BU loses at Evansville - just when we had a good game vs. UNI...

I guess I had my hopes up a bit that after the 2nd half against UNI we'd come out in Evansville and play well.
But nobody will say we played well - we were embarrassed by a team that clearly has no overall greater talent than we have.

Even Kirk Wessler this morning followed the Phil Theobald school of journalism - that if you have nothing good to say then say nothing at all. Because he said nothing at all - not a word....which was a kind gesture.

Hard to believe that after a shellacking like that last night in Evansville that the PJS would have a front page headline saying this...
"BU FALLS ON THE ROAD"

That's all...we just fell...pretty kind way of putting it
I sure wish some of the headlines the past 6-8 years were as kind...
the online story starts with "Evansville throttles Braves 90-67"..again a pretty kind statement as if we played well but Evansville just played better...

Even the Evansville paper was more to the point...
The headline in the Evansville paper read...
"UE, Colt Ryan trample Bradley"

And somehow DR comes up with this quote in his column...
"Evansville coach Marty Simmons said Bradley was a difficult team to guard because of its quickness and athleticism."

But that sure isn't the opinion of most who watch our games...
Recall the Big Ten broadcasters when we played Michigan repeatedly pointed out that Bradley's main tactic on offense was to just give the ball to someone and go one-on-one, and that the first person who gets the ball in the frontcourt was quite often the guy who instantly launched the shot....

And here we are, now, 20-games into the season and it seems little different.
Other teams screen well, get their shooters wide open, get them the ball (like Colt Ryan) and score, while we're still doing a whole lot of shake and bake, spin moves, reverse pivots and wild shots!

Marty is right that we are hard to guard but we then make it easy by getting off shots that are never going in anyway, so they don't need to guard very well.
Those dribble-drive, reverse spin moves that even our forwards make, then they throw up an impossible shot - is why we simply cannot score - we need better shots and and an offense that utilizes team play rather than just individual one-on-one moves.

In JL's first year as head coach - we had ONE 23-point loss - it was the the road game at Creighton in 2002-2003.
But now we've had four 23 (and 23+) point losses already this year - let's hope we've seen the last one.

In fact - in the entire rest of the 9-year Jim Les era - Les had only four more regular season 23-pt losses and three of them were to top ranked non-conference teams (Michigan State in 2006, Florida in 2008, Duke 2010) - never, ever did this happen when playing a middle-of-the-pack Valley team!!

And I am calling this a 23-point loss but for all intents and purposes we know it was actually a 30+ point loss and Marty was kind to flood his bench with his walk-ons & deep subs and call off the dogs...

Too bad we didn't make a few more subs earlier -- the guys starting and playing might just respond a bit if they knew their starting positions and playing time had to be battled for...

Stat-wise this one stands out..
They had 26 assists on 32 made baskets...and 16 turnovers
We had just 13 assists better than usual but 21 turnovers...

..and Marty does a good job helping pad the guy's stats playing him 38 minutes and launching more shots with a 30 point lead.



In the ISU win over Indiana State I noticed ISU never plays Trey Blue any more -- the guy must regret the day he transferred there --

BTW - -did you see that an ISU fan tried to rebut and argue the statement that Bryant Allen was a football player walking on playing basketball...
Duhh..what am I missing -- here's what his own ISU official bio says...

"Originally came to Illinois State as a member of the football team, as a wide receiver ...
Prior to Illinois State: ... played two seasons at Minnesota on the football team"