So what happened there? Surprised to see the Welsh actually puled it off. Were we too confident?
A little. I was a tad surprised how confident Wolph had appeared prior to the game, I'd not seen the disparity between the two teams that he appeared to see.
It looks like the game was lost at the SG/SF spots...63-31 for just the starters at those two positions...In fact, if you look at the boxscore it was pretty even except the 3's made.....Good win Malice.
Thank you. My SF is only 19 too... and my SG's going to be pretty effective this season.
Wolph, I don't think the game ratings accurately reflect the game much. I was pretty surprised at several things the post game analysis pointed to.
- Cymru player ratings. I thought Bridges & Marshall did much better than their ratings reflected. Whilst I feel that Hanson was probably (overall) the best player in the game, I think Bridges had the best game of any player. And he only scored a 7.5.
- The game flow. That... was bizarre. I thought our team (Welsh!) did much better on that. The end score flattered Nippon a lil' - for most of the second half we were up by 10-12.
our SG had 7-14 (50% shooting) 9 assists and 1 TO with a game high (for both teams) 5 steals. Our SG was better, but he played their PG on D. Meaning their 20y/o SG destroyed Ikouga to the tune of 35 points. Ouch Nippon. I'm guessing that their SF got the benefit of a good flow from weak defence of our 19s Ikouga and Kentaro with a R&G tactic. I also have the option of PG Horiguchi SG Kishita SF Honda . . . It will cost us a little rebounding but it also allows PF Tsunami and C Yasujiro which ups our OD everywhere (insanely) as well as outside shooting, flow etc. And we can run motion then.
This game was a huge success to look at our team. I will probably start Motoori next time in a similar type experiment.
Worth noting that "their SF" is 19 too. WIth regards to Honda playing on Hanson, I thought that was a good move. I think Hanson's lack of visible impact on the game was due to this. Had you played Honda on Marshall, I'm relatively confident the margin could have been bigger (Marshall's JS is better than Hanson's - substantially, and it would allow Hanson to have a greater impact).
I'm very happy with the result. I knew coming in to the Welsh gig that the first season was going to be difficult, but the following would be better. We have good players in the 1-3 slots, and solidity at PF/C. Happy with that win.
Thanks for the game.
http://with-malice.com/ - The half-crazed ramblings of a Lakers fanatic in Japan