tsun on the road tonight...

[factman]

I don't see much reason for any upper classmen to be playing more than minimal minutes, possibly other than Denny.

[gmartin]

Toledo on 36-16 run after we tied up at 30.

[hammb]

I don't see much reason for any upper classmen to be playing more than minimal minutes, possibly other than Denny.

Denny brings defense and rebounding tenacity but he's the least efficient offensive player on the team. No coincidence we played better last year when he played less minutes.

May as well play all the seniors though. Just make sure Caldwell and Frye are getting the bulk of the guard mins. We can't sit alcegaire down and Lillard certainly hasn't warned any additional mins.

[hammb]

Ali pisses me off

[factman]

I don't see much reason for any upper classmen to be playing more than minimal minutes, possibly other than Denny.

Denny brings defense and rebounding tenacity but he's the least efficient offensive player on the team. No coincidence we played better last year when he played less minutes.

May as well play all the seniors though. Just make sure Caldwell and Frye are getting the bulk of the guard mins. We can't sit alcegaire down and Lillard certainly hasn't warned any additional mins.

I guess that is what I was trying to say, Hamm. I'd like to see all of the younger guys get as many minutes as possible.
Ish pisses me off to. He does some good things but gets out of control at the WRONG times.

[Falconfreak90]

85-73 final...

[gmartin]

Toledo made 6 more three point shots. That's +18. Toledo made 10 more free throws. That's +10. That's 28 more points there. That's the difference in winning and losing. If you look at our next 10 games only 3 are winnable. #12 seed again

[BGSU33]

Is there ANYTHING that our football or basketball teams can beat Toledo in??? I mean anything??? Checkers, hot dog eating contest, video games??? Jesus.....

[Globetrotter]

Many Many thoughts after watching the replay on Watch ESPN
1. Watch ESPN is awesome because you don't have to watch the game at 7.
2. I don't have a clue what is going on on offense
3. Arn't people paid both to gather information about this team and to disseminate information about the team. Why don't we know
-What is going on with the injuries with Turner and Uju?
-Why this team only used 12 scholarships again? We only have 3 players over 6-7. Our starting SF is playing PF. Who should be our starting PF is backing up C and not seeing minutes. We really could have used 2 other bigs and we had a scholarship. I get it if we didn't have a scholarship. It's the coaches job to find recruits. It is clear to anyone that they didn't do that correctly this year.
-Not having enough bigs means that we have 6-2 Denny on the low zone. We had a walk on SG at PF again tonight and he was guarding Knapke. That's like me playing Knapke. Because of our lack of size we have to double the post which any good shooting team just shreds.
4. We often have terrible shot selection taking ill advised shots early on the clock.
5. Frye needs to start. In the first half Lillard's plus minus was -25. He has to be the selfish guy that Huger is talking about. Just running all over the court trying to make big plays and doesn't seem to care about the system. So other guys have to cover for him and we are toast. He might just have a very small basketball IQ. He played the first part of the fist half and we were down 6-20. He came back in at the end and they went on a 0-11 run. That's awful.
6. I did plus minus for the game. Don't know how accurate

Ish -12
Lillard -16
Denny 1
Alcegaire -16
Wiggins -9
Worrell -3
Fye -4
Fox -1
Caldwell 0

Lineups
Starters: 26-35
Lillard-Alcegaire-Worrell-Frye-Caldwell: 0-3
Denny-Alcegaire-Worrell-Frye-Caldwell: 4-1
Denny-Worrell-Frye-Fox-Caldwell: 7-1
Ish-Denny-Worrell-Frye-Fox: 2-1
Ish-Denny-Wiggins-Frye-Fox: 2-0
Ish-Denny-Alcegaire-Worrell-Frye: 26-22
Ish-Lillard-Alcegaire-Worrell-Fry: 0-5
Ish-Alcegaire-Worrell-Frye-Fox: 4-9
Denny-Wiggins-Frye-Fox-Caldwell: 1-6
Lillard-Denny-Alcegaire-Wiggins-Caldwell: 1-0
Denny-Alcegaire-Wiggins-Frye-Caldwell: 0-2

Our bench is so thin that we can't avoid what are clearly bad lineups.

[Flipper]

Josh fu**ing Gomez looks pretty good right now....and that Erger kid...please come back!!

Thin...we are Kate Moss on heroin thin. I would play Frye and Caldwell together for 30 minutes a night and live with the consequences. Denny and Fox split the wing time, Alcegaire will have to be our PF with Wiggins and Worrell playing the post. Lillard sits until he figures out who he wants too play for...Ali gets the back up PG minutes.

We'd be in so much better shape with Mayleben around and Uju healthy. Uju is your 4, Wiggins your 5, Wes is your 3 and the kids are your back court with Denny and Ali filling in. Lillard? he still sits until he figures out who he wants to play for

[hammb]

Just one time I'd like to play our real lineup out there sometime and see what happens.

Wiggins at C
Worrell at PF
Alcegaire at SF
Frye at SG
Caldwell at PG

That's our best 5. PERIOD. End of Story. And what's frustrating beyond all belief is that I think, other than relying on 2 freshmen, it could actually be a pretty damned GOOD starting 5. And if the kids are struggling you easily bring Denny & Ali in at the guard spots. Lillard can earn his minutes between the 2/3 if he ever looks like he belongs on a basketball court again. Fox stays at the end of the bench and only comes off for the occasional situation where we need 3 point shooting. If Turner gets healthy again he provides more quality depth at the 2/3 spot.

