Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
Everyone says preseason games don’t mean much. Drop 120 or 90 and win.. not going to move the needle to impress for many people. Tonight was much of that for the Wizards in a 98-92 victory over the Hornets.
Bilal Coulibaly finished with 12 points, five rebounds, four steals and one block. Kyle Kuzma scored a game-high 19 points on 8-of-16 shooting.
One of the biggest Wizards biggest concern has to be their defensive rebounding. They failed to get some of the most key rebounds late in the fourth quarter and had to rely on a few mistakes by the Hornets offense to finally pull away in the final minutes. This is something Wes Unseld Jr. feels they have room to work on before the season opener against Indiana.
“We didn’t do so well on the defensive boards tonight, that’s quite obvious, but there are a lot of good things that did happen tonight,” said Wizards Head Coach Wes Unseld Jr.
Another disappointment tonight was the combination of Kyle Kuzma and Jordan Poole. Have to grade this a B- or C at best. Perhaps its bit early to put the pressure on them to do a lot of the scoring, but isn’t that why both of them are in the starting rotation?
Kuzma shot, to put it mildly, awful (8-16 from the floor and 1-6 from deep) and produced six turnovers in just 24 minutes. This is a kink the Wizards need to get out before they get to Indiana in two weeks or we are in for a long season.
Washington will have one more tune-up game on October 20th in Toronto, we will see if Wes decides a different line-up might work, but we need to get that offense in gear between Poole and Kuz otherwise is going to be a long start to November.
