Team needed to lose this game.

[MattMang23]

It wasn't all bad. The silver lining: I had a Mandledove sighting! (And wiggins in the winter hat behind him.)

And yes, I took the pic like a creepy stalker.

 

[intlzncster]

maybe dd needs to work a little harder to get himself involved. Ray nor rip would be satisfied being a statue vs a zone.

Ray or Rip he is not. That's the point. He's not that assertive (yet?), so I figure we should actively try to get him the ball in spots more often.

 

[Milo65]

Guard play was terrible. Bazz was in love with himself. Calhoun and Boat are basically no shows. We have no inside game whatsoever. The second half turned into throwing up terrible shots from 25 feet and Stanford sitting back in their zone and watching it. 13 points? Embarrassing!

 

[intlzncster]

View attachment 4539 It wasn't all bad. The silver lining: I had a Mandledove sighting! (And wiggins in the winter hat behind him.)

And yes, I took the pic like a creepy stalker.

Dove is still matriculated right? Thought he was on the 12 year program.

 

[sledog]

how they could come out in 2H and stand around with both hands up their asses is beyond me.

 

[Caronimo]

Typical annual xl center let down loss. Was it the 9pm start? AAC rules! Honestly tho, shabazz goes to bed at 10pm. Makes sense.

 

[MattMang23]

Dove is still matriculated right? Thought he was on the 12 year program.

Lol umm... Not sure. I know because he left the bball team w/o graduating he hurt our APR. Don't know if that means he actually left school or not.

As my friend put it, we shouldn't be upset with him. It's not his fault he is stupid and wasn't able to keep up with the course work; he didn't admit himself.

 

[tentoes4rings]

Live by the Nappier, die by the Nappier. At some point, can't keep dipping into the same old bag of tricks - the audience starts figuring it out. Would have loved to see something run there that was a bit more high percentage than a no pass, deep fade away. As great as a little player as he is, the %'s will start catching up. Trick shots to win games won't keep winning games over the long haul.

Omar Calhoun needs to start figuring things out. This team just isn't deep enough or talented enough for players like Omar to be as bad as he's been of late. Outside of Maine, who was about as good as a 35 plus YMCA coed team, Omar is 8-39 in his last 5 or so. That's 20% people - that is abysmal. To make matters worse, he doesn't bring a whole lot to the table outside of shooting. So when it's that's bad, he's a liability.

Really poor loss. This team, in this conference, needs to take every OOC win at home it can get. The SMU's and UCF's aren't going to add much to the resume.

That's the problem with Omar. He is strictly a scorer at this stage of his career, when he's not shooting well he brings nothing to the table. Those minutes need to go elsewhere until he gets straightened out.

 

[art4life]

I wondered when our WTF game would happen.
It showed up during the 2nd half last night...

 

[TheRealKBuks]

As much as I hate losing it's probably better we didn't have some last second miracle in this one for the long run. Got so complacent in the second like expected they would win just because. Good to make them take a look in the mirror.

I agree with the premise of what you're saying, although had we pulled out a win there was plenty of criticism to go around. I just hope these guys have learned that they need to bring it for 40 minutes. Can't take any possessions off.

No Escalators

 

[storrsroars]

Bull.

This team has a 3000 mile flight to Seattle and possibly 6 games against Louisville and Memphis.

It took real effort to put this game in jeopardy let alone lose it. We did not need to lose this game. We should not have lost it.

This.

When UConn scored twice in the last 20 seconds of the 1st half while Stanford was supposed to be playing for the last shot, that was classic heads up Husky transition basketball and I had this one in the W column, going away.

I don't recall as bad a 2nd half against an unranked team at home since the 80s. Or a ranked team for that matter. In the final 20 minutes it appeared there were only perhaps two honest attempts to break the 2-3. Just bad, bad strategy and execution. Awful.

And I'll echo the sentiment that it's even worse because of this shiathole conference. This loss will hurt RPI and seeding with fewer chances to get some of that back down the road.

