Just got back from the game. Happy with improved ball movement even though that team we played against was awful. Good news is that it appears the false-motion halfcourt offense is gone, and thank heavens for that.
-Jakarr's approach in terms of playing within 8-10 feet of the rim improved, but I'm worried that he's put himself into some bad basketball habits. He missed a number of shots in which he should've used the glass and decided to instead finesse his shot in. He also did the one-hand-rebounding nonsense that drives me crazy. He needs to not worry about doing things the pretty way.
-Gift feasted tonight and it does looks like his hands are improved and I really liked his energy on the glass on both ends. With that said, I believe he feasted off of the low-hanging-fruit his first year as well, so lets see if he'll get minutes or be effective vs. the big boys.
-Hooper is an interesting case. In the first game and the first half tonight his shot looked rushed and I thinkkkk it was nerves but it's hard to tell. You could definitely tell things slowed down for him a bit in the second half and he held his follow-through and was in a better rhythm. I think the jury is still out on him because we have to see how effective he can be with the pace and physicality of the bigtime Division 1 game. He only played for 4 minutes vs Harvard, so this may take him some time to get used to the style of play. He will definitely get multiple opportunities to prove he can make it work at this level, so we'll see. Even tonight against a weak opponent, the game was a bit fast for him at times.
-Dom is an animal and is quickly becoming my favorite player on the team. His energy is really palpable. Even though Humboldt didn't score much from the outset, I really thought we played much of the first half on our heels defensively and wasn't pressuring the ball enough or being active enough. Dom coming in and our zone helped to change things. I really hope we see an extremely aggressive zone that plays into our style. We cannot just sit back and let teams run their stuff in the halfcourt. We're not that type of team.
Really excited for the first true test on Friday.