#12 seed

[BGSU33]

Wow, we got three of these posts in a single season while only losing to Akron twice. Pretty good year.

All for your enjoyment, and only thanks to you, because you remind me over and over every year and I don't want to let you down. I'm beginning to think you're living vicariously through it.

[gmartin]

With Western Michigan beating Toledo and Miami beating Buffalo BG LOCKS up the #12 seed.

[gmartin]

If Akron beats Ohio, Ohio would currently be the #5 seed.

[BGSU33]

With Western Michigan beating Toledo and Miami beating Buffalo BG LOCKS up the #12 seed.

BG should just forfeit the MAC Tournament. BG is the only team in the MAC to have never won it, and there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it'll happen this year.

[BGSU33]

Right now Ball State is the #5 seed. In all honestly, I think that would be the team BG would have the best shot at beating to try and get to Clevealand out of the possible teams we could face. And BG will likely need to beat Buffalo now to help line it up because UB is right behind BSU in the standings and UB owns the tie break over BSU. But if (and that's a big if) BG were to somehow manage to get to Cleveland, no way in heck do I see us advancing. This team simply getting to Cleveland would be a minor miracle at the rate the last two months have gone. IMO, it's Ball State at #5 or bust for BG.

[guest44]

Monday at 9pm will be a good thing for this program once again.

[BleedOrange]

This is an absolutely crushing outcome for Huger's first year as a coach. When he was hired, we had so much good will with the community, fans, and former players. Now, all of that means little.

This team is last year's team minus Holmes. It's hard to attribute this big of a fall to JUST the graduation of Holmes. There will be a lot of pressure on Huger to recruit strong talent over the next 2 years.

[hammb]

This is an absolutely crushing outcome for Huger's first year as a coach. When he was hired, we had so much good will with the community, fans, and former players. Now, all of that means little.

This team is last year's team minus Holmes. It's hard to attribute this big of a fall to JUST the graduation of Holmes. There will be a lot of pressure on Huger to recruit strong talent over the next 2 years.

Except it's really NOT just last year's team minus Holmes. People forget, probably because they were so mediocre prior to last season, that Clarke & Henderson both had pretty good seasons last year as well. We lost 3 of our top 4 scorers to graduation, and our 6th man to transfer. That is a LOT to overcome, and I expected this season to be brutal even if Jans was still here. I think the way it's gone down though has been especially painful. For them to play so well for the OOC and then beginning of the MAC season then just fall off the cliff has been awful to watch, and also extremely concerning for the future. You hope to see a team with a new coach get better as the year goes on and that hasn't been the case (it wasn't the case LAST year either...we had a pretty bad collapse last season as well).

What this season needed was Denny & Parker to step up as upperclassmen and fill the void left by those losses. And, of course, you'd hope some of the new guys could contribute at a level enough to help as well.

Denny has basically had the same season he did a year ago. Parker has scored more, but he's always been ridiculously inefficient. His efficiency is much better this year than it was last year, but still nowhere near as efficient as Holmes was to make up for that loss. Alcegaire, IMO, has been about what Parker was last year, which isn't good. He's a guy that scores some points, but like Parker last year, is insanely inefficient in doing so.

Looking beyond scoring efficiency look at turnovers. As a team we have more turnovers than assists this year. Not sure that is terribly uncommon for a college team, and last year's squad was only like +20. But look at the individuals that are playing. Last year our 2 off guards both had positive A:TO ratios. This year the guys that are filling that role of off guard are probably Alcegaire & Lillard, primarily, and they combine to be -40 in A:TO! That's INSANELY bad from your guards. So not only do they not score efficiently (oddly enough Lillard is the more efficient scorer at 90 less shots on the year), but when they're not shooting they're about twice as likely to pass it to the opponent as they are to set up a teammate...that's really awful.

That's just looking at the individuals that are trying to fill roles from last year. Looking at the overall team numbers tells the story pretty well though. We actually are shooting a better percentage this year than we did last year, and a much better percentage from 3 than we did last year. This team is losing because our defense is allowing the opposition to shoot a better percentage (wider than the gap of our improvement) and a MUCH higher percentage from 3 (again wider than the gap of our improvement). And looking at this year's season totals doesn't even tell the real story as these metrics (that are already a step back from last year) look terrible on their own, look at the conference only stats and it's appalling. Our defense has allowed conference opponents to shoot an insane 45% from the field and 39% from three. In short, our AVERAGE opponent in conference play is scoring more efficiently than everybody on our team except Parker. And our rebounding totals have gone from a net positive overall on the season to a negative in conference play as well.

What I take from looking at the stats comparing last year to this? Losing Holmes has KILLED us on both ends of the floor. We also haven't adequately replaced the offensive efficiency that we lost with Clarke & Henderson. But more importantly, our defense this season has been god awful horrendous. Certainly losing Holmes is a major loss on that side of the floor. I'm not sure that Clark or Henderson were really good defenders, but I think they were probably better than what we've gotten out of Alcegaire/Lillard this year.

The onus is definitely on Huger to get some talent in here. And, perhaps more importantly, we need guys that want to compete. Defense is about hustle and work, and we're not seeing it with this group. Huger has said on several occasions when he pushes guys they shut off or pout. Those types need to be gone, immediately. We need players who want to work and want to get better. Way too many times this season I've seen long stretches where the team had no fight and just didn't seem to give a damn. I'll give Huger a bit of a pass on that for this (and sadly, probably next) season, given the strange circumstances that comprise our roster, but long term we'll never win if he cannot get the guys to put forth the effort required to win on a nightly basis.

