WKU Final Wrap up

One of the really strange things is how similar this year's WKU game was to last year's...in both games, WKU blew out to a huge lead that stretched into the high teens and then BG mounted a rally to get close in the end only to lose. Check out the similarity of these two trend lines.

NCAA Basketball Stats

NCAA Basketball

I listened to Coach Orr's presser last night, and I thought he was pretty frank.  We played a team that has not been able to score the ball and they shot 61% against us in the first half, and then when we did start getting some stops, we couldn't get the ball into the basket.

He did give credit--as do I--to our guys for fighting their way back into the game.  The deficit had been within 3 for a couple of minutes when Scott Thomas finally broke the Falcons through and hit a trey to tie the game at 53-53.  BG got a stop on the defensive end, and at this point, you've got as good a shot as you could ever hope to have, given that you were down 18.

A'uston Calhoun was wide open and fired a 3, which he missed, however.  (Coach said that when a guy's wide open it is hard to tell him not to take the shot).  WKU ran some clock, drew a foul on Thomas and then hit both free throws to go up 2 with about a minute left.  Calhoun missed again in the blocks, and that was pretty much all that was left for the Falcons as the Hilltoppers ground out the free throws necessary to get the win.

Statistically, it was a pretty sad story.  BG's .746 points per possession is very poor.  In fact, BG held WKU to .85, should have been plenty good enough to win.  The poor-shooting Hilltoppers actually outshot the Falcons who shot 35% on the 2FG and 27% from 3-FG.  The other factor that tiled heavily was free throws.  WKU shot 31 free throws, and even with 8 of those coming in the last minute, BG was still at a huge disadvantage at the line.  For the game, WKU was +13 at the line.

BG had 22 fouls to WKU's 16, which isn't that much different when you factor in the late game fouling.  That would seem to mean that BG was committing shooting fouls, which indicates a breakdown in the defense somewhere, and possibly not only the guy who commits the foul.

BG did take care of the ball effectively and was OK on the defensive boards, but did not turn in a great day on the offensive boards.

NCAA Basketball Stats

Scott Thomas had 16 points and 8 boards, and he got the points on 6-10 shooting, so that's a very good day's work for him.  A'uston Calhoun had 11 points and and 3 rebounds, but it took him 16 shots to get those 11 points.  He was 3 of 14 on 2FG.  He wasn't the only one to struggle with his shot:  Brown, Crawford, Kraus and Sealey also had poor shooting nights.

BG had only 10 assists against 14 turnovers.

So, that's the anatomy of a road loss.  BG has Malone on Wednesday, which is supposed to be a win, before they play Valparaiso on the road on Saturday.  The MAC has some strong teams, but both Miami and Akron are showing some vulnerabilities, but the Falcons have yet to show they can play at a high level over several nights, which they will need to do to capitalize.