BG-Oakland Game Thread

[orangeandbrown]

I noticed this, too. We just coughed the ball up over and over again.

[BGSU Crazy Fan 58]

Way too many turnovers, nobody could hit a shot in the 2nd half, our offense got very boring, and Oakland hit some big shots. I swear we stuck on 54 for about 5 minutes I think. The other thing was the crowd wasnt into it at all. It was a decent size but very unenthousiastic. And what was up with no one in the student section standing up?! Besides the Animals and sideline squad all the kids sat down. Students stand up football, hockey, and always had for b-ball. Maybe they were all freshmen and didnt know that you're suppossed to stand up and make it a home court advantage. Very frustrating night.

[OSUFALCON]

Crowd was fair, the band did a nice job of trying to get folks into the game. This Oakland team is soild, I would guess they will be near the top of their league as we will be near the bottom of ours. On a positive tone we have some time before the conf. schedule starts to get better. I will be interested in Wright and Motens arrival. We we don't get better with them I'm not sure what we will do. Drop back and punt. I hope it isn't blocked.

[Warthog]

May have to go to a few Oakland games just to check out their 'cheerleaders' some more. WOW I was a little distracted in the second half. Maybe the team was too.

[BGSU33]

UGH!!! Oakland gets us again. And now we won't be back at home for another month....I don't like the thought of that either. At least we have Notre Dame (Ohio) on the schedule, so we should win that game. Good luck at Bradley Falcons, their probably going to need it. It was nice to see Lefeld and Dusan at least played. When Wright comes back and Moten gets on the floor later in the month, it can only help.

[BleedOrange]

Just got home from the blowout, we were down by as many as 19 in the second half. Poor, POOR, POOR POINT GUARD PLAY..... Floyd should be glad he left Oakland because he would have stayed on the bench with that team tonight. I'm sorry guys but a junior point guard should be better than that. Worst yet his backup has more turnovers than points this year. Moon had 6 or 7 turnovers tonight. They looked good in the first half despite 11 turnovers. Lefled, Solor did a great job on the boards. When Wright comes back I think within three games he will be the point guard. 10 wins could be a stretch this year. When Football start? I think the Lady Hoops team will be the one's to watch, they win again tonight.

(NOTE: Wright didn't dress and Moten wasn't even on the bench.)

I hate pile on with the negativity, but I completely agree that our point guard play absolutely stunk, perhaps the worst that I can recall seeing in Brown and Orange. Moon had at least 4 turnovers in the first half and as many in the second half. When Floyd would come in to replace him, he would immediately make the same mistakes (the box score was charitable on the turnover counts) and missed shot after shot down the stretch. Both Floyd and Moon simply looked completely out of their element in a D1 basketball game. (I wondered in earnest: "Where was Brian Guerin? Put him in now!") Ryan Sims can't get here soon enough. When Wright and Moten come availabe, hopefully we'll go with a 3-guard, no point setup up.

This game was a tale of two halves. We actually looked quite good in the first half, and one had the feeling we'd open it up a little more in the second half. Our offense came to a screeching halt in the second half. To boot, they badly out rebounded us in the second half and shot well. Oakland did a good job of keeping the ball out of Samarco's hands down the stretch.

On the bright side, Lefeld, Soler, Marschall, Clements, and RAD showed us some things. Soler was extremely active and was all over the floor. Lefeld was rugged inside and looked good on a number of jump hooks. Rad has a silky smooth stroke, and although he didn't hit, you could tell from looking at his shot that he will be lighting things up in AA. Also, Rad demonstrated a flare for passing and has good court vision. All things considered, he looked surprisingly comfortable in our offense. I'm really looking forward to seeing him, Marschall, and Clements play this season.

[orangeandbrown]

Ditto, Bleed. I thought Rad played good D, too.

When Wright does come back, he may have to play PG again, because we have nothing there.

Overall, it was a depressing game, IMO. Let's hope we can make a tourney run, because that was a downer last night.

Oakland was also playing poorly in the first half.

[hammb]

The Center for Oakland was a tub of goo. Might be the slowest, most unathletic center that LeFeld matches up against all season. In the first half LeFeld lit him up, but he was struggling defensively. In the 2nd half they brought doubles and Matt looked lost trying to pass out of the double.

Our PG play was awful. Floyd had 4 TOs!?!? I can sit here and describe 5 of them to ya. I don't know if its his mom or what that does our scorekeeping but I thought all last year they were generous to him, and it seems they still are. Moon was even worse. We have 2 PGs who cannot see the court. I swear when Floyd has the ball in his head he's thinking, "What's the dumbest thing I can possibly do, but would look really cool on the off chance I pull it off". He should NOT be taking very many shots, but like last year he somehow does. Moon knows he cannot score and doesn't take many shots, I can deal with that...Floyd is a terrible shooter, and he's 2nd only to Semarco (who has never seen a shot he didn't like) in attempts!? How the hell do you justify a guy who shot like 27% from 3 last year shooting 7 three balls last night!? SEVEN! And I know for a fact that a couple of them were from like NBA range. The guy put up a typical, for him, 33% shooting percentage, but gets 12 attempts...UGH.

Semarco looks good. The kid shoots the ball constantly, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing with this group. They need someone to step up and not be afraid to take a shot. He's got a pretty good shot as well, so keep on firing Martin! He got after it on defense a bit too. Box score credited him with 3 steals, but he deflected quite a few balls beyond that as well.

Marschall looked good last night too. He gave us some good minutes, and showed some agression going towards the hoop as well. He's undersized down low and that's apparent when it comes to rebounding, but he's got heart and I thought he played a pretty decent game last night.

