Shockers vs Braves GAME Thread

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Finally, I think we need to be a little careful about comparing things to the Final Four year unless Ron sits the rest of the games this year and doesn't play again until March :) Having him available that year come March may have been the biggest reason for the Final Four run. Unless someone comes off the bench this year and turns a similar feat, then I'm not sure the comparison is valid. However, that someone may be sitting on the bench just waiting to break through - we'll see.

Excellent point. That Final Four team lost some bad games in February, but they lost those games without Ron in the lineup. This year's team, unfortunately, does not have a stud sitting on the bench waiting to be plugged into significant minutes all of a sudden.

[molly jabali]

Been away for a while dealing with some personal issues. Sounds like the Shox slept their way through this one. They got the win, so I guess in the grand scheme of things that's all that matters. Still would love to see this team play better, more consistent basketball, but I agree with some on here. I think the success of the last few years has some of these fans spoiled. Some expect the Shox to win every game by 30 points, and that's just not going to happen. I don't think there's any doubt the Valley as a whole is tougher this season. After all, we don't even have the best talent 1-12. That falls to Illinois State, just ask Coach G at Drake and he'll tell you that. Heh. I honestly feel the loss of Cle hurt this team more than people think, and gotta wonder if the incident with CF isn't sticking with this team more than we as fans hoped it would. I am one of those that are guilty of being down on this years team at times, but they sure give reasons to be at times. This is still a good team, and they will be playing meaningful basketball in March, hopefully well into March.

On a side note, for those that think all I do is defend the officials at all costs, boy have I got a story for you. Was out of town last night watching my cousin play ball (not gonna say where, but it was a D2 school in the MIAA). After the officiating I saw last night, I would take some of these MVC officials that we've all been complaining about. Here's a recap of how last night went. The officials called 6, count em, 6 double fouls. You know, the kind of foul where the officials can't decide who fouled first so they penalize both players. Keeping it going, I didn't keep track of fouls in the first half because the game had a good flow to it. I did count in the second half though. The first 5 minutes of the 2nd half, no fouls were called, for either team. The next 5 minutes, only 3 fouls were called. The last 10 minutes of the game, I'm not kidding you.. 26 fouls were called, 12 of them in the last 2 minutes. My cousin picked up her 5th foul as she grabbed onto the offensive post player to try and keep her balance AFTER just taking a direct elbow to the chops. The elbow was reviewed and the officials called it a basketball play?! What?? This resulted in the ejection of not only her head coach, but an assistant coach as well. The entire fanbase of both teams gave the coaches a standing ovation as they were escorted off the floor. The rest of the game was nothing but boos towards the officials. A fan was kicked out for throwing an empty bottle on the court that caught one of the officials in the back. I never, ever advocate throwing things on the court, but I couldn't help but laugh as it hit the official that fouled out my cousin. A little bit of justice there, even if not the right kind. I will follow up later as I had a discussion with a couple assignors who are involved with the MIAA. So, for those that say I can't do anything that defend officials, there ya go, try that on for size. How would you have liked to have had this crew working a Shocker game??

WOW!!!That's the kind of game that has 'epic' written all over it...for the wrong reasons!

[Dave Stalwart]

100% agree with you. It's just a really unfortunate situation Evan is thrown into. He's forced to play the 4 for a majority of his 400+ minutes on the season. We need Glass, Brown, Nurger, Kelly, anyone with natural size to get their production up. Honestly Glass seems like the biggest possibility of stepping up over the next 2 months if we want to keep playing that length of time.

This needs to get said more often. Instead of dogging on Evan or Coach for what is happening at our 4 position, we should be shifting our focus to the 4's we have who aren't stepping up yet. The reason Evan is starting at the 4 is not because he decided to play there instead of the 3 or 2. He is literally better at basketball than about 4 or 5 taller, higher rated and more athletic players. He is on the court because they aren't doing what it takes to beat him out, and good grief, his disadvantages in height and offense should make it easy. There is no doubt that he belongs at the 3 on this team. We've got to stop blaming Wessel for our lack of production at the 4. We've also got to stop blaming Marshall for putting Wessel in there ahead of these guys. Marshall is playing the guy who will do what he is expected to do to make team ball happen.

Wessel, with limited turnovers, good facilitation of the offense, rebounding, and MTXE toughness BUT weak shooting and little ability to score on bigger guys under the basket is STILL better than these other guys with their one or two strengths and boatload of weaknesses. The other guys can't even run the offense and they don't play with MTXE. Do you really want that instead of Wessel? Wessel and HCGM are in an unfortunate situation...not the other guys who won't come take the minutes. Let's place credit where it's due if you want to talk about who is really letting the team down and creating this funk. Yes, they are freshman and newcomers, and I get it. I'm just saying we've got to stop acting like Wessel is the problem.

[Cdizzle]

Meh.

1. Road games are hard.
2. Every team looks a lot better when the ball consistently goes through the hoop.

[molly jabali]

some great thoughts/points all around...but it really IS #firstworldhoopsproblems....imagine being Bradley for an extended time...