But we can't play this lineup, because we don't just "not have depth" at the post, we don't even have BODIES. May as well trot Denny on stilts out there.

I understand the not giving a scholarship to a kid just to give one out. I wouldn't want to hamstring myself for 4 years of a lackluster player either. But Globe was right when he was harping on it all year. To not use your scholarships and at least bring in a 6'10 human being. I don't care if he was some 40 year old that never played college ball and can barely walk up and down the court, we need a freaking BODY. I'm sure the Uju injury and Mayleben defection killed us in this regard, but we had time after Mayleben walked. We should have looked for any Juco kid, preferably with only a year of eligibility. I don't even care if he could PLAY. We need a freaking body so that we could occasionally put our best lineup on the floor. Having only 2 big bodies, we've never once this season seen our best lineup out there.

And what else really sucks about that is we're also wasting Worrell. He's woefully inadequate and a foul machine at the 5 spot, but he's shown some touch and can stretch things out a bit if we were playing him at the 4. Wouldn't at all be shocked if he has a huge breakout year next year when we can actually play him where he belongs.

This team will be unable to defend any decent team in the MAC with our size limitations. If our undersized guys were great shooters we could conceivably score our way to victory but we don't seem to understand that. With our defensive issues there is no way we can win games by dumping it into the post and trying to work Wiggins. We need to play Cavs/Warriors style basketball. Let Wiggins rotate towards the glass off pick 'n' roll, but his main role is offensive rebounding and alley oops if they rotate away from him. Assuming we were going with Caldwell/Frye/Alcegaire/Denny we need whoever has the ball to be willing to attack, but more importantly looking to get the ball out to the other guys who are spacing the floor and hitting shots.

I don't think we have the shooting ability to actually win many games this way, but it's probably our only hope at this point. We just don't have the bodies to actually put a traditional lineup/plan out there. And we can't do s**t inside with Ali & Lillard on the floor together anyhow, because neither can shoot enough to keep a defense honest.

[Globetrotter]

Great takes. I completely agree on wasting Worrell We are also kind of wasting Alcegaire. He is a much better shooter than I thought he would be.

The great thing is that Wiggins and Frye are very solid pieces to build around. The rest of the roster gets an incomplete. It wouldn't totally shock me if Worrell transferred based on minutes. I am beginning to think that Lillard is going to transfer and I fully expect Malik to transfer. On paper that still leaves us with a more complete roster than this year.

1 Caldwell 5-10 So Cummings 6-0 Fr
2 Frye 6-2 So
3 Turner 6-4 So Plowden 6-5 Fr
4 Uju 6-7 Jr (r) Koch 6-9 Fr
5 Wiggins 6-10 Jr Gadson 6-11 Fr

If you add in Fox and Worrell it's even better. Fox is probably back but his scholarship status is unknown.
1 Caldwell 5-10 So Cummings 6-0 Fr
2 Frye 6-2 So Plowden 6-5 Fr
3 Turner 6-4 So Fox 6-4 Sr
4 Worrell 6-8 Jr Uju 6-7 Jr Koch 6-9 Fr
5 Wiggins 6-10 Jr Gadson 6-11 Fr

And then Lillard-Malik and Denny are all question marks for 2017+ IMO.

[hammb]

Agreed on Wes, Globe. I almost went back to add him to my point on Worrell, but my computer was acting up and I didn't feel like dealing with it any longer. But yes, we're wasting him by making him try to guard guys in the post.

If we actually ran our offense properly, I don't think we'd be wasting him at 4. He's undersized, sure, but he could force the opposition out to match up with him, because he is a better shooter than any of us expected (despite teh fact his shots all look fugly, they seem to go in at a higher rate than I'd have ever guessed).

Your projected roster is exactly why I'm still willing to give Huger another year. He's bringing in 2 legit frontcourt guys next year, and hopefully should return Wiggins/Uju/Worrell.

If we can avoid defections from this group, I think we could be in decent shape. But we'd be in a position to really form an informed opinion on our current coaching staff.

The roster that we have healthy right now, can NOT compete. Not without shooting a ton of 3s, and we don't have enough guys that you can count on to make them for that to be a viable strategy. We cannot defend the half court, so any attempt to play a half court, feed the post type game is just an exercise in futility.

[fanatic13]

Watching the game in-person the biggest problem with our offense is there's normally only two guys moving. There is almost always someone standing still which makes it very easy to defend. There were a couple straight possession where Dylan Frye stood in a corner and with his play making this should never happen. When the only people moving are the pick and roll guys it makes it difficult for it to work. Toledo normally had 4-5 guys moving the entire time they had the ball which led to countless open shots. It really looked like two different levels of offensive flow with Toledo's being a real college offense and ours being a pickup basketball offense. I'm still hopeful when Huger gets more of his own players here our offense will look better, because he still has an Orr player, but if our offense is stagnant it won't matter. We did play with more energy than the recent games so there are afew positives.