Thursday, December 31, 2009

Hey, the Men's Hoopsters won a close one...

While the football team was losing a heartbreaker, the basketball team was holding on to win a very close road game against Towson (70-69)

To be honest, I didn't hear even one minute of the game.  I did check in on the scores from time to time, but my focus was on Boise.  So, looking at the boxscore and such, pretty much all you need to know you can see here.



See that orange line?  With 5:09 left, we have 65 points and Towson had 52.  See how flat the line is after that?  That isn't supposed to happen.  Sadly, BG went the last 5 minutes of the game without a FG, and that allowed Towson to rally back into the game and actually possession at the end and down 1.

BG had failed to get the ball inbounds and Towson had 3 seconds to go the whole court, and they threw a lob pass that Otis intercepted to preserve the victory.

Which is better than losing.

Otis had a huge night, with a double/double (17 points and a career high 16 boards), which is nice to see.  He actually took 17 shots, and I would be shocked if he had ever taken that many before.  Meanwhile, Dee Brown had 15 points and took only 9 shots, so he had a nice and efficient night.  Joe Jakubowski had 12 points and Scott Thomas 10.

A few notes on the game:

We shot 37% from the line.  Really.
Towson shot 43% from the field and 40% from 3 range...we can't be happy with that.  They had a 10-4 advantage in 3s, which is a big part of how they stayed in the game.  (effective FG% for Towson was over 50%).
BG was dominant on the boards, which we probably are pleased with.  Of the 41 available rebounds on our offensive end, we got 18.
There were 70 possessions, which is a pace more to Towson's liking.

In what seems to be a trend, Erik Marschall played 30 minutes and Larson only played 15.  (See chart, Larson is the orange line that is falling.



The final stats break-out is below.


One more non-conference game remains on the schedule. They didn't have any comments from Coach Orr, so I don't know what his thoughts were, but my perception is that maybe the improvement of the team has flattened out a little bit, and we probably have some work to do heading into the conference season.

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