A penny for your thoughts on our season

[1981 grad]

Now that our season has officially come to an end, I am inviting any members to post any comments, the good, the bad, or the ugly about the past season. Here are my observations and comments:

First, I would like to confess that I was wrong about how I thought our team would perform this season. When Tree left the team, I thought we were going to suck. I did not foresee how good Pat was going to be and that he would be our leading scorer. I never expected Deji to be a great 2 guard and be able to consistently get to the basket. I also never expected Kwan to be a great defender, especially when it came to the MAC tournament. I also did not expect Evans to improve his game, especially early in the season. Big Dog had some great games after Pat went down. These guys improved greatly from last season. I also did not expect Robotham to be a good floor general. We were a good MAC team without Tree.

Second, I was really wrong about Antino. When I saw the 2 freshman guards, I thought we had a very good one, Robotham, and a very bad one, Antino. Early in the season he turned the ball over and had a tendency to shoot the 3 without attempting to run the offense. However, half way through the season he really picked up his defense and seemed to play more under control and had some nice penetrations and dump offs. When he took over the starting position, he really played outstanding especially after the Can't game. He had some great chemistry with Big Dog on the give and go. I thought as long as he kept playing good, we had a chance to win this thing and we came close.

Third, I was one of the guys who did not like our offense that revolved around the 3 ball. Reggie and Kretzer were frustrating because we did not get consistent scoring from the wings. However, when we shoot the 3 ball at 45%, like we did starting with the game at Can't, our offense certainly looked good. The wings were just fine and they played great defense. If we could have kept that percentage or near to that percentage, we would be dancing right now. I think our 3 ball shooter benefitted by the short roster, knowing they would not be pulled if they missed their first few shots.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone for posting this year. I knew I could always find up to date information on the Zips on this site. Each year I know that I will see posting about how the refs suck, the streaming sucks, and the out of conference schedule sucks. However, because we did have a down year on the win column I did miss our discussions about how we should receive an at large bid and how our RPI should be higher. Hopefully, we will continue these discussions next year.

[a-zip]

In will post my question here.

Do you all think this team was better with or without Tree?

[clarkwgriswold]

I was initially skeptical after the loss of Tree. The team then got hot and lured me into thinking they were better than they actually were. I think that what we saw late was closer to the truth, a young team with no true "go to guy." Lots of promise for the future, but this team's run in Cleveland was due more to Dambrot than the talent.

As for whether they were better or worse without Tree, I'd say worse. What this team lacked the most was the aforementioned "go to guy." A guy you can get the ball to in a clutch and count on him to go get an important hoop. Tree could generally go one on one, back a guy down and do that. He also gave us a tougher presence, not unlike Moss from Buffalo. His absence this year gave some players a chance to see some time that will help us in the future, but it hurt us this year.

[roopride]

Worse. How much is debatable. Also I thought someone said Kwan was going to red shirt. I would have liked to play the season with Tree and let Kwan develop and stagger the talent we have. But, Tree's on court leadership was not always the best. So maybe as a team and program we are really better off.