UT Drubs BG MBB

 Ugh.

And the 2021 season got worse for the BGSU Men.  Way worse.

In what should have been a marquee matchup, a battle royale, the Rockets kicked BG's ass on Saturday at the Stroh, winning by 18, their biggest win at BG since 1973.  It was never much of a contest.  

And there is much sadness in the Falcon nation.  And some anger, too.  Maybe more than some.

It started badly--BG missed its first 15 shots or something--and trailed 9-0 with 15 to go.  BG battled back, had the lead for a second and then had the deficit at 3 with 3:31 to go and the Rockets ended the half on an 11-2 run to lead by 12.  From there, the game was only a single-digit lead for a couple of possessions and ballooned as high as 22.  UT led for 37:42 of the game.  BG led for :46.

It was an ass-kicking.  It's just hard to describe how disappointing this is.

That's five of the last six, with four of the five losses by more than 10 points.  It's unbelievable how bad it has gotten.

Coach Huger is clear that BG's defense needs to improve.  And it does.  But, BG is failing on both ends of the court right now.

For reference, the MAC is averaging 1.06 points per possession, the third best offensive conference.  The D1 average is 1.02.

BG allowed UT 1.12 points per possession.  This was actually a significant improvement over some of the other losses.  It's still a losing number.  Over the past 3 years, BG is 4-9 at that level of defense.  They actually had four games last year where they shot their way out of that hole...including both Toledo games.  But it is a losing number.

UT just shredded the BG defense, in the second half in particular.  BG can't keep teams out of the lane and then there are kickouts and wide open 3FGs that the Rockets don't miss.  It felt a lot like the Wright State game...one team just doing whatever it wants against another team that can't seem to stop it.  BG also does not have anyone inside to protect the rim.  Of course, UT is playing without a true 5 as well.

BG scored .88 points per possession.  That's a losing number, too.  BG is 1-10 scoring .88 points per possession or less.  And I get that defense feeds offense.  Of the five losses in this streak, BG played presentable offense twice and terrible offense three times.

The struggles are on both ends of the floor.

It has come down to shooting.  BG is 10th in the MAC in shooting...that's 10th on the 3FG and 11th on the 2FG.  In this game, BG shot a season-high 46% of its field goals from 3FG.  And made 22%, the second lowest % of the season.  You saw it.  On many possessions, BG didn't even work the ball, they just made one pass and jacked up a 3FG.  UT, on the other hand, moves the ball beautifully.

Oh and the pace was BG friendly at 75 points per possession.  By which I mean friendly to what we should have been.  When you give up .24 points every possession there's no good pace.

Last note.  UT does not foul on defense.  And BG shot only 5 FTs, which has been their lifeline in some games.

It's just a disaster.

Individually, it's hard to even care.

Justin did not catch Stacey.  He has 5 points to go.   He shot 5 of 13 from 2fG and 0-5 from 3FG.  He did have 5 assists.

No player had a plus-rating for us.  Diggs was -1 and shot 5 of 11 from 3FG.  Josiah Fulcher had 12 points and 9 rebounds and Cam Young had 7 rebounds.

The worst thing is that no one seems to have a clue what's wrong with BG.  One of our players told the media that "It's confusing."

Were we overrated?  Apparently.  But it has to be more than that.  People are mentioning the Zeigler departure to me, but BG won 5 of 6 after he left.  It is possible that the team is missing Anthony Stacey, who (as I understand) served to kind of soften Coach Huger's harder edges.  When Stacey was injured back in 2018, the team went on a similar streak.

I don't know.  Even if this team was overrated, they should be way better than this. 

Here are the numbers.  BG is 4th right now, in a tie.  NIU is the spot we need to stay in front of.  Here's the problem...BG has NIU and WMU next week which is the last soft part of their schedule.  After that, five of our last 6 games are against teams we lost to--and in some cases handily--and the one exception is OU, who was without Preston when we beat them.