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I think you're not getting to the point here. We all want more. But, what makes you believe that we'd even sustain the kind of success we've had for the last dozen years with someone else at the helm? Tell us what he's done wrong, and how a replacement would be better?

OK, since we've had some people who've done well in the prediction department at times this year, I want to know how many people looked at the schedule and were 100% right on this scenario. Lose to Kent at Home Lose to BG Beat Buffalo on the ROAD Lose to Miami at Home I feel like I was invited to a party twice now (the net cuttings that were scheduled), and got there and stood around for awhile, and then was told that the party had been cancelled. It sucks.

I was happy to see it too. I think he needs to do that right now. It was definitely a different tone than after the Kent State loss.

Although I think "not that good" is probably going too far, I'd still buy into that more than the other explanations earlier in the season. "Good teams find a way to win close games" "We're the 1980 Kardiac Kids Browns" "Champions make plays when it matters" Etc. The truth is that when you play in a lot of close games, at some point you're not going to always end up on the good side. It's not some mark of greatness, as some people here were suggesting.

I don't really want to start this discussion here. But, what do you propose that we do to get beyond that point? And/Or Tell us what specifically he is doing wrong where you feel so certain that we would do it better with a new coach?

15 points at the 11 min. mark. 14 points at the 9 min. mark. 11 points at the 6 min. mark. All year, when we were in situations where it seemed as if we might pull away, we didn't. And this game had numerous situations like that. This game, like many, was one good defensive stop or one good offensive possession away from having a much different result. We're not making those plays in those situations.

#1 seed should always get the early game, to give them the max break before the title game the following night.

I think everyone anticipated that game time on Thursday. But something is looking a bit different to me. Maybe some things have changed in recent years without me noticing. 1) A 5:30 start on Friday for the Semifinals? I recall those games being at 7pm and 9pm. That will be tough for people who work on Friday, because we'll have the early game. 2) I always thought that the title game was at 6pm?

If you think about it, the total length of the home schedule of regular season games for football and basketball only covers about a 5 month period. It goes by way too fast.

Absolutely.

If you think the pressure was getting to us because we had a 4 game lead with 5 games to play, I'd hate to see what the must-win pressure in Cleveland will do to us.

At least they were a little more intimidating when they were this....

Of course. I hope people stay. In the past, the Arena has been nearly empty when they've done this. The players and coaches love doing it. Maybe telling them that this is going to happen might help?

I decided to take a look at something this morning. Everyone talks about how bad, and how good Buffalo can play. And this is what scares me about them, and also what makes me disregard them at times. They lost to Ball State at HOME by 15 They beat Ball State on the ROAD by 27 The lost at HOME to Kent by 13 They beat them on the ROAD by 8 There's others, but you get the idea. In fact, it appears that our 2 games against them this year were probably their most consistent performances against the same team. If anyone should be alarmed about anything from our last game against them, it's the way that they can rebound. That's often something that's not really affected by how good or how bad a team is playing. If we have a good percentage shooting night, we can negate that. If not, we could be in trouble. Although we held our own in the JAR this year, they beat us on the boards by 12 in the title game last year, and 20 on Friday night.

Could? We already DID

I started thinking about alternate plans for MAC Tournament weekend. We had actually cut down their double-digit lead once in that half already, and then it went back up again. I thought that stretch demoralized us, and we couldn't do it twice.

We trailed by 12 with 8 minutes left. Big Dog gave us the lead by 1 with 26 seconds left. Then we had to sweat out a final EMU possession. I just about lost it.

That might be true. But it wouldn't explain why those lower tier guys are playing very shorts stints earlier in the game too.

How about Deja Vu X4 with Eastern. Sort of. Does everyone remember the Quarterfinal game last year?

That would be even more extra incentive to beat Kent in Kent next week.

I've been wondering all along if the diminished bench minutes over the years is just a product of our top-line players being THAT MUCH better than the next tier of players? That wasn't really the case maybe 8-10 years ago. We always commented about how Keith's teams really had no "stars", and how production was so evenly distributed.

I commented about this in another thread, and I won't repeat all of the details. But to your point, what might be more significant is that we only have 2 games over the next 12 days leading up to the tournament.

Yep. As far back as I can remember. The 1986 Title was really fun in that respect because we cut down the nets in the JAR one weekend, and then cut them down in the JAR again the following weekend (Akron hosted the OVC Tournament that year because we were the regular season champ).

I was pretty confident that we would clinch on Tuesday night anyway. I wasn't going to root for Kent

I think this year it's simply a case where maybe those guys in the 7-10 spots simply haven't caught up to where those guys might have been in the past. In the postgame, it seemed that the coaches are still focused on winning games the best way we can. But I still think we're going to see some rest time increase in these last two games. Maybe I'm wrong. After all, we are only going to play 2 games in the next 12 days. But note that Keith continues to talk about guys who can help us when the tournament gets here. All the way down to talking about how Aaron and Michael might be called on to contribute. So, he's definitely thinking about how to best handle the 3-game stretch in Cleveland. But also, with the return to the old format where everyone has to play all 3 days, at least everyone will equally have to share in the issue regarding fatigue.