Falcons Flounder in Flaws

As Coach Orr said in the post-game, there is one thing this team cannot do and that's play terrible defense and expect to win. That is, in fact, what happened...well, actually, I know that the team did not defend well...I doubt they expected to win...anyway, they did play poor D and they did lose.

In fact, they lost by 14 to an IUPUI team that was not supposed to be very good and was missing its best player.

IUPUI shot 60% for the game and 47% from beyond the arc, which was better than BG's field goals for all its shots.  The Jags shot 71% in the second half.

When we let a team score like that--in Coach's words, "we aren't good enough to play tag"--and then that stresses the team where it is flawed, and that is on the offensive end.

IUPUI scored 1.23 points per possession.  Last season, the worst defensive game BG played and won was 1.08 against Temple.  No team in the Orr era has won a game where the Falcons allowed that kind of scoring per possession.

The FG% was a big difference, but free throws were as well.  BG committed 17 fouls as compared to IUPUI's 10 and the Jags shot 26 FTs to BG's 7.  They didn't do it very well, and still ended up with a 15-5 advantage at the line.

BG was outrebounded 38-27 as well, and though IUPUI had a lot more missed BG shots to work with.  (The tempo free numbers still favor the Jags as you can see below.)

BG shot only 40% and 33% from beyond the arc.  The team attempted 66 field goals and 40 of them were taken by Crawford and Calhoun, both of whom had gaudy point totals, which you would expect, but also which might not be great returns on that kind of investment.  

BG did take care of the ball.  We mentioned last night that Crawford had 9 turnovers--well, in this game the entire team had only 8, so credit should be awarded for that.

NCAA Basketball Stats

The other flaw that came back to haunt the Falcons was an inability to close out games.  Yes, BG might well have been tired today, and yes, they did play overtime yesterday but it was also the early game and IUPUI played a pretty tough team.

Anyway, as seems to happen so often, BG completely fading coming home.  With 4:39 left BG was down to, but the Jaguars finished on a 16-4 run to turn a close game into a comfortable win.  That's pretty evident on the chart below.  

College Basketball

Looking individually, as mentioned, almost 2/3 of BG's shots were taken by Calhoun and Crawford.  Calhoun had 19 points (but 8-21 shooting) to go with 6 rebounds.  Crawford had 24 points and 4 assists (1 turnover) and actually he was pretty efficient, shooting 10-19.  Holmes continues to impress, getting 7/7 in 16 minutes, though he did foul out.  Chauncey Orr also had a very efficient 7 points.

So, at 1-2 (and 0-2 against D1), BG leaves the Crisler Center.  They will apparently find out who its next two NIT games will be tomorrow, and we will keep an eye on it.  It has been a tough start for the guys, losing two games...one against a decent team they easily could have beaten and another where we lost to a team we probably should have beaten.

One last observation.  BG has been playing almost exclusively man to man defense.  Coach Orr was asked in the presser if he thought about going to a zone against IUPUI, and he almost seemed to indicate that we don't even have a zone ready.  Coach says he feels that for this team, man is their stronger defense--and you can't test that by one game, because we certainly gave up a lot of points a few times in the zone, too.

What is odd is that I always felt like one of the weaknesses of our zone was that teams shot the 3 effectively against us....as in we were among the worst in the MAC.  Having said that, in both of the games in Ann Arbor, BG was scorched from beyond the arc, so apparently that can happen against either defense.

Coach Orr said that he needs the big shot blocker in the middle of the 2-3 zone.  Now, I know Black is injured and only getting limited minutes, but Holmes can block shots and could be back there.  I just think it is interesting that the team had a zone identity for as long as it did and now is working for an equally exclusive man identity.

I think the issues are fairly apparent, and Coach's presser seemed to indicate that.  How much this team can and does improve over the next weeks will be telling, because the current level of success is going to make for a very long season.