Brown is coming off a heart-breaking, double-OT loss to Holy Cross. I'm sure they are pissed off and ready to challenge the struggling Gophers.
Look out for the Bear's two forwards Matt Mullery and Peter Sullivan. They are scoring 17.2 and 14.4 ppg respectively which accounts for 45% of their team's points.
Whether we win or not shouldn't be in question but the Gophers really need to start acting like a team that wants to win, not one that expects a win will be handed to them.
KEYS
- Half-Court - offense and defense. We need to be able to execute an offense and show some tenacity and toughness on defense. Haven't seen much of it yet but this is game one of five to figure it out. I don't care about shooting percentages or threes-made, I want to see efficiency and shots created from execution.
- Rebounding - this is really starting to concern me after Miami destroyed us on the boards. They grabbed the offensive rebound on 43% of their misses! That is incredible and completely nullified their multitude of turnovers.
- Chemistry - this team is playing like an AAU team that was just thrown together last week, not like a team that returned virtually their entire roster from a year ago. I'd love to see them play together.