Man. Toledo looked really good. 95 points. Ouch. Even without Preston that’s brutal.

I’m still drinking the green kool aid. With Preston out the results ain’t too big a surprise. When he’s back, we’ll be back to being fun to watch.

I keep trying to stay positive but I worry about our lack of swagger. Remember those Groce teams? Rico, TJ, DJ..heck, even Reg had an edge about them. I found myself wishing we had Spencer Littlefinger and his Game of Thrones hairdo. I wished we had D2 recruit JT Shumate or the Italian guy who looked like a daytime TV star. Where is our swag? Where is our grinders? We need to get it.

I think what you are describing are recruiting issues.

Hmmmm.... Swagger.... was Groce and THE quote of the last 30+ years of OU hoops (don’t flinch) swagger or toughness? Or somehow both? Not everyone with toughness has swagger and vice versa.... A lot of the current team seem tough. (While acknowledging our D needs some... ahem... work... ). As for swagger, maybe Brown seems the most outwardly swaggerific.....

Very disappointing game. I thought going in it would be a close contest. As bad as we played, misfiring on all cylinders, I wonder if it actually would have been close if Preston had played. The announcers tried to assure us that the team would be vastly improved upon his return, but I'm not so sure. I'm usually the eternal optimist in such matters, but this team has not played well, IMHO, since the Illinois game. Our wins since then have basically been against weak teams. We don't look like a contending team -- at all. Sears has played well in his new role, and Wilson has a good inside presence on offense, but seems to disappear on defense, as does most of the team. Roderick seems very inconsistent, as does BVP. McDay seems at times to have regressed from last year. In a word, we seem to completely lack chemistry, if not athleticism, compared to UT. What I'm hoping for (and here comes that optimism in me) is a team that suddenly jells and becomes a much more formidable team as a result. I remember one year back in the early 1960s when an OHIO team that was really struggling had one of those games where suddenly everything that Gentleman Jim had taught them finally coalesced in all of their brains simultaneously and the team "jelled" as the newspapers put it, and they were remarkably better from that point forward in the season. Such a "jellying" can't come soon enough for me. Go OHIO!

Post of the year? Might be post of the decade!

Wait, are we still allowed to say decade around here? Asking for a friend...


P.S.

Our defense is still terrible.

1st of all we were embarrassed by Toledo.
We continue to struggle on the defensive part of the game. We appear to be a 1/2 step slow. It really doesn't matter how well we shoot the ball if we can't get stops. I always heard that a good defense leads to a good offense.
I think Sears did a better job in relief of JP then I expected and his production has been equivalent.
The lack of intensity in our approach needs to be changed if we want to have a great season. I believe we have the talent to improve. The coaching staff needs to rally the troops to believe that increasing the intensity for each game will reap benefits.




GO BOBCATS

What we have seen in the last few games is more a psychological (head case)situation, rather than an x's and o's debacle. I am confident Coach Boals and his staff will figure it out. There may be some serious line-up changes and some bruised egos, but something has got to give with our defense and tenacity (or lack thereof) regarding what we have seen since the Illinois game.

We are dealing with young men in their late teens and early 20s. I remember in my high school coaching days, reflecting with other coaches once the season ended about the psychological make-up of our teams, the highs and the lows. This is where the rubber meets the road in the coaching profession. Most coaches can draw up a decent game plan and make in game strategy changes, the great ones can motivate, bench and tinker with lineups that result in dramatic turnarounds. I have faith Coach Boals and his staff are up to the task.

Simply put, they're just not very good at stopping dribble penetration, which leads to help side retreats, which leads to wide open kick outs on threes...hence the seemingly endless barrage of excellent shooting against them.

There's no way in hell Shumate should have gotten so many dunks. I saw no fire or want to stop him after the 3rd or 4th time. Most of them were uncontested because the rotation on D was so poor.

All of this added to us not being a particularly great outside shooting team, and we will struggle. JP being back will help for sure, but they need to get better as a unit.

The amount of wide open dunks/layups and wide open looks behind the arc was nauseating. Very concerning.

I'll be positive though...I thought Miles Brown looked pretty good. And...yeah that is all I've got.

+1. And childish.

THIS ^^^