Thoughts on today's game.

[Marquette84]

[They're still points.  You have to be able to score on the other end if the fouling strategy is going to work.  Otherwise you're just forcing them to run up the score on you.

The alternative is you simply let the clock expire, but lose by a more "respectable" margin.

Look when you start the fouling strategy, you'll never know if you're going to be able to score at the other end.

The certainty is that if you don't use it, you won't win the game period.  When you're down with a few minutes to go, this is your only hope.

The downside is that if it doesn't work, the score won't look as close.   Apparently, some people would rather have a close loss than take the chance to win.

[CTWarrior]

I certainly want us to take the chance to win, but we're just so bad at it.  We don't go for a steal, though that is a strong point of ours, and we foul the wrong guy.  Then we hoist up terrible shots with no particular plan.  I know we're in a hurry, but at least try to get an open shot for 5 or 8 seconds, you know?  Same on defense.  Take a shot or two at the steal, and then try to find the low percentage shooter to foul.  You need only watch what teams do to us when we're nursing a 10 point lead late to see what to do.

That said, the margin of defeat doesn't really bother me.  This game will be forgotten come tournament time by the selection committee, other than its effect on our record and computer numbers, which will be some small amount compared to an 8 point loss or something.

[Murffieus]

It wasn't in the game [plan to go for the "steal" aturday------against GT there is the ever present possibility of the reverse  "back door play" if we get caught in the passing lane----this took away one of our major weapons!

[TJ]

[They're still points.  You have to be able to score on the other end if the fouling strategy is going to work.  Otherwise you're just forcing them to run up the score on you.

The alternative is you simply let the clock expire, but lose by a more "respectable" margin.

Look when you start the fouling strategy, you'll never know if you're going to be able to score at the other end.

The certainty is that if you don't use it, you won't win the game period.  When you're down with a few minutes to go, this is your only hope.

The downside is that if it doesn't work, the score won't look as close.   Apparently, some people would rather have a close loss than take the chance to win.

MU didn't even make a strong attempt at scoring in the last 2 minutes.  If that's going to be the case, after the 2nd or 3rd try with the fouling strategy, you really are just asking them to run up the score.  I understand the concept behind fouling and the usefulness of it, but with the way MU played at the end of the game (in this particular game), I would rather have just run out the clock.  At least after a few tries when it was painfully obvious that nothing was going to happen for us.