[shockerfanmas]

WOW!!!That's the kind of game that has 'epic' written all over it...for the wrong reasons!

It was by far the worst officiated game I've ever seen. The worst part about it was that the officials acted like they didn't even wanna be there, like they were too good to be working that game. You could just tell by their facial expressions and body language they thought they were hot stuff (won't say what I wanna say for risk of getting a lecture from Kai :)).

I admit we've had some bad officiating in the MVC, and Shocker games, but NEVER that bad.

[jocoshock]

Excellent point. That Final Four team lost some bad games in February, but they lost those games without Ron in the lineup. This year's team, unfortunately, does not have a stud sitting on the bench waiting to be plugged into significant minutes all of a sudden.

We have been playing all year without a true power forward or center, depending on how you look at Darius. Waiting for one to show up, so I think the similarities with 2013 exist... maybe they will show up as a committee..

[WSUwatcher]

In some ways -- a big lead on the road against a weak team followed by a LONG scoring drought (how often have we seen the Shocks go 12 1/2 minutes without a FG?) -- this resembled the game the Final Four team lost at SIU. This time, the Shocks managed to win instead. It may have been ugly and hard to listen to or watch, but they did win, and that counts for something. I'll take an ugly win over an artistic loss, as I suspect the team and coaches will as well. It also tells us something about the mentality and leadership of this team that they managed to pull it out on one of their worst nights all year.

[wusphlash]

This needs to get said more often. Instead of dogging on Evan or Coach for what is happening at our 4 position, we should be shifting our focus to the 4's we have who aren't stepping up yet. The reason Evan is starting at the 4 is not because he decided to play there instead of the 3 or 2. He is literally better at basketball than about 4 or 5 taller, higher rated and more athletic players. He is on the court because they aren't doing what it takes to beat him out, and good grief, his disadvantages in height and offense should make it easy. There is no doubt that he belongs at the 3 on this team. We've got to stop blaming Wessel for our lack of production at the 4. We've also got to stop blaming Marshall for putting Wessel in there ahead of these guys. Marshall is playing the guy who will do what he is expected to do to make team ball happen.

Wessel, with limited turnovers, good facilitation of the offense, rebounding, and MTXE toughness BUT weak shooting and little ability to score on bigger guys under the basket is STILL better than these other guys with their one or two strengths and boatload of weaknesses. The other guys can't even run the offense and they don't play with MTXE. Do you really want that instead of Wessel? Wessel and HCGM are in an unfortunate situation...not the other guys who won't come take the minutes. Let's place credit where it's due if you want to talk about who is really letting the team down and creating this funk. Yes, they are freshman and newcomers, and I get it. I'm just saying we've got to stop acting like Wessel is the problem.

We absolutely should not blame Evan. He is doing what he's asked to do to the best of his ability. Frankly, I don't see a real good answer to our 4 weakness. I think we will still be having this discussion come March. It is what it is and we'll have to find a way to work around it. Afterwards we'll speculate how far we might have gone if one of the newbies had produced as hoped.

[shocka khan]

I'm all for the way HCGM handled the game last night. It's time for our bench to step up and to coin a new shockernet phrase, separate the wheat from the chaff.

[pinstripers]

I don't understand all the bench comments. We played the bench when we had a lead. We played starters when we were losing the lead.

[WuDrWu]

Visiting with a former player this morning, he made an excellent point I'll share. He believes this team, especially the upperclassmen are wearing the pressure of the last few seasons of success. Not that they are paying attention to this board or things like it, but just a general "presence" that's felt by the kids to win at that highest of levels, and not just win, but to win by 20. Combined with the feeling of losing a game, and knowing "dang, now I can never be perfect this season" kind of thinking, is wearing on them. He doesn't think it won't or can't be fixed, just that it's kind of a phase that they'll have to get through, one way or the other. We also discussed the individual reaction (which I can see) to the guys that might not now be getting as much positive attention as before. For instance, Baker is used to getting mobbed with everyone and his mother wanting to pat him on the back and get a picture with him over the last couple of years, and now that has waned a bit....and they see that.

Just an observance from someone that has a perspective that most of us do not..


I'm not complaining or telling anyone how to feel or what to say about anything regarding WSU. Only may I ask you to think how you'd feel if someone looked at you being really good in whatever you do, exceeding revenue by 10-20% year over year, then have a year that's just a shade below last year, but still the 2nd or 3rd best year in the history of the company and ask you what's wrong and point out every nuance of mistakes that you're making, whether they are right or wrong.

And by the way, these guys are kids, at least to most of us.


Anyway, 20-3, 1st place in conference, ranked 16th.

Bring on the Bears!

GO SHOCKERS!

[Cdizzle]

For the record.... I still want my picture taken with Ron Baker.

[wusphlash]

For the record.... I still want my picture taken with Ron Baker.

I wanna be Ron Baker.

[im4wsu]

None of the new guys outside of Shaq are getting many attaboys.. They are all good on either offense or defense (mostly defense) but not both..

Last night, the attaboys were scarce all around..

Nobody gave attaboys, but Brown, Kelly and Morris were three of the five players that had +/- better than the team margin of victory.