Northern Iowa vs. WSU game thread

[Maggie]

I just watched my first live game in at least 7 years and this team has become a complete mystery to me. They seem to care, they are good kids by all accounts, they appear to play hard and yet.....something is missing. And the mistakes that are being made, especially on defense, are elementary - they are not mistakes juniors and seniors should be making. I can only conclude they are the result of mental lapses. I was so disappointed tonight.

If were in CGM's shoes I would be spitting bullets. I would be more frustrated now than I was during my first season at WSU.

[vancedave56]

UNI is so much better coached than WSU its not even funny. They were clearly the better team tonight. Emphasis on the word team. We have more individually talented and athletic players for the most part, but UNI is light years ahead of us in terms of basketball IQ. They had 6 turnovers. Six! And they knew exactly what they were going to do with every single offensive possession. It wasn't even like they just hit a bunch of guarded shots. Most of their jumpers were wide freaking open.

Having said that, the officiating on drives to the basket was absolutely horrendous. The refs had no clue what to do when UNI drove the basket.

Dead On.

Double Dead On

You guys are hilariouis - we can all out-coach anyone from the bleachers or in front of the tv. Some Shocker fans have the worst "melt-downs" of all the fans in country. Maybe that's passion, maybe not.

NIU did not know what they were doing every single possession. There were times they just "lucked" into a shot. The few possessions we played zone, they looked lost, but managed to hit a contested shot right at the end of the shot clock.

No, we didn't play a perfect game, far from it. As mentioned in an earlier post, turnovers and free throws were the main problems. NIU out-played us. Congrats to NIU, and lets regroup and get ready for the Sycs.

[vancedave56]

Any word on JT?

[shockerfanmas]

This team is so inconsistent it's funny. The only consistency with this team is their horrible defense. Does HCGM not have his guys practice defense? It looks like they need to spend about another hour each day in practice working on nothing but defense. I'm really starting to think that we lost the better coach between Turgeon and Marshall. I don't blame Turgeon for leaving. He saw the writing on the wall, knew the cupboard was going to be bare at WSU, and he left for a better opportunity. Nothing that anybody shouldn't have expected.

As I said in another post, I can easily see WSU losing to ISU on Saturday, and also losing at UNI, at MSU, and at ISU (blue). This could easily be a 5 or 6 loss season for WSU in the Valley, and could see them in 4th place by the time its over. There just isn't enough consistency in this team, and god forbid we stop any kind of penetration in the lane.

We've got to hope that JT is alright. If not, we might as well forget about it. EO is not ready to step in and take JT's place, and we can't rely on Stutz and Ellis to handle the load in the post. If JT is out for the season, then we might be lucky just to make the NIT. As it stands now, that is where we are most likely headed. I believe it's win it all in the Lou, or get ready for another NIT home game.

[forevershockerfan]

One thing about the Valley is the thrills and spills are far from over. The Shocks can beat Indiana State, but I will say this. The Trees have some good shooters and are on a roll and will come in here with the confidence that they can beat us. Tonight was a wake up call. Now we will see if our team can rise up against adversity and win a game Sat. that we all picked as a win before the Season started.

[shockerfanmas]

And the officiating was not that bad at all, we just don't know how to step in front of somebody and draw a charge. Hell, we don't know how to play good defense against penetration anyways.

[ShockTalk]

I hate underachieving.

As do I, although I don't know if this team is underachieving or were simply overrated.

We clearly miss Clevin's leadership at the point.

Not sure this team really thinks the prize is worth a max effort.

Overrated in this year's Valley. I don't think so. This team has depth, it has athleticism, and is a veteran team. Not just a normal veteran type team, but one that has a lot of DI experience in both its seniors and juniors, ones who've played a lot as freshmen or sophmores. I also believe this team has players who, on teams with less depth, would be averaging 12-15 points per game.

What do they not have? Well, for one, chemistry. Is it the coaching, lack of player leadership, a steady PG? Probably a little of a number of things.

Another thing is confidence. They have these bursts where they play great defense or rack up a lot of points, but their not consistant. Maybe more than confidence, it's a lack of swagger. I'm not sure how one instills this in a team. Maybe it's just something that has to be felt in the gut by players and the more playres that do fell it, the more of "IT" they have as a team.

You can have all the swagger you can dream about, but without fundamental defense skills, that swagger means nothing!

I understand what you mean, shockall. I guess what I was getting at is not an empty type of swagger, but one where a player/team has that inner drive to work and prepare to the point that each game, when they come on to that court, they're visibly confident. We're going to take you out of your game and make you play ours.

You are right about the fundamental defensive skills. I just don't know whether it's the coaching, the players not buying in, or they're just not capable?

[Snapshot9]

Miller was good his senior year, but don't forget about Matt Braeuer, a much underrated PG. Remember how fast Matt was.

Hannah was good, and provided some leadership, but mostly he just put the ball in the basket when our Offense started to stall. I think Ragland can provide that for us too, if he would just assert himself more. He took control tonight when 12 seconds was on the clock, and pumped that 3 ball in. I would like to see more aggressiveness out of him.

DWill continues to play better, and he does things on Offense that help us if he doesn't turn the ball over.

Kyles adds dimensions to our Offense, and good Defense sometimes.

I haven't been thrilled with Hatch's play lately. It may be time to start Ben Smith, and let Hatch come off the bench for a few games.

How tall is O'Rear, 6'6" isn't he, and we only had 5 Offensive rebounds tonight, 6.5 below our average. Has Marshall ever thought of playing Durley at the 4 and Stutz at the 5 at the same time? We could hurt a team that tried to double team then.

I agree though, Marshall got outcoached tonight.

