Talk About Your Classic End of Season Folds

[willie warrior]

This one is really something. Losing the last 4, 6 of last 10.

No defense, no inside game. Each year it seems the same. The team seems to play poorer as the season goes on.

There are no excuses for this. This is totally unacceptable and frustrating.

Our lack of an inside game kills us.

[Blackhat]

Yes, there is an excuse.  You're really going to chalk this up to a "late season fade"?  Losing your all BE pg and having a JV player as his back up.   It just took some people longer to figure out, that you can't coach your way past that.....

Now it sucks it happened but why are people surprised that we are losing?

[Chicago_inferiority_complexes]

I'm not sure you can pin this one on Acker ...

7 assists, 2 steals, 6 points. It's not like he wasn't playing.

[Warrior Forever]

I'm not surprised at all with a 1-4 finish.  Even with James, at best, we'd have gone 2-3 in my opinion.  The concern is our defense.  We can't stop anyone.  Every game were allowing teams to shoot north of 50%.  That is a guarantee of failure.

Go Warriors.

[MUWarrior06]

Yes, there is an excuse.  You're really going to chalk this up to a "late season fade"?  Losing your all BE pg and having a JV player as his back up.   It just took some people longer to figure out, that you can't coach your way past that.....

Now it sucks it happened but why are people surprised that we are losing?

You can't put these losses solely on DJ's injury. They were in these last 4 games.

UCONN: With DJ sure we may win, but regardless we were in it very close until the end. Big players come up big in times like that
Louisville: We were in that game until the very last second. Again, big players come up big
PITT: Even with DJ we don't win that game. We were in it with what, about 10 minutes to go? Buzz blew that one failing to manage his TOs well. He does that and I think we are closer. However, PITT was just amazing that game.
Cuse: Again, in it at the end. If McNeal drives to the hoop instead of taking a 3 he may have drawn a foul. Big players come up big.


Honestly, I don't pin any of this on DJ. With him we may have come up different in these last 4 games, but even so I highly disagree that this is 100% on James.

Our players have been gassed near the end from playing all season
Lack of an inside presence KILLED us these last 4 games
DJ being hurt doesn't help
Buzz did not manage his TOs well in close games

[Blackhat]

You can't put these losses solely on DJ's injury. They were in these last 4 games.

UCONN: With DJ sure we may win, but regardless we were in it very close until the end. Big players come up big in times like that
Louisville: We were in that game until the very last second. Again, big players come up big
PITT: Even with DJ we don't win that game. We were in it with what, about 10 minutes to go? Buzz blew that one failing to manage his TOs well. He does that and I think we are closer. However, PITT was just amazing that game.
Cuse: Again, in it at the end. If McNeal drives to the hoop instead of taking a 3 he may have drawn a foul. Big players come up big.


Honestly, I don't pin any of this on DJ. With him we may have come up different in these last 4 games, but even so I highly disagree that this is 100% on James.

Our players have been gassed near the end from playing all season
Lack of an inside presence KILLED us these last 4 games
DJ being hurt doesn't help
Buzz did not manage his TOs well in close games

Big picture.  We got drastically worse on perimeter d and lost our second leading all time scorer and replaced him with a midget.   

The most unrational thing is people getting all upset like they can't figure out why we are worse.......  that annoys me. 

[77ncaachamps]

Watching Flynn drive to the hoop and kick out (especially to Rautins on that killer late game 3) reminded me of DJ.

And NOT of what Mo can do.

Hence, (one of) our limitation(s) is Mo's inability to dribble, drive, and dish.

[nyg]

Jerel 9 for 24
Wes 3 for 15
MU 36%, Cuse 54% (many layups/dunks) We need a center and I hope Maymon and Williams are the players they say they are. Anybody please, but not Otule and Hazel and the hockey player.   

Bright spot was Butler with 12 points and 14 rebounds and Hayward fighting like he was a senior.  

Really missed DJ and his defense on Flynn, Fields, Price and McGee. Acker got burned by all four bigtime. Sad, but just bad timing for injury.

[muhoops1]

Big picture.  We got drastically worse on perimeter d and lost our second leading all time scorer and replaced him with a midget.    

