COURT REPORT: Pack battles Beavers in home opener
Nevada head coach Mark Fox stopped Lyndale Burleson from answering a question Friday when a reporter asked the senior what was wrong with the struggling Wolf Pack offense.
“You don’t answer that, ‘Dale,” Fox said. “I’ll take that one.”
Fox responded by saying it’s harder for young teams to become proficient on offensive than it is on defense.
Nevada (1-1) shot 32.7 percent from the field Tuesday in its 65-51 loss at San Diego. The Wolf Pack shot 24.1 percent in the second half.
That’s a dramatic drop from last season’s 48 percent from the field.
“Offensively we are not the team we expected to be,” Fox said.
Nevada will get a chance to correct its offensive output 7 p.m. Saturday against Oregon State in the Wolf Pack’s home opener.
Keys to the game:
Aggressive offense
Nevada forward Luke Babbitt paced the Wolf Pack with 20 points and 12 rebounds in the season opener against Montana State, but he followed with an unimpressive effort at San Diego.
Babbitt was reduced to three points and five rebounds against a team that qualified for the NCAA tournament last season.
This weekend, Nevada would like to see the offensively productive Babbitt that performed well against Montana State.
Oregon State lost its only game this season to Howard 47-45, but its defense was more than prevalent. The Beavers held Howard to 36 percent (17 of 47) from the field.
But the Beavers still come into Reno as a struggling team.
Oregon State failed to win one conference game last season (0-18).
Nevada will look to run against the talent-lacking PAC-10 team that finished last in the conference last year.
The Wolf Pack will win if it can take the Beavers out of their half-court game. Nevada needs to run to exploit a Beavers team that lacks depth on its bench. The Beavers used only three players off the bench against Howard.
Contain post passing
Oregon State’s new head coach Craig Robinson came within a last-second shot of getting his first win as a PAC-10 coach last week against Howard.
Robinson led Brown University, of the Ivy League, to its best win total in school history last season (19).
He graduated from Princeton University in 1983 and is expected to bring portions of the Princeton styled offense as a coach in the PAC-10. The Princeton offense focuses on ball movement along the post, spreading defenses away from the basket as it looks to find the open man cutting toward the basket.
It is a slow styled offense that Nevada will have to adjust to, Fox said.
“They’ve played one game,” Fox said. “It’s really hard to gauge exactly how they’re going to play. But they’re going to be disciplined and cerebral in they’re play, and for us that’s going to pose a challenge.”
Guard Rickey Claitt started all 40 minutes in Oregon State’s loss to Howard. Clait started 15 times and appeared in every game for the Beavers in 2007-08. He averaged three points and finished second on the team in assists (69).
Forward Seth Tarver, who may be Oregon State’s most athletic player and biggest threat to attack the basket, will help Claitt.
Tarver ranked second on the team in points per game last season (9.6) and led the team in minutes played (28.4 minutes/game). Tarver led Oregon State with 10 points last week against Howard.
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