- 1st possession turn over seems to be our modus operandi of late.
- Onuorah's performance kind of confirmed that he is not particularly good.
- Early on, it appeared that we were moving the ball with a sense of purpose. No windshield wiper offense so far. The guards and Larrier moving well, making crisp cuts and going very tight on screens. Passing looks sharp as well. Now score some points, dammit!
- 12 minutes left in the first half and suddenly I am getting nervous about the whistles. Monmouth in the bonus on the next one.
- Jalen looks like he's focused and enthusiastic. That's a good sign.
- 10 minutes in, we are playing our best basketball of the season, and we still can't get any separation.
- 8 minutes left in the half - Mamadou's long arms! Great intercept to start the break.
- Nice run augmented by CV with some great D!
- Lead gets up to 9. Better, but how can any Husky fan relax unless we can go into the half with a double digit lead?
- And just like that, a 9 point lead is gone. Ollie should have called a TO when it got down to 5.
- There go the whistles again. Three possessions in a row.
- Larrier's floaters are awful tonight, but other than that, he seems engaged and is putting in some work on the boards.
- Jalen with a 3 at the buzzer. Not sure how he stayed airborne long enough for a fake and a complete position shift, but he did, and still beat the clock. Hope it gives us some momentum. On replay, I think he should have been shooting a foul shot, too, but the refs are too busy making sure they credit Monmouth with a 3 from earlier.
- Can't believe how badly we were out rebounded in the 1st half. It didn't feel like we were being abused on the boards, but evidently, we were.
- Nice start to the 2nd half.
- It's pretty clear that our most effective lineup right now is Adams, Vital, Anderson, Larrier and Diarra. And I'd be more than fine with Carlton as the first big off the bench.
- Foul on JA at 10:18 was an awful call.
- As was the call on Polley on the block 20 second later.
- Can't let questionable whistles take us out of our game like they did in the first half.
- Too late. Now we're down again. Playing very hesitantly on offense now. The crisp ball movement has disappeared.
- DO out, Carlton in. Diarra's been our most effective big by far. Can we safely buy him a few more minutes at this point?
- 5:11, Diarra back in. Best lineup is together again.
- JA got called for an invisible foul on Seaborn, then Larrier tipped in Seaborn's missed FT.
- After Tillman scored the lay in with 2:14 left, he slapped the ball down court as he headed back up. Should have been a technical. He didn't bump into the ball, he reached out and slapped it down court.
- JA just doing it at the end offensively again. Amazing how easily he gets to where he wants to be, and how much control he has in putting the ball in at odd angles with varying degrees of English required.
- Up 1 with a minute to go.
- OT. Against a mid-major. Again.
- CV really off from 3 tonight, but money at the line, and providing good D and effort on the glass.
- MD done for the night -- good call, bad foul.
- Getting ugly now with 2 and a half to go in OT.
- At first, I was infuriated on that call on Vital's steal. Replay showed that it was a good call. The hesitation between him getting bumped from behind and him bumping the guy was too noticeable to ignore.
- 1 point game with a minute to go. Didn't I say that a few minutes ago, too? Deja Vu!
- Good call on Tillman when he hooked Carlton to go to the rim. That could be called all night in most games when a big makes a move on the baseline. But Welsh called it a chicken wing. That would be keeping his elbow pretty fully bent, and just using his upper arm. He extended his whole arm around Carlton to make room. That's just a hook. No chickens involved.
- After being down by 6 boards at the half, we ended up outreboundng them, which is encouraging.
- Antoine's D on Seaborn in the 2nd half was every bit as important to this W as Adams 31 points. He looked a little Ricky Moore-ish tonight!
- Diarra's reach absolutely came into play on 5 separate occasions. Of course without a strong effort, the wingspan would just be a number.
- 9 Steals is impressive.
- Overall, the game wasn't called poorly, except for about 10 minutes in the middle of the 1st half, when we were playing our best ball, and the whistles took our aggressiveness away.
- It wasn't the prettiest thing in the world, but we've got to take our joy where we can find it, and 6-2 is way better than the 3-5 we would probably be if we still had last year's squad.
- Still too many lapses, but I see improvement over the last couple games. We can't expect mediocrity to be instantly replaced by greatness, but we can demand incremental improvement toward that goal, and I think we're seeing that.
TLDR version: Some improvement, some encouraging moments, a win is better than a loss.
I just watched it this morning, was out last evening. Some comments to add
10. The lead disappeared because of our erratic shooting. Everyone missed open shots that were falling earlier. The offense wasn’t actually being run that badly.
14. We were out rebounded because they shot 57% in the half, we shot 37%. They had many more defensive boards available. Outrebounded them overall in final stats.
16. I’m liking Diarra and Carlton more each game. Cobb is not going to be on the floor a ton given his propensity to foul. Onourah is just a big body at this point.
a). I’d like to see more of Whaley.
40. Yes, too many lapses on offense and defense, but there was very good energy on the floor almost the whole game, they won a game that last year would have been lost, the offense and defense looked much more structured and effective, and to my eye I see improvements. I do want to see less of players being beaten for layups.
We shall see if the improvements hold as the competition improves. They may not be Cincy or WSU, but Monmouth isn’t cannon fodder, they are a decent team with already one scalp taken.