The most unrational thing is people getting all upset like they can't figure out why we are worse.......  that annoys me

What annoys me is that this group is very good, but have very little to show for it other than individual stats.  I'm not bashing them.  Just pointing out that the team has very little to brag about.  They are consistent winners in the league.  MU has a pedigree, but this group can lose to anyone at any time.  Case in point today.  We made Cuse look like a top 10 team.

No patience on offense and lapses on defense.  This group has peaked in Nov/December through out their tenure.  March and April have been ugly.  It is perplexing.

[MUWarrior06]

Big picture.  We got drastically worse on perimeter d and lost our second leading all time scorer and replaced him with a midget.   

The most unrational thing is people getting all upset like they can't figure out why we are worse.......  that annoys me. 

I think DJ had a significant impact on our downfall, I just don't think he's 100% to blame. We were in these games near the end and we didn't come up with the big plays.

Sure, our defense takes a huge hit... I think that's the biggest result of this injury, but our offense put us in a position to overcome that defensive downgrade these last 2 games especially and our offense did not come through. I don't know how much of that you can pin on DJ. A 4 point loss? An overtime loss to Syracuse with a chance to win it on the last shot of regulation? We were there. It's not like we got blown out (like PITT, or even agianst UCONN our D was awful against Price with DJ out). We were in these games at the end and we didn't come up. You can't pin these last 2 on DJ alone

[Blackhat]

Yeah, now imagine if we had DJ, we definitely win today and could have pulled out a L'Ville or UCONN game.   We were on track to do that.   To act like we've had some unexplainable fade and get all upset is mind boggling to me.  WE ARE SUCKING BECAUSE WE LOST A DAMN GOOD PLAYER AND REPLACED HIM WITH A BAD ONE.   

[madtownwarrior]

we need to lose a few fans as well....


get a frickin grip - we lost DJ at the toughest poitn of the schedule - could not have been worse timing.   you want to blame somebody - blame crean for having no big men on the roster or a decent BE quality PG as a backup

[Buzz Williams' Spillproof Chiclets Cup]

Big picture.  We got drastically worse on perimeter d and lost our second leading all time scorer and replaced him with a midget.    

[HoopsMalone]

I would like to see how any Big Ten team would have done in these last five games.

As far as today goes, Johnny Flynn is a flat out stud.  If I was an NBA team in need of a PG, he would be my first pick, and Jerel was able to steal the ball from him.  The matchups are only going to get easier.  Also, Syracuse is just always a bad matchup for this group of seniors for some reason

I'm actually happy with how these guys competed, and call me crazy, but I thought that they were starting to gel a little big more in the second half.  It might take a week or two to get adjusted to not having a guy who has been playing with you the last four seasons.  

Moral victories in the end mean nothing, but these guys have been pretty competitive with some top teams with Acker in there.  The last five games we have held our own with teams that have likely NBA picks on their teams (Monroe, Earl Clark, a few Pitt players, a few UConn players, Johnny Flynn).  Things are going to get easier in the NCAA.  Hopefully Buzz can convince the team of that.  These tough defensive matchups are gonna go away in all likelihood, and at least the teams won't have multiple NBA players.  

[CTWarrior]

We miss James a ton.  Acker played as well as he could today, but he just gets killed on defense.  A couple times he was the help-out guy on the double team and he may as well not even be there.

He did a good job in the first half of gettng the ball to the high post, dribbling through gaps in the zone.  BUt in the second half and especially late in the game Syracuse decided to just ignore him unless he came inside the three point line, but he refused to shoot the wide open three or go inside the three point line.

I said it before and I'll say it again.  DJ has been our PG for 90% of the imnportant minutes the past four years.  Without question he was a coach on the floor, and a brilliant on ball defender.  His absence causes the following problems:

1.  One less offensive player for the defense to worry about.  Extra attention to McNeal and Matthews, causing them to have to work harder.
2.  Less motion, less penetration and less confusion of our opponent's defense, resulting in less open looks for McNeal and Matthews, causing them to have to work harder to get good shots, and often simply resulting in them not getting good/open looks.
3.  Lose our best on the ball defender, forcing McNeal to chase our opponents best ball-handler, making McNeal work harder, which in turn limits McNeal's help out defense, which causes more wear on Matthews and Hayward and making us a much, much more susceptible on the interior and a much less efficient defensive team.
4.  Lose a valuable rebounder on defense, which particularly hurts because a James defensive rebound was often a fast break.
5.  James could play 38-40 minutes at a high energy level (he had a tremendous motor) allowing a little bench time for McNeal and Matthews, who are now working harder on both ends of the floor and not getting any rest.
6.  It seems that Buzz can't wait to get Burke out of these games now, not wanting to go 3 on 5 on offense, which hurts our interior defense even more.

