Velcro’s USF Bulls Sports Blog

Our USF Bulls clawed their way past ECU today with hustle on both ends of the court and a zone defense that took ECU almost the entire first half to realize they had to shoot their way out of it.  USF rotated very well on the ball reversals and entry passes, and deflected many passes, although they don’t show up on the stat sheet.

 The zone defense finally showed some flaw with about 2 minutes left in the first half when ECU made 3 consecutive 3’s from almost the identical spot in the corner.

But USF regrouped with some smooth shooting from Jesus Verdejo to take the lead into the half.

 In the second half, the Bulls switched up and played some man-on-man defense, and it really caused problems for ECU who had just gotten used to the zone. 

Kentrell Gransberry had 15 pts, 10 boards, 2 blocks in 24 minutes.  He was just too strong for ECU in the post.  They did a decent job of double teaming him most the night, but he still found a way to generate offense.

Chris Howard has been looking pretty good and confident this season.  In the first few games, his turnover margin wasn’t great, but he has been filling up the stat sheet both with scoring and assists, and tonight was no exception.  9 Assists from our floor leader compared to just 1 turnover, which came on a travelling call while he was inbounding the ball in the 2nd half.

As a team, USF had 22 assist to go against 9 turnovers.  Much better than the early games. 

The team seems to be gaining confidence, and I am impressed with Orane Chin’s play.  Tonight he had 17 pts, 7 rebounds, 3 assists to go with 3 turnovers in 34 minutes.  Pretty good performance from the true freshman.  The other true freshman, Dominique Jones, registered, 10 pts, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists in 25 minutes.   Both frosh are now established as major contributors.

The major concerns from this game were that Bozeman finally looked human, or sub-human actually, from beyond the arc.  He was a scorching 13 of 17 on the season and today he went 0-5.  13-22 isn’t too shabby though, and he’ll rarely go 0-5 in a game.   He’s just too pure of a shooter.

Things are only going to get better when Aaron Holmes enters the mix in a couple weeks.

I’m as disappointed that we lost to Cleveland State as anyone, but not because I thought we were absolutely going to win, because i wasn’t sure.  I thought we’d have a tough battle, since Kentrell had to sit out a game.   And sure enough, we did have a battle.  The disappointing part was that we had the game in control very late in the game, and then we made a series of very poor plays on both ends of the floor to open the door right up for CSU.

 But, more importantly, we did get some answers.  First, Dominique Jones is the real deal.  He was the best player on the floor last night, bar none.  He lead our team in rebounding and played point guard at least half the night.  I don’t think that stat will continue with KG in there (i know it won’t), but that is pretty amazing.

BJ Ajayi has some huge potential to help out KG.  While he isn’t the same type of threat that KG is, he has moves reminiscent of Solomon Jones during his transfer season.  I hope our coaches can do as good a job with BJ as Burnell did with SoJo.

Bozeman can shoot the 3.  Every open shot he hit except the final shot to tie at the end.  Our best lineup consisted of Bozeman, Jones, Howard, BJ and Jesus.  When that 4 guard set was on the floor, our ball movement was at its best.

I really thought we’d be the team battling back in this game near the end to take the victory.   But I think there is potential with KG back to run off a good string of games leading into conference play and getting Holmes in the mix in mid december.

It is going to be an intesting ride.  The loss hurt, but there is quite a bit to be excited about.

 That is all for now.  

I’m completely new to this blogging thing, but I figured I’d give it a whirl. The Stan Heath era is about to kick off tonight with the home openever versus Cleveland State. It will be interesting to see if there is optimism in our fan base to start the season, or if the fans will wait to show up until we actually have a good record. I’m hoping we have a good turnout. We will need it without Gransberry in the lineup. Our very young team is going to need every bit of help to get the victory against a much larger team. Our starting lineup’s elder statesman is Jesus Verdejo. After that, we have 2 true freshmen, a r.s. sophmore, and a junior cc transfer.

I feel very comfortable with Chris Howard at PG. He is as quick and fast as ever, finally healthy from his 2 ACL injuries on the same knee. Freshman Dominique Jones looks to be a very physical player who will crash the boards and intiate contact on the offensive side with a determination I have only seen out of KG on this team in recent years. That is impressive considering he’s a shooting guard. After that, I don’t know what to expect, especially in game one. I expect uptempo, which i would think would play into Jesus Verdejo’s strong suit. When he is driving with the ball, he is a tremendous finisher. We should see a high scoring game, with contributions from every player available on the roster.