Mawel was Mawel. Decent defender and tough as nails going for rebounds. Deep in his heart I don't think he's convinced the ball can fit through the rim though Good, tough player, but not gonna score for ya...still like him though.

Seemed like Clements took a lot of shots with not a lot to show for 'em, and the box score shows he was 3-10. Not sure what to make of him, definitely looks long and athletic. We have a shortage of D1 caliber athletes, so I'll be anxiously awaiting his development.

Dusan didn't do much last night. I'm sure he's still not really ready to play up to his actual level. I'll be anxious to see if he can develop into the John Reimold type shooter that we can count on late in games.

In the end the group looked pretty much how I'd expect them to...inconsistent. They played pretty well in the first half, despite a ton of turnovers. In the second half the turnovers continued, but we didn't make any shots. We settled for 3's a LOT in the 2nd half, because they were bringing the double to LeFeld and couldn't work anything out of it. Any time you have John Floyd putting up 12 shots you're not in real good shape. It'll be interesting to see where Wright plays with this group. He's a natural wing, and not a real good PG, but he's better than the 2 hacks we've got manning that spot right now.

The one disappointment, as I said to Grant late, is that we really aren't THAT young. Certainly no younger than Oakland last night. Sure we've got a lot of new faces, but when you look at who really played last night LeFeld, Floyd, and Semarco are all Juniors. Mawel is a senior. Of that group Mawel is a rebounder and that's about it, Floyd should never leave his seat, LeFeld looks okay but not special, and Semarco is our one consistent scoring threat. We're gonna need Wright back and these Freshmen to step up, because our vets are as bad as we all thought they were gonna be.

[JWEIII]

23 points in the paint for Lefeld and Marschall. That's encouraging. 11 boards for Soler. Good.

But... it seems like we have 20 guards on the team and none of them can get the ball down the floor and set up the offense without traveling, getting the ball stolen or chucking it out of bounds. I was a big Floyd fan, but when Wright is ready I think he has got to play the point.

1 - Wright
2 - Smarco
3 - Soler
4 - Marschall
5 - Lefeld

Anyone...

[Warthog]

Maybe I watched a different game, but Marschall and Samarco are about the only ones that have some skills to play D-I ball. One issue that I would bring up is that there is talk of how young our team is. Look at the minutes from last night. Players that are Jrs and Srs. played 131 of the possible 200 minutes. Freshman played 50 minutes. That doesn't seem like a lot to me for a team that is using 'youth' as an excuse for their play. And for the most of the game, there was only one freshman on the court at a time. There might have been about 5 minutes where two were out there together. Does that sound like a young team to anyone?

For as heralded as the incoming class was, what have we seen so far? Not much. Marschall looks to be a player. Clements has a ways to go. Wilson sits the bench. Sullivan is being red-shirted, and some question whether he will ever actual play here already. Moten isn't even on the roster due to eligibility issues. The book is still out on Dusan due to his injury, but he didn't show me much last night. Not trying to be pessimistic, just relaying what I saw last night.

Not that it is a big deal, but I didn't see Guerin on the bench last night. Any ideas about that? (We dressed 11: Clements, Wilson, Freeman, Floyd, Dusan, Moon, Phillips, Samarco, Soler, Marschall, Lefeld)

[commonsense]

hammb

Great post, i agree with everything you say. I just wanted to add, that it is a good point to say that we really are not that young, but these guys have not played as mainstays in the line up. However, that can only be true for so long because for five they have been the mainstays. At this point I would say one major problem, is for a team that is undersized and unathletic, they do not shoot the ball well as a group.

[Maureen_F]

Not that it is a big deal, but I didn't see Guerin on the bench last night. Any ideas about that? (We dressed 11: Clements, Wilson, Freeman, Floyd, Dusan, Moon, Phillips, Samarco, Soler, Marschall, Lefeld)

Guerin has mono, it got cut from my game story today. Kind of sad since it was his poster giveaway night.

[hammb]

1 - Wright
2 - Smarco
3 - Soler
4 - Marschall
5 - Lefeld
Anyone...

I don't doubt that right now that's putting our best 5 out there, but the problem is depth. We cannot afford to have Marschall & LeFeld out there together for enough minutes in the game because we have nobody else behind them who can man middle at all. If they stay healthy & in good enough shape to get 25 minutes a game out of each of them that only leaves 10 minutes where they can both be out there at the same time.

If we had one more big man we could afford to have them both on the court more, but unfortunately I don't think you'll be seeing Marschall & LeFeld in the same frontcourt too often this year.

[hammb]

At this point I would say one major problem, is for a team that is undersized and unathletic, they do not shoot the ball well as a group.

Agreed. You can survive being unathletic if you've got size. You can survive being small if you're athletic. You can survive any combination of those deficiencies if you can hit tons of shots.

Right now we're a small, unathletic team that just doesn't shoot the ball very well...uh oh.

[Warthog]

Not that it is a big deal, but I didn't see Guerin on the bench last night. Any ideas about that? (We dressed 11: Clements, Wilson, Freeman, Floyd, Dusan, Moon, Phillips, Samarco, Soler, Marschall, Lefeld)

Guerin has mono, it got cut from my game story today. Kind of sad since it was his poster giveaway night.

Thanks Maureen. I probably wouldn't have noticed he was missing if not for the poster.

Further roster notes that may interest only me:
Of the 14 listed players, three are walk-ons, two are JC transfers, another is a transfer, one was a late signee (August), one came from somewhere in eastern Europe that I think used to be Yugoslavia, one is being redshirted. That leaves just five guys that are playing that were recruited and came to the team through traditional means. And three of those are freshman. So we have just two upper classman on the team that came to the team through the normal recruiting process. Does that seem like an incredibly low number to anyone? Guess that proves the issues we have with getting/retaining players.