Rainy Day Bullet Points

 
-I think it's time we all had the proverbial "This isn't football" talk.  Losing to teams you should beat happens in basketball, even if you're in the top five.  Sometimes your opponent has a great day, and sometimes you play like crap.  Today, both things happened, and we were still within two with 3:00 left to play after being down 13 only 7:00 earlier.  This was a crappy one to lose, don't get me wrong, but it's not remotely like the disaster it would be for the football team to lose to a cupcake OOC team. 

-I think it's important to remember they shot 62% from three land.  I kept saying in the thread that they'd cool off, but they never did.  Yeah, you could blame some of that on our defense today, but 62% is spectacular unguarded, let alone in a game.  You hate to say they got lucky, but things like that don't happen very often.

-And now my Curley rant.  Pre-season tournaments are fun when you already have a decent schedule.  Pre-season tournaments are stupid when you're counting on the to bolster your RPI.  Two years in a row now, we've lost out on playing a team that could have helped our resume, win or lose, by losing early in a tournament.  This loss is very similiar to the URI loss in the Philly Classic last year.  Dropping that game hurt, but what hurt more was not being able to get the much-needed RPI boost from playing Villanova in the next round.  Like I said.  I don't have a problem with playing a pre-season tournament, but we shouldn't be making them the rock of our OOC schedules like this.  Look, we shouldn't lose a game like today's, but when it happens, it should stand alone as one bad loss.  Now, this is almost two bad losses in one because we were dumb enough to put ourselves in a position where we needed to win the game in order to play a good team, instead of just having one or two on the schedule that we could count on to give us a boost no matter what.  

Ultimately, it comes down to the players, but this is another example of the suits not puting those players in the best possible position to succeed, and I'm getting sick of it.

This dog in a rain jacket picture was inserted to break up the text.

-All that being said, if we get out of here 2-1, we should still be in pretty good shape.  It sucks to lose the RPI boost and chance to add a quality win or two, but losing those things aren't nearly as important as winning games, and having lost early, we should be able to do that against some weaker opposition in the loser's bracket.

-I didn't get to see most of the game, so I can't comment on anything but box stats, but it looks like DJ and Brooks played well again.  In the past, we've lost games because those two, or Jones, disappeared, and it looks like that wasn't the case today, which is good.  Jones, Brooks, and Jackson will be the keys this year, and it's nice to see that even in a loss, Jackson and Brooks remained consistent. 

-The free throw shooting didn't suck today.

-The guards still found ways to score, even on a day when Frazier, Babb, and Battle went a combined 11/43 (25%)from the field.  They scored 44 together, which is pretty good considering what the percentage suggests it should be.  They got to the line, and we still managed to put up a pretty solid point total on a total crap shooting day.

-To summarize, the sky isn't falling, and it's not time to say "we suck" just yet.  There were some positives we can take out of this one, like Jackson and Brooks, the free-throw shooting, and the guard play on a rough shooting day.  We obviously have a ways to go on defense, but no one said this ride was going to be easy.