Purple Eagles Beat Falcons....

Just a quick "review" of the Niagara game, which I did not see, so keep that in mind.  I did hear the last 10 minutes or so when I got home from the football game.  Anyway, BG seemed to play a much more energetic game and stayed with what I think is a pretty decent Niagara team.  We dropped down 7 in the final minutes but battled back and had a shot to tie the game in the last minute, but Kraus' 3-ball ended up pretty much like most of our 3-balls, which is to say as a rebound, and Niagara pulled it out.

Take a look at this chart.  It is really interested.  You would look at this and you would draw the conclusion that there is no way this is a close game....

NCAA Basketball Stats

Now, if you were looking at that, you'd see that Niagara shot a lot better than BG did, handled the ball better, and did better at the free throw line.  How, in fact, was it a close game.  Check out that offensive rebounding line for BG...the Falcons picked up HALF of their missed shots with an offensive rebound.  Coach Orr even joked a little about that in the post-game, when he said something like "if you are going to miss a lot of shots like we do, you have to crash the boards."

The offensive rebounding gave us enough second chances to keep the game close.  Beyond that, we even missed a lot of the follow ups and if we hit those zero footers we probably win the game.

A few notes that are apparent as I look at the sheet.

We averaged .89 points per possession, which is just slightly better than normal, and shot just about as poorly as we typically have.

Furthermore, we didn't defend all that well....Niagara averaged .95 points per possession, which is also slightly better than we have had.  We did hold them in the 60s, however.

We are 330th out of 345 teams in 3-FG%.  (The good news?  Today's opponent, Detroit, is even lower).

We did shoot 45% from the field in the second half, so maybe that's starting to come around.  We can't shoot this badly for a whole year, and we do have guys who can shoot.

Jordan Crawford played 34 minutes, and while he did not score like he did against Duquesne, he did have 8 assists and only 3 TOs.

Joe Jakubowski played 6 minutes.  Danny McElroy did not play at all.

Torain Oglesby played his first minutes as a Falcon.  Coach said he had to earn "trust" to get into the lineup.  He was a nice addition, with 10 points and 5 rebounds in 27 minutes.

Cameron Black had 10 points and 9 rebounds in just 23 minutes.  He's going to be a good player, especially as he learns to finish around the basket.

Scott Thomas had 10 points, 8 rebounds and four steals.

Calhoun only played 17 minutes, but he had 8 points and 6 boards in that time, including a clutch old-school 3-point play in the final minute to move the game within 1 point.

In general, the game was a sign of progress, but still a loss.  It would be great to see some continued progress over the next two nights, and maybe even a couple of wins.  We are not playing as well as we hope on either end of the floor, but it was at least a small step forward.