OU Stomps BG

For the first 13 minutes of today's game, BG was playing pretty well.  Shots were falling and stops were being made...BG led 29-23.  For the last 7 minutes of the first half and the first 7 minutes of the second half, however, BG collapsed on both ends of the floor and was outscored 40-14 over that 14 minutes span.  That put OU up by 20, which was the final margin of victory, 95-75.   BG was only 4 points worse with 2 football players on the court.

BG did get the margin to 10 with 8 minutes left.  It never got closer and was 16 with 4:41 left.  OU led by as many as 28 and hit 95 points with 2 minutes left and didn't score again during garbage time.

This team is just a mess right now.  You can listen to Coach's presser, he's very frustrated.  BG cannot stop the drive at all and conference basketball is ruthless.  Until you do, that's all you will see.  In fact, as coach pointed out, OU is a 3FG shooting team and they drove on BG.

Meanwhile, on the other end, BG's can't make shots--Huger cited missing open 3FGs and layups as being a problem.  When BG got it "close" in the second half, BG started to take bad shots.  Coach says the team is inconsistent.  At the end of his second season, you don't necessarily expect to see the talent reversed but these kinds of things not being fixed eventually reflects on the staff.

And as Coach points out, if they don't get it figured out, it is going to be an ugly finish to the season.

Here's the way the numbers sort out.  As you can see, BG had a subpar shooting game and OU had an incredible shooting game.  That shooting % is the worst BG has allowed since that November of 2011 game against GW in (IIRC) the pre-season NIT at the Stroh.  OU shot 74% from 2FG and 45% from 3FG.  BG is the easiest team to shoot on in the conference and they were bad even by their own standards.  In fact, they are #310 in the country.

OU even had more turnovers than BG and won the game by 20 and it should have been more.  BG shot 45% and 33%.

That all equals out to 1.31 points per possession for OU and 1.04 for BG.  That scoring for OU is the best for a BG opponent that wasn't named Cincinnati.

BG wasn't solid on the boards either.  The game was refreshing foul free.  OU only tried 12 FTs and made 10 and BG was 12 of 17.

Individually, BG was led by Rod Caldwell with 12 points on 5 of 7 shooting and 3 assists over 2 TOs.  Wiggins had 11 points on 5 of 7 shooting and 6 rebounds in only 18 minutes, which might seem odd.  Coach singled out his big men for poor defense on ball screens and said teams are exploiting it.  I'm guessing that includes Wiggins.  That's the only reason he wouldn't be on the floor more for a team starved for bigs.

Denny also had 11 on 4 of 7 shooting.  Alcegaire had 10 points on 4 of 12 shooting.  He joined Lillard and Frye in having very long shooting nights.

All the OU starters ended up in double figures.  Jaaron Simmons had his way with BG from the start to the finish.  As Coach said, they tried numerous things on him and "nothing works."  Simmons ended up with 26 points on 10 of 12 shooting, 3 of 4 from 3FG, 3 of 4 from the line, and 11 assists over 4 turnovers.  Hard to have a better night than that.

Lastly, watch out for Jason Carter.  The FR had 19 on 9 of 11 shooting and 5 rebounds.  He's going to be a very good player in this conference.

Here's the story, sad but true.  BG is in 11th place and is 1 game out of a home berth.  However, there are 3 teams ahead of them and none of them have to play Akron and Buffalo in their final four games.  And, they all play each other. Tuesday Akron is at the Stroh and then BG is a Millet on Saturday.  BG found the ability to play well in the first Akron game and maybe they will this time, too, as they did against Toledo.