You lose by 28 and 17 in two games in the same week at home....to teams that are in your conference....and in one of them you have your coach saying that you had guys not showing a lot of effort and energy and in the other one you have him saying guys are selfish. In other words, it isn't just the losing, but why you are losing, which is selfish players not playing with energy, especially on defense.
That's no good.
I mean, I can see Kobe Bryant being selfish. Iverson. Carmello. On a BG level, it is one thing for Antonio Daniels to be selfish. But we don't have anybody on this team who should think that they're entitled to being selfish. (Note: Coach is also talking about guys who want to play offense and not defense).
You can watch here for Coach Huger's presser. He's pretty direct about who he is talking about and what he sees happening.
Also, after the game, Coach said he is going to look at adjusting the starting lineup. FWIW, the lineup that started the second half had Dylan Frye starting in place of Lillard.
It wasn't a great day for the sport in general. Seven minutes into the game, it was 8-8. Then, NIU went on an 8-0 run...meaning that they led 16-8 with 8:44 left to play. (Oh and that 8-8 moment? That was the last moment when NIU was not in the lead). BG whittled it back to 1 and then it got back to 8 before the Huskies led by 6 at the end of the first half.
Five minutes into the second half, BG was doing all right, down only 2 at 39-37. Then, NIU went on an incredible 17-0 run over about 7 minutes. BG got the lead down to 11 in the final minutes, but the game was way over at that point. That's a 69-52 defeat for BG.
The stats are interesting in that they are not as one-sided as you might expect. Neither team shot very well and both teams had a lot of turnovers. Basically, NIU got off 8 more shots than BG...that's from 4 more offensive rebounds and 4 fewer turnovers. Those eight shots were enough for them to be +8 on FGs and then they were 15-18 from the line and BG was a poor 6 of 13, so that's where the other 9 come from.
BG had .69 points for possession, which is their worst since January of 2014 when they lost 45-36 to these same Huskies under Coach Orr. They allowed NIU .92 points per possession, which is not a bad defensive day overall but obviously not enough to win when the offense is as poor as it was.
Individually...uh...yeah. Ish Ali actually had a really strong game. He had 16 points on 7 of 11 shooting and 6 assists over 2 turnovers. Dylan Frye also had an effective game, with 13 points on 5 of 8 shooting. Zack Denny had 11 rebounds. Wiggins, Alcegaire, Lillard and Fox? They had days they'd rather forget.
Coach also mentioned that Malik Hluchoweckyj played good defensive minutes as did Rasheed Worrell.
So BG is now 7-10 and 1-3 with two home losses in one week in non-competitive games. Next up is UT @Savage Hall next week and then a return engagement with Ball State on Saturday at the Stroh. Coach Huger has got some work to do, as the team loses and does it as much for effort and teamwork issues as for talent. That's tough to fix mid-stream, but if they aren't careful the season is going to have passed under the bridge before it even got started.
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