E X H A L E !
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I’m pissed off.
I’m pissed off because some dweeb at ESPN switched our game with the MSU game and tricked my DVR into recording the wrong game. So I missed the first half of our game. But did I really miss anything?
It shocks a fan base when their team wins 18 in a row then drops one. The sky is falling. But is the sky really falling?
I know everyone reading this is thinking I’m going to say the sky is NOT falling. My job now is to calm down fans. Well… that isn’t my job!
I’m going to try to remain a bit neutral on this one.
My statement is: “The sky could fall!”
The sky could fall if Bill’s players don’t start following his orders.
If we bring the same defensive level of intensity into Lexington this Saturday, we better all be prepared for the same shellacking we took from the Blue Machine a few years ago when our guys humiliated every resident in the State of Kansas. I know I will be wearing my civil defense bomb shelter gear during this game… just in case.
“Fool’s Gold” was on display last night. The very reason why Bill turned off the switch on trey shooting last year in favor of BAD BALL was proven last night. And heck, we even shot well from three. Part of “fool’s gold” is the concept that our guys stop hustling on defense because of the easy scoring on offense. Just from watching the second half last night, I have to say that was the worst defensive performance I’ve seen from this team all year. We can blame the loud crowd and the refs… but we are going to be in those situations moving forward, so do we just throw the towel in on many of our road games?
Bill has questioned our toughness on defense all year. Maybe we should have listened to him.
For a very bad reason, many fans believe we are not capable of playing good defense, especially after losing Doke. No one, including myself, questions the fact that having a big shot blocker helps on defense. But there is no way we can cop out on the idea that this team can’t play good defense. Look at all the National Champion winners over the last decade and I can only think of Kentucky and Anthony Davis being the only dominant big man. Villanova? Nope. All of those UCONN teams? Nope. Even Kentucky had a lot more than Davis blocking shots and defending.
Our guards have been a disaster on defense. A disaster. For the skill level they are capable of, and with all that athleticism, they can’t stop ANY guard from driving right to the basket. They miss assignments, switch too often instead of fight through screens. Sag in and leave the trey shot wide wide wide open. I’m still surprised we haven’t been beat by some scrub team that gets hot from trey. Maybe we are saving that for Week #1 in March.
Okay, I said I would be neutral on this post. We can definitely become a GREAT defensive team! We have everything but the big shot blocker in the paint, just like all those great National Championship teams before us (minus Kentucky). We just have to go out and hustle. We have to become tougher. No more slacking off… no more sagging. Our guards have to move their feet, hedge properly, and fight through screens. Our guys have to call things out and provide good weak-side help (only when necessary).
Where is the enthusiasm? Was I the only one who noticed just how bad our team body language was last night? Who friggin’ died?! Have you ever noticed teams that come into AFH and are almost cocky while playing us?
We can do this. We can be the next Villanova.
NO EXCUSES!
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@drgnslayr Agreed, defense and fts are our big weaknesses with depth to go with it. I’ll bet anyone that we wont win another game this year scoring 69 points.
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@drgnslayr You should be pissed off. You missed the best half of basketball. And we were still behind at halftime…
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Pollyanna here is pretty discouraged! 4 pts from bigs! D stinks, but we get called for every lil thing. Poor body language! Boards and throws! I don’t know if that cheap dumb badass foul they called on Mason started him off on a bad pm, but he forced things.
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@drgnslayr I was watching Josh a lot in the second half. He simply does not move his feet. He reaches way too much. He allowed his man to get around him multiple times. When that happens he either lets them go when he is in foul trouble or the reach gets him a foul.
He does well jumping passing lanes for steals but not so much when he has to go one on one. His 3pt shooting was great. I’m obviously hoping that continues but the 12 points he made on offensive with the threes were given back with interest on the other end.