[ShockRef]

And the officiating was not that bad at all, we just don't know how to step in front of somebody and draw a charge. Hell, we don't know how to play good defense against penetration anyways.

Officiating wasn't bad at all.

Thornley missed a couple, but he always does.

Durley actually got away with quite a lot and should have been called for plowing over Koch on his dunk.

The officials didn't have anything to do with not being able to stop dribble drive after dribble drive after dribble drive.

That is all. 8)

[shockerfanmas]

I think this has been one of the best officiated years in all of the Shocker games. The crews have been very good, have made the right calls the majority of the time. Except for that god awful crew against UConn, I have no beefs with any of the officials we've had. It's not their fault we don't know how to play defense.

[ShockerFever]

1.) Paul Jansen is a flipping douchebag. He is a horrible official. He had to be corrected once for sure on one of the most no-brainer out-of-bounds calls ever. He will screw WSU (or the home team) at all costs. He sucks at life. The officiating totally favored NIU at the end. Have these officials ever seen a moving screen before? NIU perfects the moving screen that isn't called to an art.

2.) Having said that, officiating didn't cost us the game. Wimpy defense and digging too big of a hole early in the second half cleaned us out.

3.) I thought we played decently for the most part. I thought UNI played the game of their lives. There is NO way in HELL they will ever shoot that ridiculous of a percentage again. They shot almost 60%. They'll be lucky to touch 45% the rest of the year. Seriously, they're one of the slowest, most anemic offensive teams in the Valley and that little biotch James went off on us. We didn't do too much to stop him, but he did make a lot of freakishly contested shots. They won't score more than 65 points the rest of the year. They just had to have the game of their lives against us. Figures.

4.) We switched to zone at some point and UNI struggled with it. It somewhat helped the dribble drive but we promptly switched back to man. I dunno why we don't play zone more in those situations. Maybe it's just a stubborn coach, but you have to adjust at some point when you have the same little skinny 6-foot stick killing you.

5.) This was not the type of game to get Doc to come back.

6.) At least I can go over to the MSU board and enjoy another meltdown.

[shockerfanmas]

It's quite possible that he was blocked out on the play. That's why there are 3 officials, to get the call right. He may not have had the best angle to actually see what happened. I did not see a replay that definitely showed that the ball hit off UNI last. The officating in no way favored UNI, just WSU does not know how to play good defense without fouling. If anything, WSU has gotten the benefit of the whistles so far this season. In fact this has been one of the better officiated seasons I've seen for Shocker basketball so far. We just lost to another good team, plain and simple. We got outcoached, outplayed, and outhustled. As for the moving screens, I sure didn't see any that weren't called. First of all there has to be contact for a screen to be illegal. If there is no contact, no foul. I'm sure a lot of the calls you wanted on moving screens would not have been legit calls, especially since nobody else seems to have brought the point up.

[ShockRef]

UNI is so much better coached than WSU its not even funny. They were clearly the better team tonight. Emphasis on the word team. We have more individually talented and athletic players for the most part, but UNI is light years ahead of us in terms of basketball IQ. They had 6 turnovers. Six! And they knew exactly what they were going to do with every single offensive possession. It wasn't even like they just hit a bunch of guarded shots. Most of their jumpers were wide freaking open.

Having said that, the officiating on drives to the basket was absolutely horrendous. The refs had no clue what to do when UNI drove the basket.

I wouldn't say UNI played better as a team. Just look at the number of assists for each basket. They played better one on one basketball and we couldn't stop that.

It would be nice if we had someone big inside who could swat away some of those shots when UNI drove it inside, or at least alter their shots.

Actually we do. We have EO. And before anyone says we'd lose something on the offensive end, just look at all the points Stutz put up, a big fat zero. I think EO could do at least that good, and maybe defend a little better, too.

Actually, I would like to see more EO vs GS as the season goes on.

GS has regressed to the point of reminding one of the Phil Mendelson/Darrin Dugger days.

He has turned into the veritable 7' frog. 8)

[ShockerFever]

It's quite possible that he was blocked out on the play. That's why there are 3 officials, to get the call right. He may not have had the best angle to actually see what happened. I did not see a replay that definitely showed that the ball hit off UNI last. The officating in no way favored UNI, just WSU does not know how to play good defense without fouling. If anything, WSU has gotten the benefit of the whistles so far this season. In fact this has been one of the better officiated seasons I've seen for Shocker basketball so far. We just lost to another good team, plain and simple. We got outcoached, outplayed, and outhustled. As for the moving screens, I sure didn't see any that weren't called. First of all there has to be contact for a screen to be illegal. If there is no contact, no foul. I'm sure a lot of the calls you wanted on moving screens would not have been legit calls, especially since nobody else seems to have brought the point up.

So since nobody else brought it up, it means my points are less valid?

I'm really sick of you showing up and going post crazy at times when we flop. You can write 12-page novels after every time we lose, but if we win, you're mysteriously absent.

The "defending the officiating til no end, at all costs, because I'm an armchair official watching in front of my tv screen" crowd is just as bad as the ref hater crowd (me tonight).

No one is EFFING debating that we got out-everything tonight. But these gods in stripes certainly aren't perfect like you make them out to f*cking be. I'm not EFFING suggesting the officiating is the blame for the loss. But to suggest that they never make retarded calls makes you.. RETARDED.

[shockerfanmas]

Yea I'm pretty sure that I was one of the first ones to bash the officials that did the UConn game, as they were beyond horrible. But other than that, as a fellow official myself, I've had no problems with officials in Shocker games since then. A few calls here and there, but we can't get them all right. Actually I post after wins and losses, so I really don't know what you're talking about. Then again, neither does anybody else on here most of the time.