vs. Toledo (1/15)

[mbenecke]

The Battle of I-75 will be played at the Stroh Center on Saturday, January 15 at 5:00pm. The game will be an Orange Out, and it’ll be available to steam through ESPN3. BG is looking for their 4th win in the past 5 games in this series, and it’ll be a real challenge.

Go Falcons! Beat Toledo.

[Diemilkweed]

UT is 4-1 in league play (2nd place), 12-4 overall. WE are 1-3 (2nd to last) and 8-6. We have spurts, usually less than 5 minutes, where our talent all meshes and we just destroy teams. And then we have ruts, that often last 10 minutes, where we cannot do anything but turn the ball over, take terrible shots, and commit fouls. IF we can be the destroyers for 20 minutes and only have one nasty rut we can win this thing by double digits.

But, we do not do that with any consistency at all.

I am pretty worried we are going to be 1-4 after this, almost totally killing our chances of even making it to Cleveland.

OTOH, what we are doing is clearly NOT working. Maybe we need a terrible start to league play to get Huger to FINALLY admit that and stop some of his dogmatic bullshit. Taking out your best players after 2-5 minutes and not playing the the entire rest of the half due to foul trouble is automaton bullshit. Yanking around rotations (Fulcher getting approximately 25 - 6 - 25 - 6 is dumb as hell for instance) has to go. Playing 11 guys 15+ minutes regularly has to go.

Maybe totally tanking the start to this season wakes him up. And wakes up the team. And then we finally start playing to ability. It would take a hell of a run to make it to Cleveland after starting 1-4, but our talent is totally capable of doing that. And we can 100% beat any team in this league on any given night if we just play to talent instead of coaching ability.

Much as I want to win this game, because it's UT and because losing puts us in a horrible hole, losing it might actually be our best bet to waking the hell up and being good enough to FINALLY win the darn league tourney and get into the dance.

Or, losing it might utterly destroy our season, which might finally get the athletic department to recognize that we need to let Huger go after his contract (I know we won't do it before then simply for being mediocre) and use that Frack money on someone who can actually excel.

[Diemilkweed]

On lineups: Kula and O'neal are good enough to play long stretches. But Reece is simply better. I would vastly prefer 28 minutes of Reece who fouls out than 20 minutes of Reece who finishes with 3 or 4 fouls. The last 2 minutes of the game are not more important than the prior 38. MAYBE, because of fouling situations, you get in as many possessions as 3 or possibly even 4 minutes of time from the 1st half. This does NOT remotely mean you play a player 10 minutes less than you want to try to get them to be available, in foul trouble and therefore lessened, for the last 2 minutes.

There is simple math and logic here that way too many coaches ignore. And Huger has never once shown a glimpse of understanding.

[threestooges]

Per a tweet by Corey Crisan of the Blade, Metheny, Reece, Kula and Fulcher are all out today.

[mbenecke]

Per a tweet by Corey Crisan of the Blade, Metheny, Reece, Kula and Fulcher are all out today.

I would guess it’s COVID.

Bummer.

[mbenecke]

HALF: Toledo leads, 48-47.

Trey Diggs hit at least 7 threes that half and BG battled back from down 12 to tie it and take the lead late in the first half.

Wild game so far. Seems like a great atmosphere on TV.

[Diemilkweed]

Per a tweet by Corey Crisan of the Blade, Metheny, Reece, Kula and Fulcher are all out today.

Just turned it on to see the tail end of the half. I wondered why the hell Elsasser was on the floor. I am pretty sure I think more highly of him than Huger does. So that was ODD.

[Diemilkweed]

9 assists to only 4 turnovers. With 2 rotation guards and a walk on.

4 blocks with 1 of our 3 rotation bigs available.

also 3 steals.

Where has this been.

[hammb]

Trey did in fact hit 7 threes. Turner hit a couple as well.

Our defense was pretty rough the first 15 mins or so but really battled back. Lack of size sucks because Oneal is our lone remaining big and he's completely out.atched athletically in this one.

Gonna need to keep hitting 3s to have a shot but it's closer than I thought it would be seeing the start, and being down so many guys

[mbenecke]

And BG is immediately down 10 to start the second half.

We just can’t keep up the shooting pace we had, and we don’t have enough bodies to keep battling the way we did.

I think we win this game at full strength, at home.

[Diemilkweed]

And we start the 2nd half allowing them to go on a 12 - 3 run.

[mbenecke]

Diggs somehow went 11 game minutes between shot attempts.

[Diemilkweed]

And BG is immediately down 10 to start the second half.

We just can’t keep up the shooting pace we had, and we don’t have enough bodies to keep battling the way we did.

I think we win this game at full strength, at home.

I wish I shared your optimism.

I really do.

[Diemilkweed]

Anybody else lose the game feed or is that just me?

[mbenecke]

BG now down 15 and I’m not interested in watching us lose while shorthanded against those jerks from Bancroft, so I’m out.