 

[pj]

I agree with the OP insofar as the team has gotten too reliant on Bazz bailing them out when they need a bucket. The opponents know it. Bazz is a great player but he's not superman. Even Kemba needed Jeremy Lamb to emerge as a reliable scorer before he could take over games. Bazz doesn't have that go-to scorer to create a reliable second threat yet.

The team needs to develop second and third options. I'm not sure we have a Jeremy Lamb caliber scoring talent on the team, so this may have to be a team effort. Best to get working on it early. In that sense, a wake-up call is good for the team. Yes, 10-0 is better than 9-1, and I wish Omar had knocked down that shot for the win, but another Bazz saving the day game wasn't what the team needs.

 

[husky91]

So far, lose to a bad Stanford team at home, last second victory against what will be a very good UF team, and close wins against bad BCU, Maryland and IU teams

1 bad loss and 1 good win this year

 

[OkaForPrez]

So far, lose to a bad Stanford team at home, last second victory against what will be a very good UF team, and close wins against bad BCU, Maryland and IU teams

1 bad loss and 1 good win this year

A bad loss is to a team ranked outside the RPI top 100.

Stanford is 39 in Ken Pom (we're 29)
Their RPI was 78 before they beat us ( we were 13) I don't trust the RPI yet btw.
Sagarin - Stanford is 40 (we're 41)

This. Was. A. Good. Team.

 

[jibsey]

We have talented guards but they need space to operate and last night and increasingly in the future they are going to be smothered because other teams know that we are not throwing the ball inside. Our bigs have to make a layup or get to the line. We went in there with no results but if we want to become anything we have to establish that. At this point it's Brimah, it may not be pretty for a while but he can develop. Bobby knight gets dissed alot but i wish KO would bring him in and show Amida and Phil what a pump fake is.

 

[husky91]

That won't occur in the course of the season itself, hopefully by next year he, Facey and Nolan can be factors. Right now none can play consistently at gm this level. They need to play like a mid-major this year and even go Giffey, DD at the 4-5 for stretches.

We have talented guards but they need space to operate and last night and increasingly in the future they are going to be smothered because other teams know that we are not throwing the ball inside. Our bigs have to make a layup or get to the line. We went in there with no results but if we want to become anything we have to establish that. At this point it's Brimah, it may not be pretty for a while but he can develop. Bobby knight gets dissed alot but i wish KO would bring him in and show Amida and Phil what a pump fake is.

 

[OkaForPrez]

We have talented guards but they need space to operate and last night and increasingly in the future they are going to be smothered because other teams know that we are not throwing the ball inside. Our bigs have to make a layup or get to the line. We went in there with no results but if we want to become anything we have to establish that. At this point it's Brimah, it may not be pretty for a while but he can develop. Bobby knight gets dissed alot but i wish KO would bring him in and show Amida and Phil what a pump fake is.

Daniels was 7-10 (1-1 form 3) He did most of his damage on the baseline and inside the arch. He is the answer to the over-extension of the zone. We've used him effectively in the center in the past.

 

[60'sfan]

I recorded this game because I had other obligations. When I saw the half-time score, I assumed that we would win easily. When I saw the final score I was both shocked and disappointed. I decided to watch the game this morning anyway. This is what I saw. Uconn played a very solid first half (although I had to miss the first 7 minutes because of the Texas-Carolina game). Stanford shifted to a two-three zone in the second half and we did not seem to know how to attack it. We played with very little energy and seemed to be waiting for Shabazz to pull another one out. His shot was off and we had no other answers. Our shot selection was poor and when we had a decent look we missed (0 for 12 from the three in the second half). We did not play good defense for the most part.

Stanford is a decent team who will compete in their league. They made less mistakes than we did and came away with a big win for them. I don't think we should be attacking individuals for this loss. We lost as a team. I also think that something good can come out of a loss. They all know that they have to work harder and that is good thing. Let's not forget that our last national championship team lost nine games. I still think we have a pretty good team and will get better.

