This team is worse than Saul's first year squad.

Or coach.

I agree. Basketball, by it's very name, is about getting the ball in the basket. The 'Cats don't even seem to be able to do that. This is horrible. I have never seen a worse performance from an Ohio Bobcats team.

I don't see any continuity or any offensive toughness. Kirk is the only guy who drives. Block has had one good game (Kent) since his heroics against Indiana State and Laster and Dartis look lost for some reason.

Does anyone truly believe Kirk stays in this program after this season?

I’ve never seen a group pass up more open looks. So much reluctance to shoot.

Does anyone honestly believe that one player turns this shipwreck around?

#14Months

Except that it's not. Yes, we'd be much better without injuries, but we wouldn't be world beaters. We still wouldn't be close to Buffalo, for example. What these injuries have highlighted are just how weak we are top to bottom. No bench. Guys on scholarship who aren't MAC-level players. No coherent strategy from game to game. Deep fundamental flaws. I can't imagine it's what any of us had in mind when most of us were excited with the hire four years ago.

At least the post game interview on the Bobcat Radio Network was supremely insightful, poised, and responsibility driven with such stalwart quotes as, "I've got to get this figured out" and "This group is struggling to score". If that's not a highest paid coach / highest funded program type stance, I don't know what is....

In a previous subject post I spoke of past MAC successful coaches. One such coach was Ball State's Rick Majerus, not a personal favorite of mine but he knew how to motivate and coach with little talent. In one infamous game he drew two technical fouls (I believe he was thrown out.) Why you might ask, bad officiating perhaps? No, he felt he team was not giving their all. He said something to the effect that practices would be like hell so he would never see that something like that again. The Ball State faithful never did see something like that again.

Unfortunately, we have seen too many lackadaisical performances. I can't remember when you could hear the frustration come through loud and clear in the call of the game via the radio and internet. This would be unacceptable if we were watching a game at Athens High, let alone in the Convo where Coach Phillips makes more than dare I say everyone on this board and certainly every state officeholder. He truly is the 1% and yet the performances are far from the 99%.

I am an optimist by nature but something has to change with what we are seeing on the hardwood. I can't remember the last time I criticized a current basketball coach. The last time I saw something like this was with Coach Hahn in the late 80s. Both Coach Hahn and Coach Phillips are honorable men, but clearly Coach Hahn wasn't cut out to be a head coach and it set us back for many years, erasing all of the goodwill that Coach Nee had brought to Athens. Coach O'Shea (the infamous TOS) perhaps didn't want to be here, but he did give us one moment of tournament magic.

Coach Phillips has to find a way to connect, cajole, scare or intimidate the players, he by and large recruited to play here. If nothing else, call Coach Nee and asked what he did when things weren't going as expected. Perhaps even watch a few old Rick Majerus era Ball State games, surely they exist somewhere maybe someone could send him an old VHS tape, but please do something because the current roster plays as if they were hypnotized not to win.

I didn't know basketball was invented in the time of Jesus. Are the Baptists right? Has He returned?

This was the worst night of basketball I've watched in a long time.

1. This OU debacle with whatever ESPN3 was calling a color analyst

2. The Cavs looked horrible vs. an undermanned Detroit team and Love breaks his hand.

3. Kentucky is about to go down at Rupp to a losing Vanderbilt team, but Vanderbilt FOULS UK WITH 2 SECONDS TO GO in the backcourt, to allow UK to hit game-tying FTs and send to OT for the win.

4. Speaking of FTs, Baylor just has to hit theirs to upset the other OU, but can't hit anything. Oklahoma narrowly avoids the upset.

That's four badly played basketball games I watched.

Bad.