The loss on face value is not bad, obviously. What makes it bad is how we played, because not only did we play pretty damn poorly, it’s a habit of ours to play that way. No one in this game showed any improvement. I’d argue we took a step back in a lot of categories
I’m not willing at this point to say this was a “really really bad loss.” What I am willing to say is that it will lead to really really bad losses down the road if we don’t correct some significant mistakes going forward, such as failing to box out (especially on FTs), being unaware of the shot clock, making free throws, and trying too many length of the court passes to guys who are maybe 1 or 2 steps ahead of a defender but who simply don’t have breakaways.
Exactly, they are a good program who lost to Marquette who we are better than. And it’s not about them, did you see the terrible choices and nervousness and scared play by us. It’s beyond disappointing to me. Like you said, did we learn anything.
If the season ended today I'd agree, on its own tonight was a step back. But progression isn't always linear, especially when so much of our ceiling is tied into young guys. If it gets to be March and Hawkins and Jackson are still making this many mistakes then I can say we're not a great team
Those aren’t necessarily the same; we certainly could have won it, and maybe we should have won it, but neither makes it a really really bad loss. We barely lost, on the road, to a good (7-1 coming in) Big 12 team, with 2 of our starters injured.
It actually isn’t being overstated, it’s being properly stated. In what aspect did we play well? I guess we got them to shoot 44% from the line. But all kidding aside, this is a game that we can say the team played terribly…
“If we hit a couple of three’s and put down some free throws,” it’s not any kind of loss, but a win. Regardless, I still disagree that it was a bad loss, especially at this point in the season. We haven’t even started BE play yet.
Defensively we played very well. For much of the game we even ran the offense pretty well. We got all the shots we wanted. We just missed them. The effort was there as well. We didn’t execute very well. But they did some positive things in this game. The pressure on the WVU guards late in the second half was REALLY good
I'll agree with the second part, depth is overrated when you're not going more than 8 deep at any time. I wouldn't say our depth is exaggerated as much as the benefit of having depth was
I think we're a bad shooting team. I agree 3-21 is unlikely to happen regularly, but I doubt you see Villanova ever shoot that badly.
Disappointing is more the word. Bad insinuates that it’ll actually have a negative effect on our season. At least in my opinion
Yea we aren’t a great shooting team. I wouldn’t go as far as to say bad. Say we went 6-21? We win. Polley and Hawkins(2 very good shooters) missed multiple wide open shots. That won’t keep happening
Don’t know where you saw us run the offense well. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times we actually got into and ran a set. And that was only in the first half, I didn’t see anything run well in the second half. We did defend pretty well for stretches but still got beat off the dribble too often and as the game wore on they scored a lot in the paint, where they really shouldn’t against us.
Yeah but what if they shot 65% from the line.
The first half we defended really well in my opinion. They got A LOT of tough shots. Also we can’t on one hand say they missed a lot of open shots and then on the other hand not credit the offense for generating open shots. It’s a contradiction. Had they made the WIDE open shots, your view on how they “ran” the offense would be different
I think there's a tendency in Hurley, and to be fair a large number of coaches at other schools, to coach these college players like an NBA coach might coach their players. That is, give them freedom to create. The problem is that these aren't NBA players, although some may eventually develop that level of skill. It's not reasonable expect that getting the ball inbounds, or creating a shot as the clock runs down is something that happens organically, especially down the stretch. Create some structure that they can rely on when the game is tense.
They never make they’re free throws. Most of the guys who were missing for them aren’t good free throw shooters. Polley and Hawkins had abnormal nights
Hawkins better be better and I think he will be. Jackson not so sure, he needs to integrate some discipline asap.
That’s a cop out though. What ifs are dumb. We missed the shots, and it’s not like we’re a good shooting team in the first place. Also got a lot of those open looks in transition or off of offensive boards, not a well run offense. I think you’ll struggle to find posters on this board that thought we ran the offense well.
I nominate you as the leader of the Fellowship.
How do you spend an entire post criticizing a guy who didn’t even play?