 

[PAHusky]

A lot of the blame for last night falls on KO's shoulders. The zone Florida threw at us in the last four or so minutes of that game and Stanford's zone in the second half completely threw our offense off. It shouldn't but it will until we figure something out. An easy way to beat the zone is to run - never let them even set up. Unfortunately, with the rebounding issues this team has that's not always an option. The other way, obviously, is to put a man in the middle of the zone and run the offense through him and to drive and draw defenders in and kick it out. This is what KO should have been emphasizing and this is what he missed on last night. On paper we have the pieces to shred a zone - DD works well in the center of the defense, Bazz and Boat can get around the first level and NG and OC are the spot up shooters. Instead we looked totally lost and out of our element. KO needs to address that. You know that our upcoming opponents have noticed and will roll out the zone more often.

As far as individual efforts - Omar just isn't cutting it at the moment. I understand that we'll need him confident going forward the next few years but he is really, really off, and when he's not making shots he's not doing anything out there. Our offense gets stagnant often because right now DD and Bazz are the only two dimensional threats (outside and inside). I actually wouldn't mind Boat taking more threes as it would keep his man honest. Defensively teams right now know Boat will only drive and OC and NG will only shoot threes. At this point it's obvious that expecting anything out of the 5 spot on offense is a pipe dream. We're already down to essentially 4 v 5 on the offensive end. We can't afford to have a 3 who is offensively inept as well. I like Omar, will always respect him for sticking with us through tough times, and honestly believe that he will be a fantastic player during his career but something has to change. I thought the positives last night were good D for the most part and a slight improvement in rebounding (especially Brimah) though nowhere close to where we need to be in March. If you live by the sword of winning close games you tend to die by it too. This team will be fine, we just don't want to drop two in a row now.

 

[aceboon]

Daniels was 7-10 (1-1 form 3) He did most of his damage on the baseline and inside the arch. He is the answer to the over-extension of the zone. We've used him effectively in the center in the past.

It amazes me that people still don't realize he is our inside scoring threat, and a good one at that.

 

[intlzncster]

It amazes me that people still don't realize he is our inside scoring threat, and a good one at that.

Yep, we don't want him jacking up 3s either. His mid range to inside game is nice. I felt like we didn't get it to him enough, yet he was still 6-10. That stat surprised me, as he didn't feel as involved as he could be. He's also the perfect 'big' to be the guy to flash to the top of the key against the zone. For whatever reason, we didn't have a ton of movement last night. I think much of what was wrong in our play is correctable as well. That's a good thing.

 

[BoatShow]

So far, lose to a bad Stanford team at home, last second victory against what will be a very good UF team, and close wins against bad BCU, Maryland and IU teams

1 bad loss and 1 good win this year

Stanford is a bad team?Interesting.

 

[mesman00]

guys, i'll say it again, no loss is a good loss. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "GOOD LOSS." the great ricky bobby once said, "if you ain't first, you're last." i'll take an ugly, sloppy, undeserved win over a loss any day of the week, twice on sunday.

 

[dogpause]

After reading this entire thread, I have a few comments:

1. Many people complaining about how bad we were in the 2nd half, forgot how great we played in the first half. I was actually wowed by our play in the opening 20 minutes.
We were so good, that it probably played a role in the letdown.

2. To ever think a team doesn't care whether it wins is ridiculous. Maybe in the pro sports...late in the season...when you're out of contention..., but not in college sports, and definitely not this year with this team.

3. The second half appeared to be a major case of cockiness by a very good team. They got their comeuppance and it was well deserved. I'm certain they'll learn from it too. .

4. I think Shabazz needs to combine his ability to score with his ability to distribute, rather than showcasing one at a time. Be a complete player throughout the game and it will be a lot tougher for teams to game plan for you in the second half, the way Stanford did.