The constant sniping at this kid is pathetic. Borna hit the nail on the head, the others we have on the floor, especially the shooters, need to work themselves into lanes to accept the pass and THEN shoot it. 

How about the numerous times yesterday that DJ, the SMALLEST kid on the floor, took on the Giant in the paint and beat him. DJ's foul shots taken and made yesterday weren't the result of his jacking up a 3. It was from driving the rim and challenging and quite honestly IMO there were numerous occasions he got mugged and got No calls!

How many times does DJ make the pass to one of the bigs underneath and they either weren't ready or fail to catch the pass or immediately catch it and attempt to throw it right back to DJ.


There were lots of factors that led to the loss against the Zips. Remember we went into that game as 3.5pt underdogs, not 35 pt favorites as the delusional think we should be. The Zips aren't exactly chump change, although there are chumps, and we knew it would be a battle. 

The officiating left much to be desired and left us totally and completely exposed underneath. Even the Akron fans I was around were screaming for the refs to swallow their whistles and let the kids play the game.  Akron outscored us at the line by 15 and had more than double the foul attempts.That alone is almost impossible to overcome on the road and normally would translate into a double-digit loss. 

If I had to place blame for the loss I would look more to Gross. Yea the officiating stunk, however his going from working the refs to turning into a stark raving maniac at crucial times is not helpful. I think he gets WAY to caught up with what the refs are doing and loses focus on what his team needs to be doing and loses it's focus as well. Also couldn't understand why Gross didn't go more zone as the fouls piled up against his bigs and Akron just feed Marshall underneath leaving  us essentially defenseless. 

Don't lose sight of the fact that there are times that a combination of Smith, Hall, Johnson or Guoard are on the floor and none of them are looking scoring first. Puts a ton on pressure on the DJ's of the world to take up the scoring slack. Sorry I'm just not buying that DJ cost us the game, I'm actually of the opinion he did yeoman's work to give us a chance to win it against some long odds.

I never remember Gary Trent not showing up....ever.

Seriously...the guy never shot 2-15 from the field. Granted his shots were mainly withing 10 feet, but still. The guy always showed up.

I do feel like we're the best of the 1-2 teams in the MAC.

And as far as DJ goes, I think his shooting load and selection is more of a symptom than a cause of offensive problems. Yes, he's always going to chuck a couple bad shots, but as perimeterpost pointed out, we can live with them when other things are going well.