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I’m sorry you missed the first half, they announced throughout the day the game was changing networks. We actually played pretty well in that first half for large stretches. Held a 5 point lead and blew it on 2 possessions that resulted in wide open 3 pointers and that pretty much ended all the positive momentum for the rest of the game. I remember saying to myself at that exact moment that the game was probably over. Not because I was trying to be negative, but just because it was the vibe I got from seeing a team battling to hold a lead and lose it in less than 30 seconds.
As I posted in another thread our guys were affected by the officials. They clearly got under the players skin. Mason played like a freshman for a large portion of the contest and we now see when he plays poorly that the rest of the team follows. It was a poorly played game and I expect we’ll see a different team Saturday
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I just watched the second half… but in that half, Josh played little defense. He missed assignments leaving WVU with easy points right under our goal.
I’ve been impressed with Josh all year for his hustle. Especially when considering he is just a freshman.
I’m giving him a pass on this game because of his lack of game experience on this level. He has NEVER been in this position before. All the basketball he has played… but never has he faced such a hostile environment where even the refs are Mountaineers.
His poor defense definitely cost us. But what about our experienced players? They have been there before, some have been there 3 or 4 times before!
I’d like to see a fed probe into college officiating. These refs who call phantom calls need to be called out themselves. That is rigging a game. If the players don’t have contact but the refs call a foul, that means they are making a call based on assumption. I know that sometimes the angle appears to show a foul… but they can’t make calls on assumptions.
I watched the Kentucky game after ours. Kentucky got ripped off at the end on a phantom call, too. It isn’t just us.
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I’m sure our guys were affected by the refs strange calls. But that will always be a part of basketball and our guys should show more poise than that. Our team body language was attrocous! You could tell we were going to lose this game long before the final buzzer.
Once again… this is where we need a leader on this team. A demonstrative leader.
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@drgnslayr yes we need to handle it, especially frank! But then again huggs whines and it seems to work for him.
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Valid points. It was one of those nights, again in Morgantown where nothing made sense and little went right. When we battled back for that short-lived lead in the 2nd half I thought just maybe this team would overcome everything but in the end we let multitudes of poor play from a team and individual aspect snowball into the final result. We deserved to lose the way our energy level and body language looked. I did not see a team that was willing to take punches and fight back.
Strange calls don’t even begin to tell the story. I’m sure it would be hard for any of us to put aside emotion of how the game was being called. Again I might sound like I’m blaming the ref’s and really I’m just trying to point out how poorly officiated the game was and how we let that affect the outcome of the game instead of rallying around it. When things didn’t go well we just didn’t have the answer.
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@drgnslayr said:
You could tell we were going to lose this game long before the final buzzer.
Nailed it. Even in the first half I wasn’t screaming, yelling or kicking the dog (lighten up, I don’t even own a dog…) it was pretty obvious how this was going to turn out. I didn’t even raise an eyebrow when we went up 59-58. No way we were getting out of M-town with a W.
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@wrwlumpy can’t wait! I’m going too!
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@wrwlumpy oh yea
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I absolutely agree with you. The calls were not only bad but came at times when KU was building momentum. I always wonder how coaches such as Rat Face and Huggins don’t get technicals when they are constantly getting on the refs faces. I wish Coach Self would have gotten in their faces and gottent a “T” just to send a message.
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Don’t forget to mention Calipari… and how he walks right out on the court anytime he likes. He did get a warning in the Tenn game.
It was nice to see “Gentleman Barnes” beat the slickster.
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I wonder if Bill will be treated different after he officially becomes a HOF’r?
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@drgnslayr if he wears sweats and throws up his arms
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And every other shout includes MF, SOB, etc.
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Not as long as we are in flyover country…maybe if we join the ACC it would be different.
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There was a few times during the game where I was hoping Self would have gotten a T. Sometimes those plays turn out to change the momentum of a game. Who knows if that would have been one of those situations. Coaches like Huggins & K are such habitual offenders about getting in a ref’s face that they get away with it often. Just like Huggins defense, you can’t call every foul. Same logic applies to him barking at the ref’s
