I'll take $100 on Ohio.  I just got my first Vegas line.  You were slightly off.  Caeser's and MGM both have the line set at Ohio - 5 1/2. 

We shot 73% from the line...

But that is probably from Kane's last free throw that he missed and got the rebound on himself over 4 of your players LOL



Line SHOULD have been set at that.

bye bye bobkittens

In general he should but unfortunately there just isn't enough offense right now to justify it. He plays tremendous defense and rebounds great for being undersized but unless teams just flat out don't guard him it's hard for him to get a shot off.

I see your point but I could careless. A win is a win and at this level that's what we're playing for. As long as we don't have a team full of complete thugs I'm just concerned with OHIO winning games plain and simple. The energy guys are great for practice when things can get mundane and repetitive but when push comes to shove in a game and you need a bucket what exactly are they going to do?

There certainly is but if you're looking to get defensive stops and crucial rebounds all the time from a 6-5 walk on then we're in more hurt than we all think.

Obviously a lousy performance all around today.  Glad I'm not still in Vegas as I thought for sure we'd win by more than 5.5 and thought by 10+ once I saw what Marshall had.  Throughout the entire game I thought we'd come back and win.  Hats off to Marshall as they weren't very good, but still won a game they probably shouldn't have. 

Here are the Top 8 Thoughts that ran through my mind during today's game:

1.  Yes, DeVaughn missed lots of easy shots today.  But he (and Cooper) was the best guy was the best player on the court today and is instrumental to us improving.  Are we trying to teach him a lesson and have him work through the season process, or are we messing with him?  Why don't we just start him as we always have?  He doesn't seem to be doing as well off the bench.  Play the guy 30+ minutes, keep feeding him the ball and let him work through his struggles.    25 minutes, coming off the bench is messing with him.  Maybe he hasn't earned the right to work through his struggles off the court (I don't know what's going on) but I'd like to see JG pat him on the butt and say we're riding your tail this year.  I feel Cooper has that kind of assurance/confidence, but don't feel Tommy & DW do.

2.  I thought the goal was to play fast paced?  It would help DJ, DW and Tommy for sure.  But we're a half court team right now who doesn't have a whole lot of half court scoring options.

3.  Why not play TJ Hall more?  We have very few individuals that can create their own shot and we need someone who can create.  Someone needs to fill the void of Coleman and AB.   While still raw, TJ looks to be assertive and one of the few guys with this kind of upside potential.  Didn't do much in his 15 minutes today I know, but give him double that and lets see if he develops.  He looked like he gained some confidence vs. Santa Clara and then he bounces back with a very limited role today.

4.  Similar to point #3, give Hall some of Asown's minutes.  Asown is a role player and always will be just that.  Very little upside  Do not put Asown and Keely on the court at the same time as you have two guaranteed guys who are stagnant on the offensive end of the floor. 

5.  Some have posted that Tommy is not having a good senior season so far.  I attribute that to five things:  a) he doesn't have AB to drive and give him open looks; b) the slower paced games give him fewer  open spot-up shots; c)  the lack of offensive threats on the rotation he plays with means everyone is playing him honest meaning few open looks; d) stagnant offensive with little movement means defenders are playing him straight up; e)  similar to DW, I think we're messing with his minutes/role. 

6.  We insert Ricardo on the offensive end late in the game?  He played 2 total minutes for the game and has been less than money shooting the rock.

7.  After the Santa Clara game I posted that we had good success with the following five on the court together:  Cooper, Kellog (or Freeman when healthy), Baltic, Washington, Hall.  We have no chemistry on the rotations we've run up to this point and these five seem to compliment one another well.  So what do we do the very next game?  I'm not sure these five played together much at all.  Start these five and play them for an extended period of time.

8.  The optimist in me says this was similar to what our team looked like most of last year and in the end we figured it all out.  We did it last year and we'll do it again this year, just have patience.  On the other hand, the pessimist in me says, other than one week last March, we've seen a whole lot of what we saw today.  Other than AB + Company getting hot for one week, is what we witnessed today really who we were 90% of last year and so far all of this year.  Was last March an aberration, or is it a sign to not panic and of what's yet to come?

