball that well. Then, it seems to me that our defense is dependent on an overplaying that often takes the defender out of control defense. It puts a lot of strain on the legs. I think it is hard play, but not smart defense, if that makes sense. Then, late n games the legs fade and even the shooting suffers from it. I could be full of shit. Some might be sure of it. One last thing. Any team that wants to beat the Miners just needs to press them full court. NMSU exposed it and they were able to stop even having to after they built up their lead. To me, that showed a serious lack of coaching. Maybe it was because they are a new team. Idk. Itis early yet, and we are newly constituted. I think that, and this is going to sound crazy, Sibley may be a real key to this offense and I am surprised we haven't seen it yet. I think he may come out of it and start showing his ability that got him recruited to Gtown. We started seeing it last year, but it seems to have been put away with the new team. Again, Idk.
