My takeaways from this are generally good ones as we played a top 25 team who played a very good game. We played very well at times too. Every time they threatened to put the game out of reach, we hung tough, came back a little and we stayed in the game til the end. Sorry, but this was not a blow out loss as someone said.
UMass shot the lights out from outside the arc. It happens. Today, they lived by the 3 and it worked. They shot 64% from 3. The difference in 3 point shooting between the teams was 12 points, which is what we lost by. And we missed 16 3's!
Ndour stayed amazingly active throughout. The 1st half alley-oop slam is the best one I can remember from a Bobcat at the Convo, and I was here through the Trent years.
John Smith continues to improve and it looks like he's developing a short range jumper which will give us another offensive option.
Don't agree with the decision to sit Kellogg for the remainder of the 1st half with only 2 fouls. His missed minutes cost us. He ended up with 3 fouls. But, overall, I thought Christian made good decisions in player matchups.
Johnson is a workhorse and Hall gave us some good numbers (8 & 7) in 15 minutes.
It was a good learning experience and showed we can play with the big boys. Even though they are better than us, this is a game we could have won if they didn't shoot the lights out. And how many rim bounces dropped for them and didn't for us.
I never like losing but this was a good game overall, and, sure, there are things we need to work on- tighten up on defense, take some of the shots that we passed on in the first 15 seconds of the shot clock- but I came away more positive about this team.
Last Edited: 12/19/2013 12:17:16 AM by stub