That's one of those games you would just as soon forget about.
The Zips completely dismantled the Falcons last night, 71-45. Given that BG actually led 19-10, then it was truly a 61-26 blow out from there on in. The Zips are a good team, and they had their way with the Falcons.
BG was hampered by a few things. Obviously, scoring 45 points is not conducive to winning, and it is the second time in four games that BG had dropped below 50. Scoring 17 points in the second half is also not going to help you beat anybody.
Essentially, it boils down to this. BG usually has sixty-some possessions in the game. Last night, it was 65. When you give up 30% of those possessions on a turnover, meaning you don't even get a shot off (akin to shooting 0%), and then you shoot 27% from the field, you're going to get beat.
Particularly frustrating was the BG missed a high number of shots very close to the basket. We rely on our inside game to get going, and any team wants to make "zero footers" but BG struggled with those. I'm not going to point anybody out because everybody was poor. You can look at the boxscore if you want.
One stat this is being used now is the Floor Percentage--the percentage of possessions where a team scores a point. For BG, that was a season-low 35%. For Akron, it was 50.7, which is about BG's season average.
"We just have to play better," Coach Orr said in the post-game.
Indeed. In fact, BG shot over 80% from the line, which is the only thing that kept them from setting new team lows in offense.
Akron is well-coached, has a number of good players, and deserves their rank as the favorite to win the MAC. I tweeted last night that wondered if Dambrot might not find himself in line for coaching offers. He has built a program the old fashioned way in Akron. He has also proven that once he was done with the whole LeBron-posse thing, he can still put a high quality team on the floor that is very tough to beat.
A couple other notes. In the playing time department, both Danny McElroy and James Erger saw double digit minutes, and Jordan Crawford did as well (more normal for him). So, three of our freshmen are now seeing regular rotation.
Meanwhile the minutes for Marc Larson continued to slide.
Well, not much more to say here. Last night, there is no doubt who the better team was. The MAC is a very long grind, however, and I look forward to seeing our team make their way through the schedule. Coach said you need to grind on every possession to have a chance to compete in the MAC, and I think he is right. Buffalo is next, also a very tough test, but I do believe that this team has the capacity to compete in the MAC, and just didn't bring it last night.
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