Serious Question

[CardiacAndre7]

Everyone can and should discuss whether or not we are prepared to make plays down the stretch, both our players and coaching staff. But i’m curious, when was the last time any of you were confident with a lead in the last few minutes? Maybe up to 7 points or so. I can’t really name a specific time, and that’s me being completely serious. We had leads of like 5+ against Auburn, MSU and VCU with around a minute and a half left and I was never confident from what I recall. Every great team is completely comfortable in those situations.

I know this game wasn’t one of those, but we still had leads and opportunities late that I was never confident in. Hurley and Co. don’t shoot the ball or dribble it, etc. But this is year 4 of bad execution at the end of games. They recruit well, but we need heady, stable players that can control the game. Diggins is that type of player and it annoys me that he doesn’t get any run at the expense of Gaff. We know what Gaff is, he dribble, doesn’t shoot, and makes too many mistakes. If Diggins plays for 3 minutes and plays atrociously, then we tried. But it’s getting odd that we haven’t. The kid is a competitor, and watching his direct competition struggle game in, game out without being given the chance has to be extremely frustrating.

 

[Orc]

Never. Because when they go up big Hurley will just substitute everyone and they always end up losing the lead.

 

[Huskyforlife]

It's a race to see who can make thread 5 on this topic.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

A 7 or 9 point lead early in the second half is a death sentence for this team. Need to break this cycle at some point.

 

[August_West]

2014. We had closers who didn’t make unforced errors and subsequently sunk their foul shots with a lead. I was comfortable up 1 with those teams anywhere under the 5 minute mark. We lost our share of games tgat year, but seldom beat ourselves. If we were leading at crunch time by any amount we sent it home

I never feel confident now. If we are not double digits up at the under 8 timeout I’m convinced it’s a loss. Every time. I’m unfortunately right about 98% of time these days.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

2014. We had closers who didn’t make unforced errors and subsequently sunk their foul shots with a lead. I was comfortable up 1 with those teams anywhere under the 5 minute mark. We lost our share of games tgat year, but seldom beat ourselves. If we were leading at crunch time by any amount we sent it home

I never feel confident now. If we are not double digits up at the under 8 timeout I’m convinced it’s a loss. Every time. I’m unfortunately right about 98% of time these days.

The amount of unforced errors is ridiculous. Great teams don’t do that. Coaching, personnel and abilities are just not there if we can’t figure it out. Cole is the only person on this team I have any confidence in to secure a game, and even he somewhat consistently makes errors late.