Awful Crowd.
Awful Distribution of Minutes.
Awful 2nd half collapse.
Awful pride in the home floor.
Awful perimeter D in the 2nd half.
Awful officiating in the last 3 minutes and OT.

There's a lot of things I want to write at this moment, but I'm going to hold off b/c all it will do is deteriorate into calling people out by name.

The biggest issues in my mind are threefold:

1. We play with little or no emotion. Glad we got to watch the Manchurian Candidate out there again today. There is absolutely no fire on this team. I personally think that translates into the FT problem. There's no heat to do better than 61% from the stripe. Nobody cares. Ho-Hum.

2. Our frontcourt is the softest and least experienced I've seen on Richland in a long time...and it's not improving. Maybe we were spoiled the last few years (Leon, Rome, Improved KVK)...but people need to start working harder to get better - Coaches and Players. Thank god we've got frontcourt help on the way next year...oops, no we don't.

3. Shot Selection is atrocious. I would love to play on this team. I could launch a quick one from anywhere in the Convo, clank it,  and still get a nice, juicy bro hug from the Coaching Staff . I'm sorry, but it's time to start sitting asses on the bench when they crank these bad shots.  There is too much coddling going on down there. Asses need to be ripped up a little bit. The stat sheet doesn't tell lies.

Per Mrs. LOVE the team played about as well as the halftime show. I can't disagree with her there. We were slow, emotionless, and dropping batons left and right. Don't kid yourself, Robert Morris is not good. This is a team that just lost to lowly Morgan State the other night. We ARE AT LEAST 15 points better than RMU, but I guess we are who we thought they were.

Sayles plays 2 minutes? He must have been a disciplinary problem this week in practice. Ha. I'm guessing he would have been a better perimeter defensive option in the 2nd half then some of the nonsense I saw out there. There were elderly women in the stands who could have defended the perimeter with more energy.

Oh well. Ho hum. Aw shucks Roy Williams. Let's go mosey into MAC Play and see how that turns out. May just catch fire and win a few games in March again. Ho hum Twiddley Dee. 7-7 going into MAC Play. 5-5 on the home floor. Never thought I'd see the day where the Convo has turned into a house of horrors for the boys in Green and White. Not exactly playing a murderer's row at home either. Good teams? Maybe. Beatable teams in the Convo - Absolutely. Embarrassing and Sad.

By the way, we have lost some mind numbing games at home during the Groce regime:

RMU Today
Kansas by 57 11/26/10  (I know it wasn't at home, but I'm still smh)
IUPUI 12/12 (RPI 145 and falling fast)
Austin Peay 12/9/09
Ball State 1/31/10
BG 1/24/09
Buffalo 3/1/09

6 Egregious losses and 1 anhiliation on a neutral floor. 3 black marks already in '10-'11.

Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe 6 ungodly home losses in 3 years is ok and meets the standard of expectation of our fan base. The issue is that we are getting worse at defending the Convo as Groce progresses in his tenure. Even during our 15-17 campaaign during his first year - we were still 11-2 at home. We'll be lucky to hang with .500 at the rate we're going this year.

Whatever. Sun still comes up in the East tomorrow and Ol' Roy will go spit in the Ol' Mississippi. Aw shucks.

It totally sucked that we lost.  We had a tight lead in a close game for most of the 2nd half and it slipped away.  We got some opportunities to win it and came up short.  That is a shame.

However, I actually did enjoy myself today.  I saw two teams play a hard fought competitive basketball game.  I confess, I don't follow Robert Morris and didn't have any preconceptions about what we should do.  Karon Abraham was a beast and his shot form was beautiful.  We did not have an answer for him.  Still, there were stretches when Ohio played great D and I saw lots of hustle.  We started two freshman and two sophomores so clearly we're a young team, inexperienced despite last year's success.  How many freshmen come into D1 basketball playing great defense? 

I don't know; there's so much negativity on this board; it's part of why I post rarely.  I'm not trying to start anything with you, Love, but my bottomline is I did enjoy myself today and I wish more people who followed the Bobcats could find things to be positive about.  They were there today. 

I understand that, Love, I do.  I appreciate that your passion leads you to demand a lot from the team.  At the same time, you don't want that to blur your perception.  Case in point, I wouldn't harp on our shot selection.  Overall, we shot almost 40% from deep.  We got lots of good looks, took them, and hit a fair percentage.  DJ had a few ill-advised launches, true, and his shooting from all points was a major culprit.   You can hold his feet to the flames on that, but overall I think we did fine.  The biggest beef, which you mention, is that your star PG with a knack for getting to the line has to do better than 50% from the stripe. 

