RichZ
Fort the ead!
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 5,204
- Reaction Score
- 22,155
I had a lot of thoughts during and after the game, but wanted to review the game before putting together a post. Thanks to tcf15, I finally got to do so, but not without a whole lot of interruptions. So finally, nearly 24 hours after the fact, here's a laundry list of highs and lows.
- When Purvis hoisted a three 14 seconds into the game, given his shooting woes of late, I gave him a big WT... Never got to part, because the ensuing swish stopped me in my tracks. A few minutes later, when he had like 8 of our first 10, I was giving myself the big WTF.
- At about the 13 minute mark, Calhoun got his hand on the ball when the SMU guy was trying to get it up for a layup. The ref called it a tie up. But the guy managed to release it in the general direction of the basket before he came down, so it's not a tie up. Not sure whether it would be credited as a block or not, but I lean toward yes. SMU got the ball on the alternating posession. Not sure if it mattered, ball went out off us on the rebounding anyway. Just example one of questionable officiating.
- When TSam took an elbow to the chin, play continued, and SMU hit a floater in the lane like 5 or 6 seconds later. Then they retroactively called a flagrant on Moore for the elbow. Shouldn't they have taken the basket scored after the flagrant off the scoreboard and backed the clock up to the point of the foul when TSam went to the line to shoot?
- On that same sequence, Spanarkle drove me crazy with his commentary. Basically said yeah, it's the rule, but it shouldn't be. He seemed to be trying to make a case that the rule shouldn't allow the defender to get close enough to get hit by that elbow.
- The play that Facey made that sweet jump shot on was a thing of beauty. As Boat drove the lane, Facey backed out of the paint. Ostensibly, that should have dragged the big covering him out and given Boat shooting room. But Cunningham ignored Facey and went up to try to block the shot that Boat never took, leaving Facey with an 8 foot cushion of empty space. Boat did the wraparound pass to him for as wide open a 10 foot shot as I've ever seen. Then Facey had a beautiful block on Moore on the ensuing SMU possession. Not sure why that block doesn't show up on the box score.
- With 3 or 4 minutes left in the half, things started to get a little dicey. A couple consecutive turnovers led to SMU scores (even though one was a kicked ball and shouldn't have been a turn over) Our 10 point lead became 4 pretty quickly. Part of that stretch was DHam's little floater that was blocked. It was clearly goaltending on the replay. Oddly, we maintained possession, boat took a desperation 3 at the end of the clock, we got fouled on the rebound action, and the possession ended up with Amida's shot being goaltended, and that time it was called, so it came right back to us kinda poetically. We seemed to settle back down after that. Or maybe SMU started getting a little more careless. One or the other, but a little storm had been weathered, and I felt like surviving that turned out to be important in winning the game. If they had continued to erode our lead and that questionable call on the late shot had put us down instead of simply cutting the lead to 5, things might have turned out differently.
- I wanted to be upset about that call the at the end of the half, but it could have been called ether way on the floor, and there wasn't clear evidence to change it on review. If the initial call had been that it was late, they would have had to leave it at that after the review, too.
- I have to believe Brown went nuts on the refs on the way to the locker room or on the way back from the locker room, asking how come the 'foul prone' Brimah didn't get called once in the 1st half. They sure made up for it in the 2nd, didn't they?
- So how DID Amida not get called in the 1st half, against a team that tries to go to its bigs as much as SMU does? Looked like a great coaching move by Ollie to go to a 2 big double immediately every time the ball went to a big in the paint, with an occasional triple from a guard.
- Boat's 3, a minute or so into the 2nd half was one of the prettiest plays of the game. The whole key was the hard cut followed by the immediate pass and going up with it the instant the ball hit his hands. Then a few moments later, Rodney did the exact same thing from the exact same spot. And a minute later, it was Boat again. Same play, same spot, same result. Only difference was that the pass came from Purvis instead of Dham. Running that play 3 times in a matter of 5 possessions early in the 2nd half wasn't an accident. Coaching staff saw some kind of a weakness or tendency on SMU's part, and exploited it in the 2nd half. KO and the guys rocked it! I love having a bench full of point guards in suits.
- I don't know how many times Spanarkle said that Boat had a rough game. Yeah, you know, the 23 point, 5 assist, 3 board, 50% on threes kind of rough.
- Did Larry brown sitting there saying "I like being around college kids," in that interview sound borderline creepy to anyone else?
- Last year, I got angry every time we played Louisville, because their guards constantly got away with using a forearm shiver to the chest to create space on the drive. Yesterday, Purvis got away with the same move around the 12 minute mark. I still don't like the move, but it's nice to have it go our way for once.
- My vote for play of the day? As much work as Rodney and Boat did to get us to that point, DHam's three after SMU took the lead around 7:40. He used that weak fake that seems to get his man to back off a hair, as he always seems to try to drive off it. Then he just went up and drained it. That really seemed to light his fire. Starting with that shot, he scored 12 points over about 3-1/2 minutes on the clock.
- Things got shaky when SMU started pressuring the inbounds plays late, but just like that little storm late in the first half, we worked through it, and reopened the lead once they started fouling.
- Post game interview, RP credited Coach Hobbs for helping him improve his FT shooting -- 100 to 300 FTs with Karl every day.
- Yesterday, we finally saw the team we expected to see this season. The one with two consistent scoring threats to complement Boat. Kinda fun to watch.
- I hope Brimah's leg is OK. He played hurt the last 10 minutes.