Hornets dominate Bucks upfront

Despite stellar efforts from Mo Williams and Ruben Patterson, the Bucks fell to the Hornets last night in double overtime, 109-101. Both Williams (who apparently was sick) and Patterson played 50 minutes each, and produced very well. Patterson scored 28 points, grabbed 16 rebounds, and had 5 steals. His "will to win" is incredible. Williams added 30 points. Charlie Bell also had a productive night, recording an Eff48 of 28.44 in 27 minutes of action.

The problem, once again, was lackluster efforts from Milwaukee's big men. Andrew Bogut played the same 50 minutes as Patterson and Williams (which I commend him for) but was only able to grab 8 rebounds in that time. That's one more than Williams, who, of course, is the point guard. That's terrible. And it wasn't as if there weren't plenty of rebounds to be had. The Hornets grabbed an incredible 71 of them, which was 22 more than the Green and Red. The Hornets dominated the offensive boards all night long. I don't know how many times Johnny Mac had to say "another reload" for the Hornets. Actually, I do... it was 31 times. You just can't win giving the opponent that many second chances.

Bogut was not alone in blame. Another important Buck frontliner who appeared in uniform but didn't get much done was Charlie Villanueva. In 42 minutes of action, he managed to accumulate more missed shots than points (9 to 7). And he barely made a dent in the rebounding column (6 boards). He has to do better than that.

Here are last night's Eff48 scores, for those who are interested:

R Patterson.......31.68
C Bell..............28.44
M Williams.........26.88
D Noel..............12.00
E Boykins...........11.07
A Bogut.............10.56
C Villanueva........4.57

Big night for Hornets' Bigs

Continuing a disturbing trend I pointed out a couple of posts ago, the NOK Hornets starting center and power forward each had hugely productive nights against the Bucks. As a duo, they thoroughly outplayed, and frankly embarrased, their Milwaukee counterparts Bogut and Villanueva. Starting center Tyson Chandler, whose game I love, scored 11 points and grabbed a Chamberlin-like 22 rebounds. And Hornets starting power forward David West became yet another power forward to produce astronomical numbers against the Bucks. West scored 21 points and had 19 rebounds and logged an Eff48 of 36.63. In doing so, he became the 13th power forward to average better than a 35.00 Eff48 score against the Green and Red this season.

Bucks sign new stiff... errr... big man

The Bucks signed NBDL center Jared Reiner to a 10 day contract. He played last night and did nothing of note. His game appears disturbingly similar to Wisconsin Badgers big man Brian Butch, without Butch's shooting touch. Not good. My question is, if the Bucks added a big man to take up Gadzuric's minutes, why didn't they just leave Markota in the NBDL where he could get some on-court seasoning? Why bring him back up just to warm pine?

Photo Credit: Associated Press