I hope he sees his history of allowing his teams to blow leads and take terrible shots.

DJ Cooper has to take the blame. Three year starter. He hasn't played anything close to all-mac this year.  He must pick it up and lead this team and its starts with making good decision and making shots from the field and at the line. Baltic also has to take the blame for his lack of focus. Its February and he 50% from the line.  Apparently that missed free throw that cost us the Ball State game in Cleveland last year is still on his mind.  Kellogg needs to become more than a jump shooter and attack the rim more and get to the line. He is our best foul shooter and if he does a little of what Offutt tries to do attacking the rim and drawing fouls he could help this team get to the next level. He has to become a scorer than just a shooter to take some pressure off Cooper.   

That was a microcosm of everything frustrating about this team, all in one short evening.  We got a taste of all of it, all in one night.  We saw:

*Our inability to put teams away when we have big leads.  Honestly thought this could be a laugher and I'd have to find something else to do vs. watch a blow out.
*How limited we are in the paint.  Our inability tonight to get rebounds; scrap; guard guys posting up on us; post up on them--just all around poor interior play.  Or as Groce must have said--being soft.  Reggie and Jon verus their entire squad.  Then when our jumpers our falling, how limited we become in finding other ways to score. 
*The up's & down's of Ivo's Junior season.  Tonight it almost felt things were too rough for him underneath, so he turned into a perimeter shooter.  Hit a couple, but we got plenty of jump shooters and not enough of what he should be for us and was for us last year.
*DJ amazing ability to bring us back by getting hot late.  Then the ability to totally force a shot that results in an airball at a crucial time.
*We're reminded how special it was to have A. Bassett (the hoops player) for the magic carpet ride.  With 2.2 seconds left you know he would've wanted that last shot.  Instead, we get our shorter player lobbing to the rim?  Great chance to get fouled, but do you trust Ivo to hit 2 free throws?  I would've like to have had Walter get something going to the basket, but I'm not sure he demanded the ball in that situation or that it was obvious to draw up a play for him in that situation?

Chalk that one up to frustration and let's get on with it hoping we got it out of our system. 

Here is what the Charmin Twins have averaged the last five games - 6.6pts. & 4.6 rebs. and 9.0 pts. & 4.0 rebs. This is not going to get it done. And only one of those teams had a winning record. Yes Coach you are right.

Tonight,  I only heard the last four minutest.  But it's pretty obvious:  We don't get rebounds (though we generally seem to hustle on the boards) and we don't have any distinctly talented players.  At least no player who is consistently a frontline MAC performer who gets us over the hump in tough times.

We can contend for the tournament championship.  Or we could get knocked out in the quarters.

I posted some of this in the story on the homepage but Groce did make it pretty clear he was not happy. His comments about Ivo, I had been thinking the exact same thing and actually sent a text to my wife telling her that I didn't understand why he didn't post up against a much smaller defender. Hopefully we respond the way we did when we lost at BG and come back playing better.

“This one’s really simple. Thirty-six points in the paint to our 20, 20 offensive rebounds to our 19 defense rebounds. I don’t know what the final score was with the loose balls, but they won the loose balls. They were tougher. Bottom line. … It was the first time we have been that soft since Bowling Green.”

“(Pearson) certainly is one of the better players in the league,” Groce said. “He’s a tough cover. I was really impressed with him. He got nine offensive rebounds against our quote unquote tough guys. (Walter) Offutt and (Ricardo) Johnson are our tough guys, but he was tougher than them tonight.”

“I hope it’s a punch in the stomach. The last time we got beat this badly and again I want to emphaisze that’s not all us. We didn’t play well, but they have a lot to do with that. We just didn’t get it done in some of the hustle statistics. The last time we got dominated in the hustle statistics was at Bowling Green and we came back and played with desperation against Buffalo. … You’re hoping they respond the same way on Saturday.”

“The deep Cooper 3, we’d prefer he drive it obviously,” Groce said. “They defended the ball screen pretty well and shot clock, he took the shot. He had made a couple. In a perfect world, I’d rather him drive. The play at the end of the game, I haven’t watched the film yet. My kid (Baltic) is upset because he thinks he was fouled. I thought he was fouled. … Bottom line is you have to stay on your feet and catch the ball. … You can’t put the game in the hands of the official on a 50-50 call.”

