Reading positive comments and analysis about this team as the season was getting starting, I went ahead and watched this game to see what some of this talk was about. I wish I hadn't. #SOSDD
I'm not knocking fellow commenters, it's understandable to get a little hopeful with the start of a new season and a zero in the loss column. I sort of figured this would likely be a real test for the team to get a feel for what might come this season.
Again, CNM appears to have amassed a decent collection of lean lengthy reasonably athletic players. They appeared to put forth decent effort overall.
Sadly, discipline and toughness were largely absent just like most every other game of CNM's tenure. Shoot selection is atrocious, as usual. The obvious scout is to let MT jack 3s from the perimeter especially early in the shot clock. This continues to be an obvious problem that the coaching staff does not correct.
I suspect these players are decent shooters. CNM seems to recruit mostly long perimeter players that have reasonably decent shooting skills. If anything, they are not strong or wide enough to finish inside. It's just they continuously and constantly take perimeter shots out of the flow of the offense.
I could go on and on. It looked to me just like what has been on display for the last few years. There is no discernable discipline to offensive or defensive structure, eg. players constantly out of position, jacking 3s out of flow of the offense, poor spacing, generally poor weak side help, lack of consistent cutters from the weak side when handler drives into paint, out of control driving to paint, etc etc etc. It's really just a near unwatchable frustrating mess. Aggravatingly, these same problems do not get corrected.
Some nights, the shots will likely fall better than other nights to allow for a few victories along the way. The up and down nature of shooting% will be the master of the fate of this team rather than structure, discipline, and toughness mastering the fate of the team's season. In other words, it appears to be just more of the same.