Orr Presser

Coach Orr, ending a four-day period of unprecedented media availability, held a regular press briefing yesterday.  I listened to it, and found it pretty interesting.

A few things.  He says he is a big picture guy, and that he thinks we are making progress.  While we are 1-6, we still have 24 more games to play, which is pretty mind-boggling when you think about it.  So, he sees that the team still has a lot to play for.

Much of the press conference centered on our shooting woes.  He says that we are running good offense and getting good shots, and that they are being taken by people who can shoot the ball, and they will eventually start to go in.  He says guys are in the gym working on their shots...it is just something that isn't happening right now.  Someone asked him about self-fulfilling prophecies, and he is really one big on one kind of prophecy, although he conceded that if shots were falling you'd find yourself more confident.

He thought we played better in every game at Detroit, and that we played the kind of defense we needed against Albany, but hurt ourselves with poor rebounding.  (Quick note, Coach Orr is even talking a little bit like a newfangled tempo-free stats guy when he talks about the number of offensive rebounds we get in the context of the number of shots we missed, which is exactly how it should be looked at).  He cited several players as putting together some decent minutes.

Overall, he is optimistic that in the big picture the team is making progress.  He notes that it is hard to improve during games because of the pressure of winning and losing, but that the team has all week now to practice and run through specific issues leading up to the MSU game.

Speaking of which....Coach Orr might be funny in private, but he is pretty serious publicly.  He was asked how his team was going to prepare for the Izzone, and he said "where would we go to simulate that?" which was actually pretty funny.

One last thing.  He has said several times that he prefers to have a set starting lineup, yet has used 6 lineups in 7 games this season.  Beyond that, as I noted Sunday, the playing time patterns are all over the place.  A guy will get huge minutes in one game and then be in single digits the next game.

I just think he is really searching to find out what is going to work.  He is getting uneven performances from a lot of the young guys, which you expect.  They are great one game, and then lost the next.

So, that's how the Coach feels about 25% into this season.  Nowhere to go from here but up.

Starting lineups