Hoops Skid Continues, Updated

The hoops team continued to slide, losing to what might be a decent Illinois State team at AA, 69-58. The combined poor record of our team, and the poor weather brought us the lowest attendance I can remember--659. Ouch. On the radio, sounded like a high school game.

We fell 13 points behind at halftime due to shooting 30%, and then couldn't get over the top. We rallied nicely in the second half, tying the game 8 minutes into the half. But, from there ISU slowly pulled away into the double digit victory.

Darryl Clements had a great night with 18 points and Chris Knight had 14. We even won the battle of the boards.

On the other hand, we had 20 fouls and they had 10, we made 16 turnovers and they made 10, we got little production out of Miller and Larson on the inside, and Otis played 22 minutes with 4 points, 2 boards and 3 fouls.

We shot really poorly in the first half (30.8% and 11.1% from 3), and pretty much put ourselves in a hole we couldn't dig out of.

We're 4-5 now, and given that we started out 2-1, we've gone 2-4 since that opening weekend.

I don't think there are any mysteries here. We were a bad team last year, and we have essentially the same talent back this year. We are learning a new system. This wasn't going to get fixed quickly.

Things got a little tougher when our only senior did not play--Ryne Hamblet is suspended indefinitely for violating team rules.

We have troubles scoring, and still commit a lot of fouls on defense. I have confidence Coach Orr is going to turn this around, but we have to be patient. Right now, the results are a repeat of last year. Let's hope there is progress beneath the surface.

Updated: Ryan's blog at The Blade echoes these thoughts. Note his pessimism on the quick return of Hamblet.

It looks like BG will be without Ryne Hamblet for what could be a long time. Orr suspended BG’s only senior for violating a team rule. I hate to speculate, so I won’t. But it doesn’t look good. “It’s something that’s going to take some time to see how things work out,” Orr said. “It’s unfortunate, but we’re trying to lay the foundation and we need everybody on the same page.”