Sunday, March 07, 2010

Looking back at today's game....

I'm trying to figure out exactly how we lost.  BG shot a season high 59%, only turned the ball over 10 times, held WMU to 46% shooting and were even in the rebound battle, and still lost.  Yes, WMU hit 9 3s but BG hit 7, so it wasn't like that was a big blow out.  The biggest difference was fouls...BG had 17 and WMU had 11, and was 16-18 from the line, while BG was only 7 of 12.  And there did an otherwise solid effort fall down.

There was a lot of what Coach Orr calls "playing tag" in the game, teams racing up and down the floor trading baskets, and usually we figure we're going to have a hard time winning a game like that.  On an efficiency, it was our best performance of the season (1.35 points per possession) and our second worst defensive performance (1.37 points per possession).  Still, even with all that, if BG doesn't send WMU to line as often, I think we probably win the game.

Scott Thomas had an absolute monster game, with 23 points on 10 of 15 shooting.  Marc Larson, in his last game as a Falcon had a double-double (12/11) and Jakubowski had 11 points and Brown 10.  Coach Orr made a couple of different moves, starting Larson for Marschall and Kraus for Brown.

I have never been able to figure out how it works, but you see it more than you think...a player starts, plays the first few minutes, and then hardly plays again the rest of the season.  Kraus did that today--started and played 7 minutes.

We'll do lots more to review the season in the coming weeks.  The last players of the Dakich era are now finished playing.  While there were high points this season, at the end of the day it is our 6th losing season in the last eight years.  I do think we got everything out of this team that we could, we just need more playmakers.  Given the fact that we lost our three best players plus Chris Knight off last year's team, I don't think the result for this year is too disappointing, and it only seems worse when it is seen as part of a relatively long string of under-performing seasons.

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