Shox vs Braves official thread

[Cdizzle]

There is some serious development going on with this team right now. I'm excited to see if it will travel for the upcoming road game. That's the next step. If the recent developments can be taken on the road, scouting reports are going to be getting adjustments before too long. That will help a lot. Still a ways to go to make that happen though. But if it does, watch out.

[ShockerFever]

That was a butt ugly first half.

Marshall going absolutely crazy was AWESOME. It woke everybody up, including the crowd. If it wasn't for the 4 timeouts in 60 seconds, the noise would have really been deafening (LOVE the no sound meter anymore, somebody's listening).

FVV is SO much better when he looks for the pass first, and his shot second. 9 assists tonight? A lot of great finds, including the Shaq throwdown. Let's hope this is the tip of the iceberg for Morris. Ron's back-to-back 3's finally broke the Braves' back. Those were huge and pure. Vintage Ron right there. I think he's found his outside stroke.

So happy to get a blowout again.

Need to have the same mentality heading up to Chicago Sunday.

[SHOXAAC]

An outstanding evening all the way around.

1. I got to escort my Mom to half court prior to tip off to 10,000 plus rabid Shocker fans as she represented the student-athlete portion of the evening.
2. Pogo got some big screen time in the 2nd half, which means Kung Wu was just out of the picture.
3. The Shox played angry in the second half, giving up only 15 points.
4. Shaq made another big step in his Shocker journy.
5. Marshall almost made the Chip & Dales traveling team.
6. We are 3-0 in the MVC.

[Fozzy]

Great to get another W and a blowout win. The next couple weeks are going to be a bear with some tough road games and having this game as a lead-in to Loyalo should help. Not too much to mention that others haven't already, and things could be worse (flash back to the 90's), so just minor filler to up my post count:

Was a little worried at halftime that it was going to be a close game, but was good to see the Shox pull away. Maybe there was some cold air coming in from the tunnel that turned the shooting on that end cold.

Wouldn't mind seeing some of the guys drop the business like approach that HCGM mentioned on the radio show and display more emotion during a game. Fred encouraged the fans after the Shaq dunk and would be nice to see more of that type of emotion. I actually think the crowd feeds off the emotion of players and the business like approach carries through to the crowd at times. Also, some people may take the business like approach look as the players aren't into the game.

Anyone have stats on how many times we win big on our home court when HCGM sheds a piece of clothing? We did well when he went without a tie early in the season and played well after he got rid of his coat tonight. Shirt only like in Hawaii led to 1 close game and 1 loss, so I think we're good as long as he doesn't go tie-less and coat-less.

Great to see Shaq have a good game. Really interested though to see how he plays on the road now where he won't have thousands of fans cheering him on. If he continues to play and get better, even on the road, we may be able to let Darius to play the 4 and bring Evan off the bench to give Ron, Tekele, or Darius a rest.

Speaking of rest, was hoping Ron would have been pulled sooner just to give him more time off. We can't afford to have him play 35+ minutes a game and not have him tired and worn out by the end of the season. Same for the rest of the starters - we need to get to where we have a deep bench.

Thought the camera man was trying to leave the building at the end of the game the way they kept pulling back as time ticked down. Maybe WuShock was behind him and wouldn't let him leave early. Kind of surprised they didn't talk to HCGM after the game - I thought maybe he was under contract to be interviewed on tv after any game on Cox but maybe not.

[SHOXAAC]

Observations from Sec 120:

- Shaq Morris, welcome to the team. Keep it up. Now I see that potential everybody keeps talking about.
- Rashard Evans apparently got the memo. Grabbed some big rebounds.
- Junior got through his Freshman Stupids pretty darn quick, didn't he?
- Zach Brown is the sleeper agent. One of these games he's going to just go Sleepy Floyd on some poor team and they won't know what hit them.
- My only concern about Ron is that he's taking a lot of WWE-quality bumps, and we need him healthy.
- Lots of fast hands from everybody tonight. Even in the first half when we couldn't hit water falling out of a boat, we were playing really well, moving the ball, playing solid defense. You knew if they stuck to those fundamentals the score would come around, and it did.
- I hereby declare our free-throw shooting woes (provisionally) over.
- Bush looked a bit more confident out there. I'm still liking my earlier prediction that we'll have our frontcourt shored up by halfway through the conference sked. Big step that way tonight.
- Figured Rauno was still under the weather, and Ri'an was just not a good matchup size-wise. You know it's not effort for those two. These are problems we should be ecstatic to have.
- More consistent crowd, noise-wise, tonight I thought.
- Geno Ford is a class act who has Bradley playing good defense. They're on the rise. Also, I noticed their players helping ours up a few times. Classy guy, classy program. Of course, compared to ISUr, the Raiders look classy.
- Can't wait until next week to see Barrah in the house again.

Rashard Kelly got the memo as well.

[CBB_Fan]

As bad as the game looked in the first half, it wasn't particularly worrying. Sure we went on one hell of a cold streak, but Bradley managed to get just one point over despite shooting much better. The biggest problem we've had as a team is how we can just forgot how to score for entire halves. But while the outcome of this game wasn't really in doubt (even with a half-time deficit), we can't afford to shoot like that in big games. My other take-aways from the game:

Horrible, horrible reffing. Not because they made bad calls against us, but because they had no consistency at all. I can't tell you how many times I saw us foul a Bradley player and wonder where the foul was. And then next possession we'd be called for barely touching them. Add to that the flat out missed called (both ways) and you get a game with no rhythm or flow. A big reason we couldn't buy a basket is the Fred Van Vleet rule that has been imposed this season: If Fred goes to the hole, it is not a foul unless he is actually punched. A ton of misses both ways were simply fouls, and I stopped counting over-the-back violations and moving screens. Marshall was right to get angry, and the sad thing is the refs showed their own lack of confidence by immediately calling a make-up call.

