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Message: [QUOTE="Yawin4Heisman, post: 4497916, member: 2872"] Great post by the OP and I was thinking in game it was pretty brutal some of the shots that were falling for them… the analytics back it up… when factoring in the blocked shots it’s really hard to say “well just play better defense” but of course that’s par for the course here (also blindly assumes other team‘s D’d up more than we did to stop Marquette’s mid-range game which I’m going to go out on limb and say probably isn’t the case given almost no defense prioritizes defending that shot anymore) … a lot of people on this board cannot fathom that luck might ever be part of the equation (it’s always just an “excuse”)… it might blow some people’s minds but it’s possible to: a) have a terrible string of luck (opposing teams scoring lots of points on low eFG% shots for example); b) have a stretch where the refs are objectively hurting you and; c) be playing your worst stretch of basketball of the season all at the same time These aren‘t mutually exclusive events like some people seem hellbent on suggesting… For the Marquette game specifically regarding those 3 things: a) First, see OP’s post which is honestly pretty brutal, they also shot 15% above their season average from the FT line, including a 40.5% FT shooter going 5/5 from the FT line (that has a 1% probability of happening) including 4/4 in like the final minute (Shaka for some reason had the guy on the floor still which I remember thinking at the time was dumb so Hurley basically had us unintentionally intentionally foul him which I thought was smart but he makes all 4 of those FTs so Shaka is a genius and Hurley still sucks, right?)… I know, I know, Dan Hurley needs to scheme a better free throw defense… b) thought the refs were good for most of the game yesterday, however, the Jackson block, Karaban block and 3 point flop(?) on Marquette in the second half of the second half all seemed like non-fouls to me… that’s 7 FT’s (and combine with the bad luck of them shooting 15% above season average from FT line - by the way every team in our last 5 games has shot above their season average from the line and on a ton of FT shots - the combo of a lot of FT’s, many of which came off questionable calls, coupled with shooting well above season averages, has equaled a lot of points folks) c) The way Sanogo, Hawkins and all of the other guards played in this one has been well chronicled already - the turnovers, the inability to create / score and defend up to the level we’ve seen before was just not good Individual CBB games are a small sample size - luck can matter… and sometimes a lot given what a small sample size it is… no need to ever be a complete hardo and completely discount it at all times - you could easily make a case for why we should have beaten Marquette and lost to Creighton based on some of the above… things aren’t as bad as they seem but aren’t as good as we thought when we were 14-0 and looked unbeatable… [/QUOTE]

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