@ Ball State (1/30)

[hammb]

It was a long foggy drive home but glad I made it over there. Can check another mac arena of the list. Place is too big. I will never be in board with Mac schools building 10k seat arenas. I still live our own concourses, it adds so much to the atmosphere, imo. The small crowd in the massive arena almost felt like walking through a dungeon in the empty concourses pre game.

Comparing the things we always complain about. Parking was $5 to be in a lot probably about as far away from the doors as alumni drive is from the stroh. Concessions had way more choices than we offer. BBQ, chick fil a sandwiches, brats and dogs. I think the prices were a buck or so cheaper. Grabbed a box of cardinal corn regular popcorn and caramel corn mixed, was pretty good for $5

For the game Hill was simply insane. Agee and Spurgin had good success as well. The defense as a whole moved better than they have in most of the MAC season, but I don't think BSU challenged them as much. They have some talent but didn't seem to know when you force it to the right guys.

The officiating down the stretch got crazy. BG got a huge break on what a would be double dribble by hill before he kicked it to Spurgin for that big 3. Was nice to see us close out a game and so nice to have all our timeouts for those in bounds plays. Keep rolling!

I didn't notice anything awry with Hill before the Spurgin dagger. And the announcers didn't say anything either. They were more commenting on the goaltending, which was not even in doubt, and the foul on the 3-pointer from Trey. And that was also clearly a foul. They were looking for contact in the body, but the defender hit his forearm and elbow on the follow through which caused the shot to fall about 3-4 feet short, clearly a foul.

I too thought that was the best defense I've seen us play all year.

Yeah the the Trey Thomas shot was right in front of me. The BSU fans were crying "after all they've let go they call THAT!?" The replay on that one was obvious, dude hit Trey's arm on the shot, no clue where the moaning was on that.

On the play setting up Spurgin's 3 it looked like Hill fumbled his dribble and in regaining control had both hands on the ball before continuing his drive. Now, maybe that was an illusion of the angle we were watching, but I thought it was a missed call.

The goaltend was so obvious in real time they never even showed a replay on the screens in the arena. I don't know how anybody would argue it. I called it before the ref did and they confirmed on replay. *shrug*

Our rotations on defense are still too sluggish if teams want to make those extra passes. Some of that is simply byproduct of how aggressive we want to play defense, but against teams with good perimeter shooters it's going to continue to cost us some points. I really like both Spurgin & Agee defensively (they did a good job with their feet last night), but without Towns we are so reliant on them offensively they simply cannot afford to get into foul trouble. Last night our trap defense was the best it's been in MAC play, IMO. Whenever we got them into a less than desirable position the 2nd defender was there quickly and with purpose. And they did it without fouling. Led to a lot of easy buckets in transition and even when BSU escaped they were consistently working later in the clock than they wanted to.

I don't know the names of all our assistants, but sitting behind the bench for a change was interesting. The coach that runs our defense works his tail off all game long constantly making sure our guys each know who they're guarding and what we're trying to run on any given defensive set. I was very impressed by him (of course he probably has been doing the same in the games our defense looked poor).

[mbenecke]

It was a long foggy drive home but glad I made it over there. Can check another mac arena of the list. Place is too big. I will never be in board with Mac schools building 10k seat arenas. I still live our own concourses, it adds so much to the atmosphere, imo. The small crowd in the massive arena almost felt like walking through a dungeon in the empty concourses pre game.

Comparing the things we always complain about. Parking was $5 to be in a lot probably about as far away from the doors as alumni drive is from the stroh. Concessions had way more choices than we offer. BBQ, chick fil a sandwiches, brats and dogs. I think the prices were a buck or so cheaper. Grabbed a box of cardinal corn regular popcorn and caramel corn mixed, was pretty good for $5

For the game Hill was simply insane. Agee and Spurgin had good success as well. The defense as a whole moved better than they have in most of the MAC season, but I don't think BSU challenged them as much. They have some talent but didn't seem to know when you force it to the right guys.

The officiating down the stretch got crazy. BG got a huge break on what a would be double dribble by hill before he kicked it to Spurgin for that big 3. Was nice to see us close out a game and so nice to have all our timeouts for those in bounds plays. Keep rolling!

I didn't notice anything awry with Hill before the Spurgin dagger. And the announcers didn't say anything either. They were more commenting on the goaltending, which was not even in doubt, and the foul on the 3-pointer from Trey. And that was also clearly a foul. They were looking for contact in the body, but the defender hit his forearm and elbow on the follow through which caused the shot to fall about 3-4 feet short, clearly a foul.

I too thought that was the best defense I've seen us play all year.

Yeah the the Trey Thomas shot was right in front of me. The BSU fans were crying "after all they've let go they call THAT!?" The replay on that one was obvious, dude hit Trey's arm on the shot, no clue where the moaning was on that.

On the play setting up Spurgin's 3 it looked like Hill fumbled his dribble and in regaining control had both hands on the ball before continuing his drive. Now, maybe that was an illusion of the angle we were watching, but I thought it was a missed call.

The goaltend was so obvious in real time they never even showed a replay on the screens in the arena. I don't know how anybody would argue it. I called it before the ref did and they confirmed on replay. *shrug*

Our rotations on defense are still too sluggish if teams want to make those extra passes. Some of that is simply byproduct of how aggressive we want to play defense, but against teams with good perimeter shooters it's going to continue to cost us some points. I really like both Spurgin & Agee defensively (they did a good job with their feet last night), but without Towns we are so reliant on them offensively they simply cannot afford to get into foul trouble. Last night our trap defense was the best it's been in MAC play, IMO. Whenever we got them into a less than desirable position the 2nd defender was there quickly and with purpose. And they did it without fouling. Led to a lot of easy buckets in transition and even when BSU escaped they were consistently working later in the clock than they wanted to.

I don't know the names of all our assistants, but sitting behind the bench for a change was interesting. The coach that runs our defense works his tail off all game long constantly making sure our guys each know who they're guarding and what we're trying to run on any given defensive set. I was very impressed by him (of course he probably has been doing the same in the games our defense looked poor).

I believe that's Bryce Martin. I had the same thought when I sat behind the bench for the EMU game to start MAC play instead of my normal GA seat (thanks, dollar night!).

The whole staff does a really good job of communicating with guys throughout the game. I was really impressed by that when I got to see it up close, and I think that's why our team is instantly better than they were last year. The culture is different.