I guess I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Could some of you overreact more?
1. We lost a conference game on the road - stop the presses! (Check that, two conference games on the road, one of which wae to one of the best teams in the country, and likely BE Champion). I'm not sure, but I don't think that's the first time that's happened. I could swear that Notre Dame, who we play next week in a game for some reason everyone seems to have placed in the loss column about 12 hours ago, just did the same thing. For the record, DePaul is 11-2 at home (MU is 13-3), with their losses coming to Pitt and Louisville. My God, how could we lose this game?
2. DJ - I am not going to try to defend the first of those 3-pt shots at the end (the second was desperation time and pretty irrelevant), but over the course of the last 12 hours the kid has been ripped mercilessly. Things like he needs to stop shooting, maybe he should go pro, we'd be better off without him. He had what 17 points, 5 rebs, 5 asst. or something like that. Yep that's pretty awful. His defense in the second half was key to us even being in that game. He is one guy I am not at all worried about - he will get it together. In fact if you want a silver lining, look at it this way, he wanted the ball and he wanted to be the guy to take the shot when it mattered. You can't teach that, and not a lot of guys have it. He has demonstrated it time and time again. He is struggling to be sure, but we are nowhere without him this year. I find it comical that everyone defends Jerel McNeal's frequent boners saying something to the effect of,
you have to take the good with the bad, yet somehow that doesn't apply to James.
Jerel hasn't seen many 3-pt shots he doesn't like either, and has a whopping .276 3-pt % - lower than DJ's, but when it comes to his three point shooting I hear crickets. Interesting.
3. I think the team did look a step slow, and a bit sluggish the last couple games (I am making no insinuations about the length of practices. Not sure if I believe in all that). Perhaps the flu bug has something to do with it, but they do look just a bit tired to me. They better find a way to suck it up though if that's the case as we have Saturday - Monday coming up. No rest for the weary.
4. Sometimes you lose - yet after this one I heard things like "we look awful"..."worst loss of the season (some actually tried to argue it was worse than NDSU)"..."we don't belong in the Top 25 (does Kansas?)"..."we may not win another game." Are you serious? Really, are you serious? Pittsburgh was torn limb from limb on their home floor by Louisville jus afew short days ago. Yet after one game, many are now convinced we have no chance when we play them on the 3rd. ND lost at USF. Again, many have already put that one in the loss column. Villanova lost at home to (gulp) DePaul!
Yet somehow Villanova's going to beat us, and DePaul was the worst loss of the year. Snap out of it people! Some of you either were shaken as children, or need to be shaken now.
5. More than anything else, the first half defense is what concerned me about last night, and is the reason we lost (FT's didn't help - See comment number 3). Yet I felt much better by the end of the game, because they really did tighten it up in the second half. All of the things that really caused that loss are correctable. The current situation is very similar to what it was after the back to back losses to Providence and Syracuse - a bit slowed and short handed due to injury/illness and they have not been showing up with max effort or execution - especially on defense. Obviously something that needs to be corrected, but anyone who thinks that it will not be corrected, clearly hasn't watched this team very closely.
So unbunch your fricken panties, take some Midol, do whatever you have to do and get out to the game Saturday and try to have a good time.