I hear you, but when you're scoring .77 points per possession and allowing the opposition to get back 45% of its misses and showing little, if any, fight, how much do you have to lose?  Maybe he lights a fire.  I don't know.

I agree.  People like JG much more than TOS personally, so they are willing to give him a much greater benefit of the doubt.  But if you look at his entire tenure, aside from that one week in March, we have been exceedingly mediocre.  Right now we appear headed for a third straight year of underachievement in the regular season.  Groce talks a great game, but ultimately he has yet to back it up in the regular season with victories.  He still has much to prove when it comes to coaching acumen.

Whether a player is walk-on or 5-star recruit is not relevant.  Performance on the hardwood is.

Weren't intensity and effort a hallmark of kents during its years of great runs?  Would you say that much about us this year...espec in front court?  Someones needs to exert will and, most importantly, leadership.  Football seems to lack that.  Hoops too?!

Based on what I saw yesterday, the problem for Marshall has less to do with free throw shooting that it does with 3-4 players have obvious attitude problems.  They have a great looking team talent wise, but I know I'd have a hard time rooting for any Bobcat who acts like a couple players on that team.

I had two friends with me that are Marshall grads.  All the kids wanted to sit in the OZone so we were on the floor watching those guys.  They were not at all proud of the characters in lime green.  They are talented, but their attitudes are unbearable.  Shaq Johnson was talking to us when DJ nailed a 3 right behind him late in the game.  It was hilarious.

JG doesn't need to make excuses because he's got you to do that for him...

Talk all you want about intangibles like "fire in the belly" and "ripping some arse," but the bottom line is that JG has underperformed TOS in the most important category of all: winning games.  JG's winning percentage of .539 is significantly below TOS's of .558.  And while I agree that I am glad the post-game "life on the road" references have been retired under JG, ultimately his 7-21 road record isn't much of an improvement over TOS's.

You'll write that all off to a lack of talent, but I strongly disagree.  JG's first squad wasn't a world-beater, but it really should have been better than a 15-17, 7-9 in the MAC team.  He had the should-have-been MAC POTY in Tillman, along with a decent supporting cast with Allen, Coleman, Orr, Freeman, Washington, and KVK.  Given how weak the MAC was, that team should not have finished in last place in the East.  Last year was also plagued by underachievement, at least during the regular season.  You said during the season that we lacked talent, but I think that the Georgetown win evidenced the fact that we had enough talent to do better than 7-9 in the MAC. 

This year's squad is admittedly young, but by year three the blame for that falls solely on the shoulders of JG and his inability to keep a roster intact.  We've lost 5 players prior to graduation since the start of last season - which has to be among the highest numbers in the country for a program without a coaching change - 4 of whom were JG recuits.  And that doesn't count the lengthy list of suspension issues that have afflicted the program under his watch.  Even with all that, our performance this season has been far from inspiring, even if the overall record is only a game under where I predicted it would be.

Look, we all hope that last March's run was a sign of things to come under JG.  But if you take off the green-tinted glasses, and look at things objectively, I think it is pretty clear that JG's results have not matched the hype he receives, with the exception of riding the hot hand of Armon Bassett for a week last March.  But just like the magical March 2005 run didn't reflect TOS's true coaching abilities, based on the totality of what we've seen so far under JG I don't think that the March 2010 run is an accurate view of JG's abilities either.  JG has a lot of work to do on the coaching acumen side of things if he is ever going to reach the potential so many here believe he has.

Edit: The truly great coaches can win even if they are somewhat short handed on the talent front.  Maybe they won't win big, but they'll be better than .500 in a lousy conference, and will never get blown out by 57 points.  JG has yet to show an ability to win consistently, and the only time that he's won big has been when a player has gone on an out of this world hot streak (with any hope for extending that winning streak evaporating quickly in the first half against Tennessee once AB went back in the tank again).  You can talk all you want about JG sincerely wanting to win, but based on 2+ years of his team's performance on the court, his overall track record to date is that of a C-level coach.