Blah...why did I just spend so much time talking about how shitty this team was and looking at last year's stats? Just makes me sad...

[guest44]

Jans was the reason Clarke, Henderson, Holmes, and on and on, played the best they ever had. Joseph, while limited, fit Jans system enough to have a positive impact. Parker was available when he was good Parker, but they had options when you got bad Parker. Austin and Dickerson brought a toughness and an edge to them that the program hadn't had in 10 years. The part that I don't get is why did BG have to fight to get these guys to stay. They actually WON games. If they wanted to leave, let them leave. This years team probably would not have been great, but who knows. Had 3 or 4 left, 3 or 4 Juco's or graduate transfers would have been here. Could they really be less helpful than Gomez was for 4 years?

[hammb]

Jans was the reason Clarke, Henderson, Holmes, and on and on, played the best they ever had. Joseph, while limited, fit Jans system enough to have a positive impact. Parker was available when he was good Parker, but they had options when you got bad Parker. Austin and Dickerson brought a toughness and an edge to them that the program hadn't had in 10 years. The part that I don't get is why did BG have to fight to get these guys to stay. They actually WON games. If they wanted to leave, let them leave. This years team probably would not have been great, but who knows. Had 3 or 4 left, 3 or 4 Juco's or graduate transfers would have been here. Could they really be less helpful than Gomez was for 4 years?

I'm with ya, and Jans definitely deserves credit for getting major production increases from those holdovers. Jans was a fantastic coach, if an abrasive personality (and embarrassment to the university).

I never understood the fight to keep guys either. I'm happy that we didn't lose our entire roster, but I don't understand why the kids didn't want to stay and work (or maybe they did and the rumors were just that...). They should have had a taste of some winning last year and understand what it takes to win. Guess not.

I hope Huger can get some kids in here that want to win. This group, all too often, seems to have no heart. And they're not overly talented either.

[guest44]

Again, I'm not defending Jans. It is what it is. However, I think people thought the players, many of whom just wanted to feel recruited again, were much better than they really were based on Jans coaching. Therefore, the administration acted as if Huger needed to do everything possible to convince these guys to stay, when in reality most moving on would have been better. Again, the dumpster fire was already started, let it burn and move forward. What good does it do to beg players back when three coaches haven't found roles for them? Maybe Jans was over the top in his treatment of players, maybe he was trying to weed some guys out to speed up the process. I have no idea. However, Huger's frustration is that of a guy who can't wait to get his players in, yet the roster as is doesn't allow that to happen very quickly. Give me more Dickerson's and Austin's. I'd rather they contribute and leave in a year. Give me less Gomez and Rorie's. A combined 7 years of scholarships, and they don't even finish senior seasons. It's not 1980 anymore. You can rebuild quickly. You just can't keep wasting scholarships.

[hammb]

You just can't keep wasting scholarships.

Especially on 4 year players....

Bring in a Jr. Juco that doesn't pan out and you're only out 2 years. We've got several players on this year's roster that have been here for 3 years already and have contributed about as much to the team as I have sitting in the stands. That hurts...

I'm really bummed that we're entering the best time of the year for college basketball, and we're really looking at next year already. We've had some bad teams over the years, but this one has to be among the very worst.

[Statmanmatt]

I think some folks need to take the 9-4 out-of-conference record and put it into some serious context, because when you look back on it, it's not anywhere close to as good as the record looks.

Just going by current RPI, we were 0-4 against the top 4 RPI teams that we played. Of the 7 D-I teams we beat OOC, the best current RPI among them is FGCU at 236. The rest are worse than 250, and 4 of the 7 are worse than 300.

Some of the teams were just god-awful. UMBC (7-24), Drake (7-23) and SE Missouri St (5-24) all finished last in their leagues. Cleveland State (9-22) was next-to-last. New Orleans (9-18) is 10th in the 13-team Southland, and Youngstown State (11-20) is 7th in the 10-team Horizon.

Even looking at the two D-II teams we beat...Urbana finished 2-26. Oakland City was 18-4 but did it as a D-II independent who played the likes of Wright State's Lake Campus.

I love the Falcons and am not trying to put the team down, but when you're a MAC team playing the country's 315th-best OOC schedule, one could argue that 9-4 is a bare minimum of what you should do.

Games are games, and you have to win against the schedule you're given...so it's great that they won most of those. But when looking at what's happened over the last two months, we probably shouldn't be too nostalgic about the OOC part of the season.

[Globetrotter]

I expect atleast one or two more scholarships this offseason than the open 2. Huger is clearly fed up with the team if you listen to a few of his post game conferences. My guess is there are a few guys who are singled out by him because their effort isn't there and it brings down the rest of the team because the team has no real leader. The captains are Alcegaire and Mayleben and Tisdale. 2 of those guys don't even play.

[guest44]

I said after the exhibition game, that was the worst individual BG game I've seen. Close runner up's were Duquesne and Akron blowouts the year after Orr's extension, in which you knew we were in trouble long term. This years team doesn't guard. Alteast Orr's teams could pack in the 2-3 zone, protect the rim, and hope we hit some shots. .