Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
They have GOT to get over these early game yips. Cold shooting I could live with but the terrible ball-control and haphazard defense in the first 5 minutes of games is getting awfully old.
They buried themselves early and anytime they had a chance to get to 5-7 down, Butler would bury a 3 to keep the margin at/near double digits until Mizzou finally ran out of gas down the stretch.
Against a mediocre team you can start out slow and fight your way back. But against quality opponents - potential tournament teams - you may even be a little better than they are but you're not so much better that you can spot them double digits and make up for it.
You re-set the score after 15-3 and that would've been a neck and neck slugfest for the remainder of the game. But that's not how it works and it's the same damn thing they did against Xavier.
They have got to come out ready to play. They're a solid squad but not good enough to dig out of these god-awful pits they're putting themselves in. Especially when they're a result of terrible turnovers.
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How the hell do you have 2 starters that finish with goose eggs? Tilmon and Pickett combined for 28 minutes 0 points, 0 assists, and 3 rebounds, you're not gonna win too many games when 2 of your best players put up that bad of a performance. On top of that Mark Smith was only able to score 4 points in 33 minutes. Mark Smith averages the 2nd most points on the team at 12 ppg and Tilmon is 3rd at 10 ppg.
It seems like it was just a game that started put bad for a few guys and they never seemed to recover. So hopefully that's something they can get fixed and if they can this team is good enough to be a top 25 team and is pretty young. Im hoping that as the season goes along we get more production from the younger guys. Right now our top 3 scorers are Jr's, but then we have
4. Pinson (SO) 9.3 ppg
5. Brown (FR) 6.8 ppg
6. Pickett (SO) 4.7 ppg
7. Jackson (FR) 4.0 ppg
9. Watson (SO) 2.5 ppg
Hopefully these guys start taking more minutes from Nikko and Mitchell Smith. Nikko is only getting around 6 minutes a game, but Smith is getting 13 minutes a game. I'd like to see them both start getting around 5 minutes a game, because they suck. If they both were getting 5 minutes a game then that would open up 9-10 minutes for Jackson and Brown to split. It would also be a much more athletic lineup, but it would give us the best chance to win.