That ISU team is not that good, and with a more disciplined defense we should have had no problem with them. Why oh why do we go flying through the air with every shot fake? It's routine now that we allow the other team to stay one step ahead of us because someone got themselves out of position and they easily find the open man.

AJB played 35 minutes last night. Let's not go backwards there. He is shooting above 50% from two and three, he's averaging double figures across three games where one of them he scored only three points in a foul trouble game, and I can't recall one shot attempt so far in the early season that was ill-advised or forced. He has the game.

Strongly agree that relegating Evans to the 9th or tenth spot on the bench with some DNPs is a bad investment for the future, considering our only "wide" bodies are gone next year. Let's look at the minutes distribution between our bigs last night:

Clayton 28
Searls 19
Evans 0

Searls had a nice game offensively, but hasn't shown anything yet beyond 10 feet from the cup. Two rebounds in 19 minutes at 6'9" 240 doesn't support his case.

Off the bat, I'd be more strategic about when to take Clayton out of the game. We did the sub out right before the media timeout thing with Leon Williams. Let's do it with Clayton. That probably gets him another four minutes at least. And we've cracked the seal on Evans playing in the rotation. I think short term and long term it makes sense to play Evans at least some in the first half and ride with whomever in the second half when the rotation needs to be tightened for key moments. If that is Searls, fine - you went with the physically mature veteran over a true freshman. If that is Evans, fine - you went with the promising young kid who will have a huge role next year over the guy in his last year of eligibility.

Sheldon more minutes than Pav. Insert wide eyes emoji. Interested in more of Elliott. That too looks like a good investment. Keep in mind Shereef didn't play last night. I don't envy the task of keeping team buy-in balanced with rolling with the best combination to win among our six guards.

This team is lacking in perimeter defenders outside of Shereef. Gonna be a problem all year unless some of the other guards step it up. Defense was an underrated part of Jaylin's game the last 2 years and Pav has been getting taken advantage of on that end of the floor. If we aren't going to outscore teams or defend then we're in trouble. To shabamon's point. If I see someone else jump into the third row on a pump fake, I'll jump out of my window.

Based on last night, T R .com now has us as an underdog to MTSU and a toss up at Marshall. This is trending the wrong direction.

I doubt the impending beat-down at Memphis will be a factor though. It's expected.

WAIT-WAIT-WAIT ... I thought Ohio was the most veteran team in the league with the most returning starters/players???

We haven't played any league games yet. HTH.

I'm not pressing the panic button 3 games in over 2 road losses. I think we need to be a little more honest with ourselves...the MAC just isn't that good. I found a page with conference NET rankings that had the MVC (with Illinois St) at #10 and the Sunbelt (James Madison) at #17. They have the MAC #23. Yikes.

I'm not sure we have lost a game yet that you would say we were expected to win.

I'm officially getting worried. This team lacks chemistry and seems to wilt at the slightest sign of adversity. The individual parts look better than the whole. There's still time for this team to jell, and get it together. But what I've seen so far is not MAC championship winning basketball.

I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

I wasn't responding to you.