Another Loss for BG MBB

 Another game, another loss for the BG Falcons.  This loss was an improvement over the previous losses, but when you were picked to win the title, that is very small consolation.

You can feel it slipping away.  I think that's what is making people so nervous.  We felt that this was our best team since pre-WVU.  We have our best player since those days, to be sure.  And like it has so many times before...we just feel like somehow we're not going to have enough this year.  Again. And it will be wasted.

To be sure, you need to win 3 games in March to make this all forgotten.  If you finish in the top 8, you have the same chance everyone else has and you know the team has talent.  You'd think they are capable of winning those games.

Also, as a Twitter fan pointed out, we usually have a late-season collapse, so maybe it's better to have a mid-season collapse than a late-season one.  Obviously, no collapse would be preferable...but that hasn't seemed to be an option.  Most teams do go through a rough spot, to be fair.

Lot of things can happen too.  First, BG and UT haven't had to pause, but who knows, it could happen.  And those other teams are going to have to play a compact schedule in February, which won't be easy.

Having said that, here is where we are....sorted by the loss column.  Wins, losses and games remaining.

BG is right now tied for 6th, with a game in hand over Ohio and BSU and games remaining with both.

Here's the thing.  For the last five seasons, the regular-season champ has finished with 5 or fewer losses...and as low as 2.  There are two more games this year, so let's charitably think about winning at 14-6, which would require Toledo to go 5-5 coming home.  Which I doubt, but it could happen.  It would also require Akron to 5-4.  And Kent is a sleeping giant as they get to a better part of their schedule.

So if you were looking for a top seed, you're not there and you aren't that team right now.  As for making the tournament, and it's hard to imagine that we are talking that way, BG has a 2-loss lead and there do appear to be 4 bottom-dwellers (Bad year for Michigan).

And BG has 2 games has two games with Toledo left.

The natives are certainly getting restless and their focus is on Coach Huger.  To be fair, this isn't new...despite bringing this team to a competitive level we have not seen in decades, there have been fans that felt that the Coach isn't the guy to take us to the title for years and even that extending him wasn't a good idea after 2019.

I don't see it entirely that way, but today you'd admit the river is flowing in the wrong direction.

The problem is that you are in the zone where there is nowhere to hide.  Which is where you want to be.  But those first post-Jans/Orr years are past.

If you're looking for it, you can see issues.  There was Frye last year, Zeigler this year and then the one collapse in 18 that coincided with Anthony Stacey being injured and not with the team.  And the big meeting with the team after the Cleveland State debacle in 2019.

Incidentially, critics of our football and men's basketball programs are latched onto one similar issue:  unwillingness to use transfers to jolt the program.  Coach Huger has used JUCO transfers to effectively fill roles...Sierra, Uju, Diggs, Washington, Alcegaire.  There have not been any D1 transfers and BG had a scholarship open when the NCAA opened the gates.

But other teams have gone full on.  UB's championship teams were filled with JUCO players.  And yes, you have CMU and EMU with transfers and sucking, but you also have Kent, Akron and UT all with four transfers averaging 10 minutes per game.  Cristian Jackson, Littleson, Nuga, Bryan Trimble...

Look, we've also developed Plowden, Fields, Turner, Frye, Wiggins, into high level performers.  And reached a level of competitiveness we wished for for years.  It does feel like we stay two steps from the top of the ladder while teams climb around us but we're also not at the bottom of the ladder.

The only was is to win our way out.   But you can see the frustration...because it does seem like we have the players.