Game 20 review

UH usually doesn’t run anything to get Sasser open for 3s.

This to me is inexcusable. When your team can’t score, how is your best player only going to get 11 shot attempts? Is it that difficult to run him through a few screens?

It’s on Sasser too, though. He simply can’t be that unaggressive late in a close game like that. Since absolutely nothing else was working for us offensively, he needs to be more “selfish” in those situations. It’s not like he was getting triple-teamed every time he touched the ball or anything.

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It feels like a home specific thing. Other than the Norfolk game we’ve started most home games completely flat

No Carlton or White in the middle is a real problem.

Against Alabama, and now Tulane.

Francis does not seem good enough to solve this weakness. Nor J. Walker. It may be a deadly problem in March.

And,of course, a permanent feature of Cougar Basketball. FT shooting.

We lost the 1983 National Title over this issue. 40 years later nothing has changed.

My High School Coach taught FT shooting. Stare at the rim, relax, use your legs, shoot just over the rim. Even our backups(me) could hit FT’s.

This is a teachable skill. In 40 years it does not get properly taught. We ran laps if we missed. Soon we quit missing.

Lack of Big Men and FT shooting woes will lead to disappointment.

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Every time I looked we had more rebounds, assists and shots taken. Fewer turnovers.

Shot poorly from everywhere.

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This might be a hot take but just for me personally I prefer to lose the flook game to a lesser team where everything had to go wrong just to lose by 1, then losing to a team like Memphis in our conference ngl. Kinda like what we did against ECU with our final four team. Just knowing what college basketball is. I would rather win at Memphis and lose v temple. Than beat temple and lose at Memphis. I would rather be confident that this team will show up when the stakes are high like in March and we are playing really good teams with a lot of talent, than feeling like we only beat down the lesser teams and lose to the teams with a pulse. Again that’s just my opinion

We played absolutely horrible. We shot so bad in every aspect of the game. I think this game will be a big learning experience and adjustments will be made offensively. But this game doesn’t change my perception of the team. I saw us against St Mary, Oregon, Bama, Virgina, Kent State, Oral Roberts, UCF (healthy). This team can beat anybody. We just have a lot of room we can grow!

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Yesterday was abysmal from the FT line, but on the year we are around 70%. That’s not terrible and would have be plenty to win that game yesterday. I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes they just don’t drop.

@Kmoney Is UCF still going to be without Dur and Johnson on Wednesday? If so, I have a hard time seeing how they can beat us.

Why we lost. Nailed it.

For context, Shaq was a career 52.7% free throw shooter. We were putting up literal hack-a-shaq numbers at the line.

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The only thing I’m wondering going forward is what is the calling card for this team in the tournament on offense. Hopefully we find out in the next month.

They are still Q1 as of now.

can we get them to call that foul on Sasser a shooting foul instead of a floor foul so he gets the 3 FTs? That was weird

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Even though the total fouls/free throws ended up looking okay in the box score, it felt like every little 50/50 call like this went against us. The BS Roberts “foul” at the end, calling this very obvious shooting foul on the floor, etc. That stuff adds up and didn’t help on a day where we already didn’t have much margin for error since we were playing so badly.

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Ok I’m not the only one who’s noticed that. Shead could score at will last year with that floater.

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Very good question. Any suggestions? It’s funny looking back at our final four team our offense was really just Deeky drive, Sasser and grimes Jack up 3s and if we miss go get the rebound Brison or Gorham

definitely seemed like they were a little easy on the whistle calling fouls on us, but im not going to go down the road of blaming that on us losing.

we had ample opportunity to come out ahead, and just didn’t.

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We should have been up 20 when they called that foul on Roberts so yeah, that loss is definitely squarely on us.

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Agree it was a tough afternoon offensively for the entire team.

My group was commenting early in the game (first 10 minutes) that UH looked flat, not their normal demeanour.

Sasser was a defensive beast this game. He is always outstanding defensively but I thought he had a phenomenal game on defense. So disruptive. Big reason the game was close.

Temple did a good job making the extra pass or two to get open looks, although they weren’t hitting with any consistency. Temple made some awesome passes inside for scores which we don’t normally see made. Wasn’t bad UH defense at all but excellent passing by Temple.

I’ve seen Sasser in several mock drafts going to the Rockets in late 1st round. I hope this happens. Would love to see him stay in Houston.

This game was an offensive anomaly, IMO.

UH shot poorly enough to lose. Defense was typical elite effort to keep it close, in spite of poor shooting. Officials made a lot of horrible calls but UH kept it close. Just couldn’t make an extra shot or two.

At least when it is tourney time, we’ll see much better officiating. But again, rarely are losses because of officiating. Always plenty of plays which could’ve/should’ve been made to make poor officiating a non issue.

Coach will use this loss effectively.

Also, the Lath kid looked huge standing in the huddles.

Looking forward to next home game!

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Seems like every time a starter fouls out we lose.
First it was Mark with Alabama.
And now it’s Roberts with Temple.
But the real reasons run deeper than just that.

The two biggest takes I got from watching the game. There were at least three times where Sharp was wide open and Shead driving did not look to give him the ball. No offball screens to get Sasser open or pretty much anybody open. Result a lot of standing around and ISO.

We beat Tulane by 20 in New Orleans

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