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This was our first game in eight days... so I can’t fault the guys for showing a little rust. We stumbled through an ugly first twelve minutes and TAMU-CC hit some early shots, but we recovered and sailed through the latter part of the game to an ultimately comfortable victory.
Let’s break it down.
Is depth a real word?
Does anyone know what depth means? I think it’s a fancy name for an old ship. Who knows. Sounds fake. In any regard... we might not have much of it. The usual suspects (Gilder, Davis, Trocha, and Williams) were on point tonight, but the stat sheet (save for garbage time) looks a little empty otherwise. Our 2nd unit (or even our 1.5th unit) was incapable of pulling away from an inferior squad, which is something to file away.
One final note: Hogg struggled again. He was cold from downtown tonight, and he didn’t try to attack the rim until late in the 2nd half. He’s still got the green light until further notice, but it’s an issue that continues to linger.
It might not matter. Our top end guys are that good.
Our optimal rotation can hang with anyone. That’s not really something we learned tonight, but we saw that in an extremely tight loss against UCLA, which was validated when they went on the road and beat #1 Kentucky in their next game. If we stay out of foul trouble, avoid injuries, and minimize fatigue; we have the talent to stay in any game.
Kudos to Tyler Davis, who had an excellent night with 25 points (a career high) and 8 rebounds on 9-12 shooting.
Tonight was a different way to win.
Just another way of stating the obvious - but we didn’t have our best game tonight, and we got it done. We’ve been pounding lesser teams into submission down low, but the Islanders actually grabbed a surprising edge in rebounds tonight. It’s good for the psyche to lose part of your traditional path to victory (inside scoring or rebounding) and find an additional way to get the W (in this case, better ball movement and transition buckets).
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Our next game is against Denver in two days, and South Carolina State comes to town three days later. If that feels quick... it is. We batched three “softer” games to give us a full week of rest before a huge tilt in Houston against #20 Arizona.
BTHO Denver