As frustrating, uninspiring and hopeless this season has seemed--I bought the telecast and cheered the entire game just as I do every year. Even kept my hotel reservations for Cleveland and quite honestly, probably would've still made the trip. Happy that we competed and happy Stevie played so well. Honestly didn't think they could stop Mo if we lobbed it into him the entire game, which we did a lot but probably could've done even more of down the stretch vs. reverting to contested 3 pointers. But as much as I hate missing my annual Cleveland trip, it's probably best this season ended and we turn the page. Will certainly make us all appreciate the tournament runs of the past and make us look forward to runs in the future. As much as I hoped for a dramatic finish to the season, this season had no legs and it was time. Looking forward to better fortunes moving forward!

Nice, guess, old Army man, but it was my young computer that did that for me. After serious internet issues over the weekend, I had some cache problems with my browser. TWC was here today stringing new coax from the pole to the house.

Good one . . . made me chuckle. ;-)

I don't know about that take. It sure looked to me like David Brown getting loose in the second half, WMU hitting almost 45% of their threes, and Ohio taking (and missing) some ill-advised deep balls early in the shot clock (27% for the game) during the 2nd half were the difference to me.

There's two errors in that analysis for me.
1. Points scored and plays made to close an 8-point 2nd half gap and tie the game count as well. You can't read the game by picking it up from the 52-52 tie and then decide what made the difference. The effort WMU made to get to that point and Ohio's mistakes count, as does the massive momentum swing that resulted.
2. A bit of that foul disparity is the result of Ohio fouling down the stretch when the lead ballooned to 10. Wilder himself had 4 made FTs in the final 1:30.

I understand that WMU had a big run of FTs from 10:00 to 5:00 that helped put Ohio in a hole. Still, part of that was our inability to defend, the same issue that led to the game getting tied up.

I'm not sure if your suggestion is that Ohio was officiated out of the game or just that "WMU got to the line more." I don't think we were screwed by the refs last night. Sure, there were a few dubious home calls but it wasn't outrageous. The defense was not there in the second half like it was in the first and WMU made shots they had missed early on.

I agree - once a couple players get into foul trouble, Saul was in a big hole when it came to options. Next year, this shouldn't be a problem at any position unless there isn't someone who can handle playing 10 minutes to back up the point. Every other position will have legitimate competition for PT.

I don't think the fouls are an indication of the way the game was being called by the refs, I think it was an indication of how the players played. But I'm not completely sure what the root cause of it was- was it physical fatigue with only a 7 man rotation, was it the mental fatigue of trying to keep a lead and then losing it, was it a feeling of inevitability once the game was tied, are we just unable to focus for 40 minutes straight? Don't know.

Here's the margin of loss for our 14 MAC losses this year-
5-7-8-10-10-11-11-11-11-12-13-15-27-34

And here's the margin of victory for our 5 MAC wins-
1-2-3-9-30

We managed to win some close ones but rarely lost close ones, when we lost we usually lost big. Why did we lose big so often, was it the same reason we lost last night?

I was in attendance for this one, scored some perfectly centered seats to watch what I thought would be the end of Taylor, NDour, and Bean's career.

And it was! I was definitely proud of the way Stevie and NDour played. Foul trouble and David Brown proved to be too much.

Oh well - that was the only chance I had to see this year's team in person so I had to make the trip. Pregame beers at Bell's made it totally worth it.

I ran into this problem with Northern Iowa a few years ago.