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Message: [QUOTE="Towney007, post: 2941062, member: 5832"] This is what I walked away from today's game thinking. And I think that's gotta be the message everyone takes in walking away from it. I'd have loved to get the win, but today for me was more of a test to see what we really were - and I think they passed with flying colors *despite not playing a very good game*. Carlton looked lost, Jalen was inconsistent and Gilbert played his worst game to date. And we literally went blow for blow w/ them up until the last 10 seconds. They're bigger, more athletic, well coached, we played bad, one of the referees what out of this world terrible and with all that going on, we still flipping SHOULD have won the game. All things considered, this was a team a year ago who couldn't hang on any level with a respectable Division-1 program. In context, this is about what we are and for a month into the season, i'm pretty much okay with that. And I also think it's the kind of loss where you really do learn things from. They exposed Vital's poor ball handling. They made Gilbert shoot over longer guards. They absolutely abused our slow big men underneath. They made us pay on sloppy turnovers. They needed Jalen to step up and he couldn't find that fifth gear when he had to. Just lessons all around to be had. At the end of the day - we're just not ready to win these games and that showed today. But we've also played three NCAA Tournament caliber teams - we beat one, got blown out by one, and probably should have beaten the third. All three are probably as good or a little better than the best of what we'll see in our league this year. We're not going to be losing to Tulsa on the road this year or dropping games to ECU. I think we're arguably the best team in the conference and the tournament is 100% in the conversation at this point. If we're in the NIT, we'd probably be one of the best teams in it. I think this team is better than Ollie's last NCAA team, FWIW. I think i'm feeling pretty good about making it back this year. I think we're good enough now - and I think we're going to be getting better. Today was a huge indicator of that for me. And i've been really pessimistic/walk before you can run about this group as a whole. I just think it's important people see the good in today because there was just a ton of it. Enough bad to keep you grounded in reality, but I saw everything I needed to see today. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach