uneblinstu's postgame chatter : vol 17; ed 16-Purdue

We simply had our asses kicked.  Hard to stomach!

We better dig deep. This league is unforgiving and we’ll quickly play ourselves out of dancing.

Throw away the tape!!

Last 2 opponents are 36-68 from 3 (53%).

Let’s see if we have some pride.

I'm not sure any team in the country could've won that game today with as well as PU played and as motivated as they were.

That said, a veteran team has to have more pride than that. Hope we show it Thursday vs RU.

As someone said in the game thread, we likely wouldn’t have beaten Purdue regardless with the way they shot the ball. However, the entire program should be embarrassed by the lack of effort on both ends of the floor.

We couldn't shoot, couldn't defend, couldn't take care of the ball, couldn't force turnovers, couldn't rebound. 

The one thing we did is make free throws.

This was not Iowa beating us twice.  This was the fact that we weren't ready to deal with Purdue's pressure.   We should have been.

Here’s highlights if you missed it.

It’s never a good day when HHC invests more into a game than the team. Today may have been one of those days.

10 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

We better dig deep. This league is unforgiving and we’ll quickly play ourselves out of dancing.

I hear the late great Jim Mora in the background:   "Dancing??"

3 minutes ago, HB said:

 

I hear the late great Jim Mora in the background:   "Dancing??"

Thankfully we did enough by not dropping one in OOC, winning in Hawaii against teams we needed to play, and beating Creighton on the road to afford ourselves a few clunkers in conference season.

Sadly— we’ve about used up all the clunkers 5 games in.

How fast things have changed. After the UCLA game, we all were talking about being worthy of being ranked, making sure we didn’t let Loesner go anywhere because he was our defensive mastermind.

A few guys need to take a long look in the mirror. Ok, a lot of guys. I get it, it sucks to be blown out but have some pride. We showed no fight. Purdue made Nebraska look like what we did to Southern.

2 things 

1 - IF Williams isn't on his game, we have basically no chance against quality teams.

2 - We have completely crumbled on the road 3 times now. Seems like we might be a bit soft mentally, can't stand the pressure of tough road games

4 minutes ago, Faux Mike Peltz said:

How fast things have changed. After the UCLA game, we all were talking about being worthy of being ranked, making sure we didn’t let Loesner go anywhere because he was our defensive mastermind.

A few guys need to take a long look in the mirror. Ok, a lot of guys. I get it, it sucks to be blown out but have some pride. We showed no fight. Purdue made Nebraska look like what we did to Southern.

We have went from what seed are we getting in the Big dance to are we going to make the Big 10 tournament.

We have struggled all year with ball handling with pressure on the road.

Historical ass-whooping

Where’s that Poll RE: if we’re Better or Worse than Last Season…? 

If we look at our games away from home

St Mary's 15 turnovers close loss

Creighton 7 turnovers double digit win

Michigan State 11 turnovers blowout loss. MSU made 12 3's to our 4

Murray State 15 turnovers double digit win

Hawaii 12 turnovers double digit win 

Oregon State 12 turnovers double digit win 

Iowa 14 turnovers overtime loss.  Iowa makes 17 3's to our 9

Purdue 17 turnovers blowout loss. Purdue makes 19 3's to our 6 

Nebraska turnover, Purdue 3

Maybe a bit how Purdue felt last year against us.

Dropping the Iowa game feels pretty big right now.  Now you have find a way to get some energy and beat Rutgers.  Win that and I think we'll have a good shot to win at Maryland.

Sounds like my schedule conflicts worked out for me today 

Horrible all around game, felt like MSU 2.0.

2 hours ago, MJW82 said:

Sounds like my schedule conflicts worked out for me today 

Unfortunately, I was thinking the same thing.

Wasn't planning on a Husker win today. But even if Purdue shoots the lights out, you don't have to get absolutely embarrassed like that. I watched Penn State handle Purdue (they were ahead by 28 in the 2nd half of that game, then Purdue climbed back and lost by 11). Good teams, or just mentally tough teams, value every possession and fight like hell regardless of the score. 

That all starts and ends with Brice and Juwan. They are supposed to be the leaders. Within the first few minutes they were both hanging their heads, just like in the Michigan State game. Brice passed up an open shot in the first possession and that lack of aggression was the theme of the game. His casual demeanor might be good in that opposing defenders can't speed him up. But your movements need to be more violent, crisp and clean against tough Big Ten defenses. He gets the ball stripped too often. Every possession matters.

Juwan again had 1 rebound. Zero defensive rebounds. Go back and rewatch any part of that game and you'll see Juwan not only not playing good on-ball defense, but also not helping and not rotating to close out and contest shots. 

Sam and Connor needed to play more than 22 minutes in a game like this. They provide energy that is desperately needed. They're the only two that box out every time a shot goes up. They're the only two that are constantly moving on both ends of the court. And right now they're both a threat to knock down an open shot (Sam is up to 40%3FG). The argument for Connor not playing more has been that he's a liability on defense and he's one dimensional offensively. He's playing pretty good defense right now and grabbed another 5 boards today. He's a good passer and in the last three games he's done a better job of creating for others than anyone outside of Brice. Had another 3 assists today. He was also 3 for 3 inside the arc in this game.

Think we should run more for Berke on offense, like we did against St. Mary's. He's playing pretty efficient offensively, just very low volume. 

We still run 2 or 3 sets a game to try to get the ball to Meah on the block with his back to the basket. Why? It's ALWAYS a wasted possession. Every possession matters. Reminds me of when Miles would try to force feed Tshimanga the first possession of every game. Don't think we ever scored off those sets. 

I still like this team and think we could have a good season, but our two 6th year seniors need to step up and be the leaders this team needs. 

Edit - full disclosure: it's a bourbon Sunday for me, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.