We essentially went 7 deep today, with Johnson getting 4 minutes and Sayles a cameo appearance with a whopping 2 minutes. I'm confused why Sayles has been put into the Witness Protection Program. I understand he doesn't bring the night after night ability to be a double-digit scorer, what I think he has proven to be though, is a more than adequate defensive performer and at least a calmning figure at the offensive end of the court, which was sorely needed at times today especially from the last 10 minutes of regulation which was about the time we had blown a 42-30 lead and we proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm concerned that once things start to unravel on us, that the ENTIRE operation appears to be clueless as to how to re-establish some semblence of control. It would be one thing if we were losing these Convo games to clearly superior talent, but we are now making a habit of losing Convo games to teams, that we SHOULD NOT be losing to. Again, back to Sayles I just haven't seen a good reason as to how the guy has gone from starter to he might as well have been gone from the program as he appears to have totally fallen from someone's good graces. I haven't seen any of the freshmen play that spectacular that would render Sayles as persona non needed at this point.

is every loss a cause for a meltdown diatribe? this is a young team with a young coach that got hot for one magical week 9 months ago. I'm not sure why their performance is a surpise. A team reflects its coach and frankly Groce looks emotionally sporatic at times. so does his team.

On the plus side, I like the starting line up we've seemed to settle into- Coop, Kellog, Hall, Baltic and Washington. I think the two freshmen give us our best bet to develop another AB type that can drive to the basket and/or shoot from 3. That kind of threat is critical to our offense with the lack of strength we have down low. They will still make freshmen mistakes but giving them minutes now will payoff in March.

I like having Freeman and Sayles as our veteran offense/defense specialists coming off the bench, I hope they see quality minutes each game.

The biggest surpise/question mark for me so far this season is Reggie Keely. He looks frustrated, lost and unsure of himself, and I have absolutely no idea why. 

What matters now is that we go out and destroy Miami next week. 

I do like the lineup we had today. I think it offers Groce the chance to rotate his three guards Cooper, Kellogg, and Freeman with his three bigs Washington, Baltic and Keely.  Hall/Freeman splitting the minutes at the 3 spot.  Solid 7 man rotation with some limited action for Sayles and Johnson who are . We aren't as deep a team as we hoped. Smith and Offutt likely slide into Washington and Freeman roles next year. Right now developing Kellogg, Hall, Baltic and Keely around Cooper would be are key objective.      

My question is at what point do you decide that Keely is not a 20-minute per game player? Would it be better to bump up Washington and Baltic's minutes and get more 4-time out of Sayles? He'll probably run into some numbers in MAC play but this isn't the same player we saw down the stretch last year. Of course, maybe the looks are harder this year with the absence of shot creators.

Fan of the Game hit the nail on the head here. I didn't want to negatively call out individuals, but since Ted did the dirty work - this is a valid question.

I'm not sure if anyone is watching film, but when the ball goes low to Keely on the entry - everything completely stops for a second while he tries to figure out what to do. In the aggregate we move the ball pretty well on the perimeter, but it just dies when it goes inside to him.

He's not skilled enough to play the post right now and he has no semblence of an outside game. My biggest beef yesterday was that he didn't get into the box score offensively until about his 27th minute on the floor. He played 30 minutes and while he did grab 9 boards, he was virtually listless on the offensive end.

Maybe he will develop into a guy like Tillman, but he's not there right now. I would much rather see Baltic, Washington, Sayles, and even Adedipe on the floor for a little more athletic look. I don't think we lose anything with them playing more minutes, and if anything - Baltic has more upside to develop.

Sayles playing 2 minutes yesterday is flat out unacceptable.

Couple other points from yesterday....

1. I caught a T-shirt. Snagged it from mid-air so one of the nudniks behind me couldn't have it. It's the little things.
2. Meant to mention the Billy Hahn lineage in the house yesterday.
3. One of the Bob Morris Assistants was wearing a velour sport coat. He looked exactly like Coach Yontos from Rudy. "I can do this Coach"

I thought the effort of the tire rollers was pathetic!!!!

No...but 5 losses at the Convo with this schedule is.  It's been a VERY disappointing year.  This shouldn't come as any surprise...in the dozen or so years I've been following the team, any time we have high expectations and a great team on paper, we fall flat on our faces.  Our best teams come in years we expect very little.  This and the Chicago Cubs have caused hair loss to kick in full force before the age of 30 for me.

I'm ok with the starting 5, with Tommy, Reggie, and Ricardo being our key 3 reserves. But for some reason, Ivo sits for long periods and barely plays 1/2 the game.

My take on our 'bigs'

I agree Reggie is too deliberate on offense but he is capable of scoring in deep, plus his strength, positioning,  and soft hands makes him our best rebounder.

Devo needs to get more consistent on offense. He's a human pogo stick and needs to forget bouncing the ball when he's backed in low, and go up for the flush. 

Ivo should see the ball more. He's the most active of the 'bigs'  and can go left or right to the hole, plus he's developing a nice fade away jumper.

Last game, our 'bigs' finally started finding shooters to dish off to, but they only only took a combined 12 shots in 45 minutes. The 3 of them often hold the ball too low when they first get it, and rarely make a quick up move to the basket, which is often when the defense is less packed in.

Bottom line-  2 of the 3 bigs need to be on the court at all times.

My view on the bigs: they're awful. Plain and simple. Do they have some talent? Sure, you don't play division I ball without having some talent. But you can count on one hand the amount of true post moves in a game. Everything else is based on fast break points and hoping the defense falls asleep for a second. There are way too many fallaway lay up attempts and not enough taking it strong to the hoop and maybe heaven forbid having a little contact while you finish. We are a long, long way from the days of Leon Williams, that's for damn sure.