No Compete, No Win

Very disappointing night in Anderson Arena tonight, as the Falcons lost by 12 in front of a decent crowd to a Central Michigan team that is decent, but not that much better than us.  And, the game probably was not actually that close.

I listened to both LaMonte Stone and Coach Orr's presser, and the theme was pretty much the same.

• The team did not compete.
• We settled for ill-advised outside shots.
• We didn't get to the line.
• We didn't have a fire in our eyes today.
• You can't do that in conference play.
• We haven't had this problem since the Xavier or Iowa games.
• Otis missed some time with an injury--but other players did not pick up the slack.

This probably tells the story.  It was an ugly night at Anderson Arena.  Coach made the point in the post-game that the stats did not tell the story, and I think in this case it was true.  The stats themselves were relatively similar, but the game was a total mis-match on the floor.  Part of this is a game rally the Falcons found in the final minutes which might have evened things up a little bit.

College Basketball

For a better illustration, let's look at a painful segment of the first half. The opening 10 minutes were reasonably competitive, and with 9:28 Erik Marschall hit a layup to give BG a 16-13 lead. Let's track the half from there:

4:59 BG's next points, by now, CMU leads 23-17.
2:18 BG gets its first FG since the Marschall FG, BG now trails 28-19 (7:10 without a FG)
1:42 BG gets another FG, and is frankly lucky to only be down 7 at the half.

During the 9:28 that ended the first half, BG had:

• 5 points
• 9 missed shots (including 3 layups)
• 2 turnovers
• 2 missed 3 FGs

Still, down 7 at the half is not a deal breaker, we're often down 7 or so.  We got a quick basket to get it to 5, and you could kind of think things might be turning around.

The Chips scored the next 8 points, however, and at that point, the game had been decided.  (BG missed 2 3FGs in that run, BTW).  The lead got as high as 20 and never lower than 9 the rest of the way.

NCAA Basketball

So, very little redeeming out of that performance.  That should not happen at home, and I applaud our coaching staff for not mincing any words in their discussion of it.

A final couple notes, and we shall speak of this no more.

First, Otis was injured, apparently with an ankle sprain.  He did come back and the coaches did not seem to think it was too serious.  Still.....

Second, the Rockets are coming to town in two freaking days.  I don't care if they ARE winless in the MAC, it makes me nervous.  I do think, however, that today's game actually works in our favor for Monday.  I don't think we will play that bad two days in a row, and the team will actually be grateful for the chance to get right back onto the court and get "this taste out of our mouth/"