11-06-2009, 10:49 AM
- Went to Meet the Bruins last night. Poor turnout overall in my opinion. I don’t know how many showed up last year, but there were half as many folks there as I expected. Pepsi came strong with free drinks and Belmont t-shirts.
- Byrd wore a microphone and he was good at it. However, he didn’t seem to really enjoy that too much. Really preached ball security and taking shots within the offense (at times was not happy with either aspect). Lots of praise for hustle. Down the stretch he was really trying to pump up the blue team who was trailing to play hard, aggressive defense and they responded.
- He introduces all of the players and let them dunk. Hanlen instead shot about a 35 foot three instead and airballed. That may be the last airball we see from him. He can shoot it.
- We will be a force inside this year. However, the bigs had several turnovers early. They seem to know each other’s tendencies pretty well right now.
- Since they were playing each other and Johnny Rice was out (foot troubles) and MD was at class, there was very little subbing during a 20 minute scrimmage. The guys were getting pretty gassed out there. Byrd even tinkered with some pressing. They were going hard and they had trouble making shots down the stretch when they were wearing down.
- The game had two referees. Byrd overruled one of their calls on an out-of-bounds play. He was playfully critical of them on the mic too.
- Overall there is a lot of potential there, but we have a pretty steep learning curve. Some of the pre-conference games may be brutal this year. We won’t be taking teams like Tennessee to the wire this year. I am thinking maybe 5th place in the ASun, but tons of potential for the future.
I’ll post player-specific stuff soon.
- Byrd wore a microphone and he was good at it. However, he didn’t seem to really enjoy that too much. Really preached ball security and taking shots within the offense (at times was not happy with either aspect). Lots of praise for hustle. Down the stretch he was really trying to pump up the blue team who was trailing to play hard, aggressive defense and they responded.
- He introduces all of the players and let them dunk. Hanlen instead shot about a 35 foot three instead and airballed. That may be the last airball we see from him. He can shoot it.
- We will be a force inside this year. However, the bigs had several turnovers early. They seem to know each other’s tendencies pretty well right now.
- Since they were playing each other and Johnny Rice was out (foot troubles) and MD was at class, there was very little subbing during a 20 minute scrimmage. The guys were getting pretty gassed out there. Byrd even tinkered with some pressing. They were going hard and they had trouble making shots down the stretch when they were wearing down.
- The game had two referees. Byrd overruled one of their calls on an out-of-bounds play. He was playfully critical of them on the mic too.
- Overall there is a lot of potential there, but we have a pretty steep learning curve. Some of the pre-conference games may be brutal this year. We won’t be taking teams like Tennessee to the wire this year. I am thinking maybe 5th place in the ASun, but tons of potential for the future.
I’ll post player-specific stuff soon.