Shaq played really well in the second half, and Marshall was confident enough to start him. I'd like to see Shaq get a starting spot in one of our games to see how he performs. The last couple of games he has really added another dimension to our team, and despite a few freshmen defensive blunders he has even managed to make some plays on the other end of the court. Not to knock Evan, but one reason Ron and Fred sometimes struggle is that Wessel's man often feels free to help. Shaq doesn't let his defender do that, and thus opens up a lot of options for our guards.

Will be very interesting to see how we start against Loyola. Hopefully we find "it" between now and then and put two halves together, but needless to say it may be tough.

[WuDrWu]

Posters here have been pretty critical of anything other than praise and adoration for the team and for the individual players. Is it OK to citique a performance where the Shox are trailing an rpi #291 team at half-time at home?

:reallyreallytinyviolin:

[wusphlash]

16 rebounds from Morris, Kelly and Brown. Thats good, right?

[HockeyShock]

Rashard Kelly got the memo as well.

I know! And with BOTH of them, nobody will even think of trying to match us inside!

I even screwed the name up twice! It's RASHAD Evans. :P

[Ricardo del Rio]

The Shocks covered. The spread was -19.

Lotsa housekeeping going on.

Arrow on #24 is on a positive slope.

[Cdizzle]

As bad as the game looked in the first half, it wasn't particularly worrying. Sure we went on one hell of a cold streak, but Bradley managed to get just one point over despite shooting much better. The biggest problem we've had as a team is how we can just forgot how to score for entire halves. But while the outcome of this game wasn't really in doubt (even with a half-time deficit), we can't afford to shoot like that in big games. My other take-aways from the game:

Horrible, horrible reffing. Not because they made bad calls against us, but because they had no consistency at all. I can't tell you how many times I saw us foul a Bradley player and wonder where the foul was. And then next possession we'd be called for barely touching them. Add to that the flat out missed called (both ways) and you get a game with no rhythm or flow. A big reason we couldn't buy a basket is the Fred Van Vleet rule that has been imposed this season: If Fred goes to the hole, it is not a foul unless he is actually punched. A ton of misses both ways were simply fouls, and I stopped counting over-the-back violations and moving screens. Marshall was right to get angry, and the sad thing is the refs showed their own lack of confidence by immediately calling a make-up call.

Shaq played really well in the second half, and Marshall was confident enough to start him. I'd like to see Shaq get a starting spot in one of our games to see how he performs. The last couple of games he has really added another dimension to our team, and despite a few freshmen defensive blunders he has even managed to make some plays on the other end of the court. Not to knock Evan, but one reason Ron and Fred sometimes struggle is that Wessel's man often feels free to help. Shaq doesn't let his defender do that, and thus opens up a lot of options for our guards.

Will be very interesting to see how we start against Loyola. Hopefully we find "it" between now and then and put two halves together, but needless to say it may be tough.

Thank you. I would like to see the ref apologists defend that game. I thought that generally WSU got a pretty if not very favorable whistle (with the exception of the now-apparent FVV rule), but that officiating was just horrid. 4 minutes into the 2nd half and not a player on the floor knew how to play the game within the rules those guys were calling. That makeup call was one of the most bush-league things I've seen in a long time.

[SHOXAAC]

I know! And with BOTH of them, nobody will even think of trying to match us inside!

I even screwed the name up twice! It's RASHAD Evans. :P

My season tix are in sec 124, but I sat with my Mom in 120, which is where the Oxford Grand Student-Athlete seats are. Great view from row 14. Where are your seats?

[1972Shocker]

No doubt Ron's two treys were big. I don't know if they loosened up Bradley's zone but shortly thereafter Tekele found a seam in the zone and drove to the basket for a score. Up until the time the Shocks had done a very poor job penetrating the zone either with the dribble or with passes. After Tekele made his drive the Shocks attack the interior of the zone from there on out with a vengeance and with a great deal of success.

I believe the teams both had 16 rebounds at the half so the Shocks outrebounded the Braves by 25-12 in the 2nd half. Much more like it.

The Braves couldn't make anything in the 2nd half and they weren't getting many 2nd chances either.

Clearly the Shocks are not quite hitting on all cylinders but it just seems like they could bust loose at anytime, especially if Shaq, Corey, Zach Brown and Rashard can continue to progress.

[WuDrWu]

I was not as down as others after the first half. Sure, it wasn't the best half for our guys but I thought we played hard and the D was good. Bradley made some really tough shots.

The first 6 minutes of the 2nd half were flipping priceless. That was Gregg in all his glory and it was EPIC.

Boy Shaq has a lot of upside. I also LOVED seeing Gregg support and congratulate him. If you don't think he knows what he's doing, you're just a little late to the party.

We dominated the paint. Anyone else surprised?

I really like Geno Ford and I hope he gets it turned around because he deserves some success and his teams play hard and with class. That being said while they have some decent pieces to work with, I like ISUr's young talent (as well as overall talent) a lot better.

13-2, 3-0. Ranked. Playing 4 freshmen serious minutes and counting on them A LOT. All 4 have serious upside. I LOVE Corey Henderson's game. He's quietly making huge strides.

Go Shox.

Almost forgot, the 2nd half effort, especially on defense, was incredible and unbeatable, at least in this conference.

[Shocker-maniac]

I'm just thankful that there were absolutely no reports of @WstateU: streaking at the game.