Sunday, March 21, 2010

Color Me Impressed With Truck Bryant





If you asked me what I thought would happen in today's game, the last thing that would have come to mind was how impressed I was with Truck Bryant. Looking at his stats for the game tells you very little about how important he was. Missouri earned the respect I had for them coming into this game by leading the nation in turnovers forced. In my mind, I could just see him getting his pocket picked over and over. Instead, what I saw was someone that just focused on ball security and running the offense. He had a lot of help from Joe Mazzulla and Da'Sean Butler. But West Virginia did a great job with ball security and patients in the offense once they beat the press.

I've bagged on Truck a little bit since I first saw him play for West Virginia. I've been driven to madness by watching him rush down the middle amongst the trees. I may be wrong with that, though. For instance, I don't know that Huggins hasn't asked him to do that. It's just been hard to watch at times over the past couple years. But today I thought he did exactly what he needed to do to help the team to win, and if you're going to mention the bad you have to see the good as well.  Well done, Truck!

There was a lot more dairy goodness to speak of. Particularly Da'Sean Butler. The dude is just a machine. It's hard enough to bring the ball up the whole game under pressure. It's even harder to get involved with the offense after the ball crosses the time line. Butler got WVU into an offensive flow to start the game and kept them ahead the whole game. The more I think about this game, the more I'm really impressed with everyone. The only thing that was odd was all the offensive rebounds the Tigers got. But we'll take it. Survive and advance.

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