in the perimeter game. Bartley's coming along there, but he still doesn't get the offense nearly as well as Halford.

And the other 20% is Halford's superier shooting (which he has problems with against tight defense, I realize).

If Halford wasn't doing a half-decent job containing Randle last night, we would've seen Bartley. Or, if Stanford had another hard-to-defend guard, we would've seen Bartley. But, as it goes, our zone held pretty good against those guys last night. Worthington & Nielsen deserves a lot of credit, I think. They clearly lost the head-to-head against Stanford's bigs, but they made it hard for them for the full 40. I really thought Nastic was gonna open up on us in the second half, but Luke really battled him hard in the position game, & Nielsen of course rotated down on him excellently more than a few times.

As for--or back to--Halford--he's actually not a bad on-ball defender. Granted, if he tried to cover a guy like Randle for 30 minutes things would likely start to get very ugly. But as long as it's just 10-15, he's really not that bad. His D has definitely improved since last year--as has his offensive awareness. Really, he's a MUCH better role player than he was last year. We all wish he were bigger & stronger, but as long as his guy can't score on him at will, he's clearly our best backup PG option.

And I'm saying that as a huge Bartley fan. I really hope the kid picks up the offense & works hard on his handles & shooting. If he could, there's not a guy in the country, I think, who he couldn't give fits on defense.

mutu.