“Their kids played with more of a sense of desperation than we did and that’s disappointing at this point in the season.”

“Other than Keely, who I thought did have a physical disposition tonight, I don’t think any of our other four or fives wanted anything to do with them. .. Ivo’s been a good player for us, but the game plan wasn’t for him to shoot five or six fadeaways on the baseline over a guy who is 6-4. By the time he’s a junior, he should have that figured out.”

“I thought our guys played really hard the last five or six minutes of the game. They could have cracked at that point. I guess that’s the one bright bright point in the game.”

 

I thnk Coach has it pretty well nailed. It would be nice if he would address some of the things he was trying on the bench and in the locker room to stem the tide when UT started digging out of the hole.

This is the exact type of game that keeps me from getting excited at all about Cleveland. I just do not recall an OHIO Team shooting this bad to this point in the season. I think we all were fearful the low post would be an issue. Not to mention the layups missed when we did have shots down low. Really bummed now that reality has checked me.

The people blaming DJ last night couldn't be further from the truth.   We started the with great movement on offense. D.J. would drive and people were moving into passing lanes giving him options. All of a sudden we stopped moving.  D.J. would drive and people were standing wtih their hands out waiting for their jump shot.  They started to get their confidence back and then outhustled us the rest of the game.  D.J. was just about the only guy on the court that looked like he wanted to play.   We've got Ivo and Reggie settling for 15 foot jumpers.  We've got a bunch of other guys not even looking to do anything and then we get beat to every single loose ball.   I've said all year that defense doesn't got into slumps but it sure does when the effort isn't there and last night we sleep walked on defense and paid the price. 

I'm not sure why Ethan Jacobs all of a sudden is getting TyQuane Goard's minutes but it needs to stop. He has played two of the last four  games and in both games our opponent wisely went right at him. Not sure what Goard has been doing to get in the dog house but he needs to get out right now.

Hopefully this game can serve a purpose and springboard us the rest of the year.  Unfortunately it completely eliminates any at large talk and probably any MAC regular season title talk.  

We are 19-5 and 7-3 in conference. It's a bad loss but let's not go overboard here.  We are still looking at one of the better teams we've had in quite some time.

100% Agree. Maybe they aren't as good as we hoped they were.  Maybe they have just had a few bad games. No Matter how you slice it, this is one of the 2-3 best teams to take to the Convo floor since Gary Trent left.

Alright, since 1995, name 3 Ohio teams that have had better success.  I was a student in 95-96, so for me that's as far back as I can go.  I can think of a couple teams that might have been better than this one, but didn't produce the results. 

*The 98-99 team with Stoney, Adell, and Whitehead might beat this team, but they didn't have a good point guard, and they didn't defend nearly as well as this team does consistently.  They'd outrebound this team like UT did the other night though.  The next year was some of the same crew minus Whitehead but plus Brandon Hunter as a frosh.  To me they were not better. 

A few years later, we still have Brandon, then Esterkamp and Sonny Johnson.  Still, no guards that really got it done, which cost us because we had everything else. 

I might give you the '05 team because we had leaders on the team, and we had the sick talent of Jeremy Fears.  The next year we had the talent, but the wheels fell off when O'Shea & Co. couldn't keep the team together and Fears left.  Next year, again, Chatman leaves - no point guard...which becomes a recurring theme until Groce is hired. 

Groce is hired - year one is rough because we're basically 7-8 deep all year with, what, 9 scholarship players?  Groce & Co with Bassett leading the way get us through a hot run in February and March all the way to the last 32.  Because we had Bassett, that team was better.

So, I can with certainty, point out 2 past OU teams since '95 that might have been better than this year's team.  That's it.  One of them has a number of the current group of players on it.


Edit:  To add to this /\   The reason I disagree with you with a couple teams as exceptions is that we've never had good ball handling guards.  We had good teams in the late '90's that lost because we couldn't beat good teams (Kent, Miami, etc.) that had GOOD guards.