Aaron J. Simpson

Some thoughts from last nights DePaul/Notre Dame exhibition game: - Overall, not concerned with the direct results, but there was still some areas of concern. - DePaul tried lots of different lineups because they could. You shouldn't put a lot of stock into who played when and where. DePaul also didn't foul at the end of game to try and extend it. That's how you know they didn't care about the score. - Holtmann mentioned needing to find guys who made more winning plays. That will be an uncomfortable tape to watch. Just way too many possessions that were lost by not going after and securing a loose ball. - Speaking of winning plays, Kruz McClure is the one guy you can say did. There was a play in the second half where Cotton missed a three, McClure secured the rebound, kicked it out to Popoola who nailed a three. But what made it a winning play was McClure after kicking it out, ran over to Popoola to run interference on the ND defender to buy Popoola time to get a shot off and not feel rushed. - One of my biggest areas of concern is rebounding. DePaul didn't grab the loose balls on the back end, but it's because they couldn't rebound on the front end. It just wasn't a good night on the glass. Gave up 17 offensive rebounds and 28 second chance points. - Safe to say with all of DePaul's bigs that their defense is easily ahead of their offense. Being 7'0 or taller and just being able to be at the basket makes it so difficult on offenses. - Fabian Flores has made a drastic improvement offensively with just being able to be more comfortable playing with his back to the basket. - DePaul's speed and size on the defensive end is really going to be a problem for teams. - DePaul's offense also just looked so much better than at any point during the last decade, take the results out of it, it didn't necessarily stall out a ton, and that was with wacky lineups.