Evansville game thread

[proshox]

Exactly. Fred's C game is better than most ballers' A game. Just incredible.

Items his stat line failed to capture include:

Giving up way more than 16 points. He was invisible for many portions of the game.

The numerous times he drove and passed a hospital ball to a big that was not ready or capable of turning into Inspector Gadget to make a play. He was bailing himself out while making a teammate look bad.

His usage rate and constant pounding of the ball kill anything a neutral observer would call offense. I thought he had the same problem early his sophomore year, but had it completely fixed by MVC play.

With all of that stated he passed for the three biggest plays. The EW three, the AG roll to the basket, and the ZB three. Hopefully that sinks in.

[Stickboy46]

Pretty weak crowd tonite, Ron and Fred at different times looked frustrated trying to wave the crowd off their butts in a close game.

I can remember 2 or 3 times that the crowd was getting amped up and starting to stand up and get loud, only for a media timeout to be called. It completely killed that momentum

[Kung Wu]

Pretty weak crowd tonite, Ron and Fred at different times looked frustrated trying to wave the crowd off their butts in a close game.

Wow my section was good. Must have been spotty, but the energy was good where I was sitting.

[shockmonster]

Wow my section was good. Must have been spotty, but the energy was good where I was sitting.

William must be a weak fan. Fans good where I sat too. A couple hundred empty seats where students traditionally sit but otherwise a good atmosphere. Ads may not add to the atmosphere but atmosphere still good. Some need to a better job cheering and having fun and less time evaluating.

[pinstripers]

"Win and you keep the thought of invincibility. "............this is sofa important. Not many grasp this.

[Dan]

Fred's leg must still be hurting him. His best defense is face to face when he can use his hands to get steals, not chasing guys all over the court. He's not fast enough for that when 100% healthy let alone on a gimpy leg.

[William]

West side lower bowl was a morgue. It felt like a bunch of folks who expected a blowout, were not concerned when it did not come, and then got involved with 3:00 to go. WEAK

[jazztrane]

I was disappointed in the crowd on our end, too, for the last 3-4 minutes they stood for the defense then immediately sat down when WSU got the ball back, even if we had a stop. In a close game vying for first place can we not just stand the last few minutes?

Also coming out of those aforementioned timeouts, the crowd did not get back into it. We had great energy, timeout, then its dead until the guys do something to get the crowd back in. Could the cheerleaders start an occasional "de-fense" chant or something? Seems like all we do is just try to get loud at certain times. It does seem like that has changed in recent years-maybe we're more spoiled, or more rich folks down low, but the crowd is not what it used to be, at least consistently.

[pinstripers]

IMO, the most important thing the crowd can do is to be hellish loud AFTER Marty's timeout (that he called to quiet the crowd) is over.

[SHOCKvalue]

Probably already mentioned, but...

The "Saint Lewis" and "2:30 AM" group strikes again. In this particular case they get two out of four right, which is cool in the context of a 600-level engineering class graded on a curve; less so here.



Anyways, spellchecking and proofreading still not a thing in the WSU Athletic Department.

[Kel Varnsen]

Lots of news sites claiming how Evansville "pushed" us...yet our win probability during the game never dipped below 66.6% per KenPom.

[WuDrWu]

The officiating was good last night for the most part, as it always is when Higgy's in charge.


That being said, here's a problem. Officials managing the game. John passed on Giddy's 5th when Fred went to the cup near the end of the game.

He gave the ball to WSU instead of the foul. Fred jumped into Giddy...which he had the right to do because Giddy jumped into him (I initially thought he went straight up but he didn't and clearly fouled Fred).

Now, John manages the situation....no foul on a borderline 50/50 call, ball to WSU. Ooops...go to the monitor. Over rule the managing....Aces ball. You could tell John wasn't all that happy.

What was bad was the other end of the court on the very next possession. Brown erases DJ and gets the foul...SERIOUSLY? Bert blew that HUGE. Maybe there was a TOUCH of body, but it didn't affect the shot and Brown had all ball, maybe 2 feet out of DJ's hand.

Managing the game doesn't necessarily work in that case, because you can only check who it went out of bounds on in the last...2 minutes is it? I'm not sure. But I think you have to officiate differently now in those last couple of minutes. Don't pass on a call if you think you can make it right with the OOB call.

[WuDrWu]

Also curious..... Perhaps @ShockRef: can answer...could you review the end of game play (ku vs OU) when Mason stepped out of bounds to see if he was the first to touch it? Is any part of that play reviewable?

[pinstripers]

I thought Jaylon Brown was the best player on the floor.

[SHOCKvalue]

And nothing like a good "find Wu" or musical chairs to get us going. I'm serious. There needs to be an uprising and protest about the programming. It's plain awful. I mean mix it up already. How bout a Rusty Eck game of checkers or something? I'm just really embarrassed for them.

This trend continues to get worse. Squeezing every dollar has impacted the atmosphere. Last night the crowd forced a EU time out in the first half. Should have been a moment for the band to keep the crowd rocking. Instead we get a lame promotion. Embarrassing.

I'd really be curious at what this looks like at other schools that value and emphasis their basketball program. I watched the last 1/3rd of the KU versus OU game (it was compelling... what can I say, I was interested in watching KU possibly lose), and in their timeouts they were blasting music through the sound system to keep the fans and the atmosphere jacked up. If the same game would have happened at Koch they'd quickly throw a cold, wet towel on the crowd in the form of a human dressed up like a coffee cup, or some guy shooting free throws from a recliner. It's asinine.

Last season the WSU MBB program brought in $1M more in revenue than they spent. Is this BS really necessary? There's a realistic chance the decision to kill off the crowd for ad money could be influencing the end result of games. It is certainly a debatable position worthy of discussion.