kreed5120

Fair point, but I was referring to the season as a whole. BG did a really good job of trapping him and forcing him to pick up his dribble. A few times he got in really great position and the help defenders raked at the ball from behind as he was putting up his shot. Just in general teams will continue to give him hard double teams if Noah, Kwan, and Antino, and others can't hit their perimeter shots to keep the defense honest. In the bigger picture we need to find ways of getting Big Dog rest or else he will be completely exhausted for the final like he was last year against Buffalo and how he was down the stretch against OSU in the NIT. The problem is we kind of can't afford him not being being on the court.

Hard to give the bench more minutes when our 6th man is injured at the moment. I thought Aaron Jackson played one of his better games of the season. Perhaps the fact this was his 1st game in 2 weeks that he has seen the floor helped motivate him to play with more effort. I'd love to see Hughes develop and play as I feel he provides the closest skill set to fill in for Big Dog without the Zips having to completely alter their offense. Our offense looks lost when Big Dog is on the bench. Just a bunch of players standing around and forcing up a contested shot at some point in the shot clock. At this stage its late in the season and it appears Hughes back issue hindered his chances of progressing into the valuable player that he could have potentially been for us this season.

I completely forgot about this until I saw Dr.Z post. I managed to tune in for the last 15-20 minutes of the Larry Williams interview. Thanks for the recap @Dr Z.

FTFY

All you have to look at to validate that point is compare our football team to our basketball team. Getting to 6 wins and making it to a bowl game is considered a successful season in football. Anything short of winning the MACT tournament and making the NCAAT is considered a failure in basketball.

FTFY

What is so puzzling is what was a strength earlier in the season is now a weakness and what was a weakness earlier in the season is now a strength. I felt we did a great job with our half-court defense as BG pretty much relied on turnovers and long rebounds to get out and run to score their points. Big Dog has definitely been playing with more effort on the defensive end and it has shown. Robotham seemed to take a lot of gambles going for loose balls and offensive rebounds instead of getting back on D. This led to a lot of 2 on 1 fast breaks at the other end. Our offense is a mess right now. Our shooters need to start hitting their shots otherwise Big Dog will continue to get double and even triple teamed. We are settling for poor shots and we are not moving the ball side to side. I felt one of Kwan's best looks was a 3 pointer he didn't take on the play where he put the ball on the floor and the defender drew a charge. That's a shot I feel Kwan would have taken (and made) 2 weeks ago. I wonder how much of the poor shooting can be attributed to mental frustration and players thinking too much about missing instead of just letting the game flow.

You know something? Had you told us at the beginning of the season that we'd be sitting at 12-3 with a full 2 game lead in the MAC, we would've given anything for that. And you know something not only are we going to Buffalo ZN.O, we're going to Akron and Kent and then we're going to Cleveland to punch our ticket to the NCAAT BYAAAA!!!...We will not give up.

People keep saying our record is a mirage, but we're losing now because our offense has regressed. 2-3 weeks ago we weren't shooting the ball 36% from the field. Any team is going to lose more times than not when they shoot that poorly. Hell we would have gotten smoked earlier in the season shooting that badly, but we have gotten a little better defensively since. What is going to be key is getting Kwan back to playing how he was for the first 20-25 games of the season. Kwan is vital to our success and if he goes 2/10 shooting in Cleveland, we will likely lose. If the pieces do come back together and we start resembling the offense we had earlier in the season, I don't see us losing in Cleveland.

https://mobile.twitter.com/alex_backes/status/827378571148615680

We had much better ball movement earlier in the year. Now it seems we run down the court looking for the 1st contested jumper. Our defense has much improved, but our offense has suffered.

What a terrible inbounds pass.

Move the ball around. This isn't the time to hold the ball to play hero ball.

So many 2nd and 3rd chance opportunities for BG...

Come on box out and get a damn rebound. 2nd chance 3 and now an over the back.

Like I said I felt we could stop them in the half court. Where they have been killing us is in the transition.

Noah has been getting beat badly by going for loose balls on the offensive end. His man keeps running down the court for easy fastbreak.

I've really only seen BG score on the fastbreak so the good news is if we actually start making baskets, we might be able to slow them down on the other end.

So many turnovers. We're usually good at protecting the ball.

I'm not seeing Akron listed on ESPN3. You guys see it? Edit: Nvm I see it now.

Assuming I'm available and I remember at that time, I'll be sure to tune in. I'm interested to hear what plans Larry and Matt have in-store.

Download betternet to your tablet or whatever device you watch ESPN3 on and you should be able to bypass a potential blackout. https://www.betternet.co

Use a VPN to mask your location.

I wouldn't say this is a must win, but I'm with @1981 grad in the fact that losing this game opens the door to us potentially not being outright regular season conference champs.

No worries, I typically hold off on creating game threads expecting (hoping) that someone else will. Its been very quiet around these parts for the past 2 days and I didn't see a thread up for the game so I went ahead and created it. Oddly enough I believe I've only created 1 other game thread all season and the same thing happened. I got a laugh out of it more than anything.