We had been playing tremendous basketball despite our lack of size by winning the battle game after game after game at at least three of the PG, SG, SF anfd PF positions.  Now we lose the PG battle (probably the most important position battle) and the C position badly game after game, and that is hard for the other three guys to make up.

[Daniel]

Watching Flynn drive to the hoop and kick out (especially to Rautins on that killer late game 3) reminded me of DJ.

And NOT of what Mo can do.

Hence, (one of) our limitation(s) is Mo's inability to dribble, drive, and dish.

DJ's absenc eon the court hurts us in many ways, and you have nailed it on the head here - we can't get to the hole as easy anymore without DJ - we can't penetrate and kick it out for open looks as much without DJ.  And whatever DJ's sverage was in ppg (was it 11?), well, we aren't getting that from Acker yet. Add his average in over the last 4 games versus the sub's and we win a couple more.  His impact on this team this year was huge.  He truly was the point this year - and we miss him.  Period.

[bilsu]

Uconn and Pitt are significantly better than us even if we had James. There is a reason they are expected to get No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Our defense is bad, because we have to collapse so much on other teams bigmen, that we cannot cover the pass to the opposite side. That is why other teams have shot well from three point land against us. Even with the finish this team won more games than it should have based on their lack of size.

[Daniel]

Uconn and Pitt are significantly better than us even if we had James. There is a reason they are expected to get No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Our defense is bad, because we have to collapse so much on other teams bigmen, that we cannot cover the pass to the opposite side. That is why other teams have shot well from three point land against us. Even with the finish this team won more games than it should have based on their lack of size.

Agreed.  UCONN and Pitt are great teams.  We might have beat UCONN with DJ, but maybe not.  Pitt, not likely.  But our perimeter defense is weakened by exactly what you have said. 

[Ahoya06]

You can't speculate how wed'd do with DJ. Maybe he's as cold as Jerel was against 'Ville, and these were tough teams for our defense to begin with.

I thought we'd go 2-2 even before DJ got hurt, and 1-3 was a real possibility, so I don't really consider this to be a fold.

[79Warrior]

I'm not sure you can pin this one on Acker ...

7 assists, 2 steals, 6 points. It's not like he wasn't playing.

you failed to mention his brutal turnover in the last minute of the game. That cost us the game.

[Spaniel with a Short Tail]

From yesterday's game, DJ's absence hurt us in these two ways the most:

1. No offensive penetration, just a lot of perimeter passing.
2. On-ball defense.

I wasn't a big fan, but miss him now.  JM & WM have to find a way to adjust for any continued success this season.

[RawdogDX]

you failed to mention his brutal turnover in the last minute of the game. That cost us the game.

also didn't mention his 2 for 8 shooting or his defence.  Didn't 5 of those 7 asts come in the first half?  He did nothing in the 2nd half or OT.  3 boards in 40 minutes is about how many you expect to bounce directly into a guy's hands.

[Nukem2]

How can anyone say this team folded?  Totally ludicrous.  But, some folks on this board tend that way anyway.

[NotAnAlum]

CTWarrior’s analysis is dead on.  It is impossible to over estimate the loss of DJ.  This team’s season effectively ended February 25 at about 6:15PM CST.   We are now given the gift of in all likelihood playing Georgetown, who I believe is the best BE team outside the top 8, for a Third Time.  Without DJ this game is a toss up.  Add to that the difficultly of beating a team 3 times in the same season.   Then on to the NCAAs with a seed that will be 1 to 2 levels worse due to DJ’s season ending injury.  Honestly guys, short of the kind of uninspired full of fear performance MU put on against Mich St 2 years ago I’m willing to accept anything and simply put an * by it.