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Bloggin' Rick Pitino has made a triumphant return to the Interwebz this Monday morning to discuss the things he learned from his team's 71-55 exhibition victory over Bellarmine on Sunday.
Here's a portion:
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What I learned for us to make our offense run smooth is Quentin must be on the floor for major minutes. He makes us go and gets paint touches the best on our team, along with Damion. His final hurdle is defensive rebound or get deflections, which he did not get any against Bellarmine. Now you may say, "why do you need your point guard rebounding?" Simple. Very few point guards hit the glass; they run back for transition defense. Q has free reign to chase the ball down. I told him we expect five-to-six rebounds per game and six-to-seven deflections.
I also learned we are further along defensively than I thought. Holding a great shooting and passing team to 32% from the field and 22% on three point shooting is excellent for the initial outing. Bellarmine has some legit post players and will be an excellent contender this season.
Our front court played hard and intelligent. Donovan has shown big improvement in his jumper, but zero rebounds with his athleticism is unacceptable. Ralph Willard said it best, that a few of our freshman would be a deer in headlights the first time out in the Yum! Donovan, Ray, and Ryan showed that, but will be better next time out. Really pleased with our performance. The magic word is potential that leads to great upside.
You can read the full entry here.