Our poor man to man defense. Especially when we play a team with fast guards with size. DJ kept getting posted-up and we had to help which gave USF some open jumpers. I think we are going to have to practice playing zone. When we went to a zone we did OK tonight. Well we need to forget about this one and focus on Villanova. GO MARQUETTE!!!
I think I said this before, but when we play fast teams, our lack of bigs to stop them in the lane etc. will hurt us - this game reminded me of Dayton - they were blowing past our guards too. Our m to m defense takes a lot out of a defender - how can they not tire by games end? We need soen height and more zone....
Onto the next game.
Bad FT shooting, rebounding, and bad 3pt shooting.
Nothing "new" was exposed tonight. Opposing coaches/teams would be fools not to implement a similar defensive strategy in the future against MU.
All you need to do is pack the line defensively, and encourage players like James/Mo to put up the 3 ball.
I'm surprised we haven't seen teams implore the "Hack-a-Nique" late in ball games. I don't know how it's possible...but Dom has regressed further in his free throw shooting.
What was exposed tonight? That there are a lot of fair weather so-called fans out there who post in record numbers after losing a game we should have won.
Nothing new was exposed in this game. With our lack of height we can't afford to shot badly. We need to get paint touches to get to the line and free up our 3 point shooting but both of those killed us.
Our 3 point was horrible. DJ really needs to rein his shots, again nothing new. He has all year until last night. But what really lost us the game was free throw shooting. Not only just missed free throws but we missed out on quite a few 1 in 1s.
The only thing "exposed" was that MU can indeed play a crap game. With how well the season is going, I didn't think that possible. I'm also confident that's the worst performance we'll see out of this team.
I'd much rather this then have played great and lost to USF.
I'd much rather this then to have lost by 30 on the road to another top 10 team (cough Duke cough).
I'd much rather this then have lost two road games in a row to inferior opposition after being undefeated for two months. (cough Wake Forest cough).
I'd much rather this then have been controlled at home by a team that may not make the NCAAs (cough UConn cough).
I'd much rather this then have been shellacked by UNC in my home state (cough Michigan State cough).
If we shoot poorly we lose. Oooooh, there's a newsflash. We are exactly the same team we were 24 hours ago. We have the exact same strengths and weakneses. We had a crappy game on the road. Despite mind bogglingly bad shooting, despite our best player fouling out, we had two really good looks at the basket at the end. IT WASN'T OUR NIGHT. Learn, move on.
Quote from: mufanatic on February 07, 2009, 08:43:52 AM
Nothing new was exposed in this game. With our lack of height we can't afford to shot badly. We need to get paint touches to get to the line and free up our 3 point shooting but both of those killed us.
Our 3 point was horrible. DJ really needs to rein his shots, again nothing new. He has all year until last night. But what really lost us the game was free throw shooting. Not only just missed free throws but we missed out on quite a few 1 in 1s.
+1
If Wes hits the well designed play at the end, do we have this panic? MU's weaknesses are still our weaknesses. On DJ, I actually don't have a problem with him shooting as we need him to against a zone, but with the fact he only had
one assist. This is the second time through the BE, coaches adapt. USF's zone was trying to stop the DJ penetration...Heath is an Izzo disciple of the match-up. DePaul gave us a tough game. Dj, dCubes, Acker, Lazar need to start hitting threes like they have in the past or we are toast. But, what else is new?
It was a bad loss--it happens--but underlying this is a pattern of other teams now taking away the things that we have been successful with. MU's coaching staff will adjust and provide some new looks and twists. One thing for sure is that Buzz had said he wanted MU to peak by Feb. 14...he has some regrouping to go. Nova will be a good test with the quick turnaround and tired legs. Let's see what they come up with.
Here is what was exposed tonight.
We weren't going to go 18-0 in conference...
Teams have bad games... lets move on.
I'd rather have a bad game in mid February than at the end of March
+1 you P.H.