The defense is consistent. The rebounding is solid. The things Coach Dixon likes to preech. A good thing for the USA teamwhen the shots were not falling against Greece. The US still won 85-69.
“It was a little different game for us, a kind of grind it out game. It wasn’t real pretty as far as offense, but I thought we defended some things pretty well,” USA head coach Jamie Dixon stated. “I thought Howard (Thompkins) played well, we got the ball inside like we wanted to. We figured out some things as the game went on, so it was a good win. They’re a good team, they got some guys who can score.”
This one had lots of fouls as the USA teamwas too strong inside for Greece.
Ashton Gibbs is getting plenty of minutes and playing point. He finished with 8 points and 0 assists and 0 turnovers. There were only 10 assists for the entire USA squad. An inside game, is familiar to Gibbs.
How much easier is for you as the point guard when you have it going inside like the team did tonight?
Being a good basketball team always requires a big time inside presence. We had that last year in my college season, so I’m used to big guys dominating inside and that’s what Howard (Thompkins) did today. He dominated on the boards and in scoring. He was a dominate force and that’s what we need.
While the U-19 team has been taking and making a lot of 3s, according to Howard Thompkins, it isn’t like Coach Dixon radically altered his approach.
Did Coach Dixon emphasize the guys getting you the ball inside.
Well he wants us to start our offense inside out anyway. Coach wants us to start our offense inside out anyway, but we just have such great shooters it just doesn’t seem like that sometimes. Coach Dixon always emphasizes for us to play hard on the inside, go from the inside out.
Just in case anyone thinks Pitt will start mad-boimbing from outside this year. Heck, it seems like Coach Dixon has been running things as he would if this was a Pitt squad.
Teams seems to struggle against your defense in the second half, do you feel like you have a fitness edge over some of the other teams?
Well I’ll be honest with you. Coach Dixon and everyone ran us in the floor when we were in training. So we’re definitely ready for that second half of defense, and that was his most important objective, second half of defense. He wasn’t so much worried about our offense because we have a bunch of dynamic scorers, so he just banged on the second half of defense.
Next up is Puerto Rico, where Mike Rosario — Rutgers — had a Levon Kendall-esque performance with 54 points to help Puerto Rico escape with a 90-89 win over France.
