Yeah, we had a ton of completely unforced turnovers. Highly uncharacteristic of this team. We also kept getting sucked under the rim on rebound attempts while they were launching from 25+ feet. Not sure why we thought rebounds would bounce straight up. They were clanging 10-15 feet out and we were out of position all night. We just didn’t play very smart last night and somehow got away with it.
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Now that I came down off the meth people were passing around on this board last night, I will say Coogs still have a shot without Sasser.
Team needs to play “culture” ball more consistently. The offense is what it is at this point. Rebound, communicate on defense, and take care of the ball and we should be in it.
We win this game if we play our brand at a high level.
And don’t let Auburn suck us into a track meet. Our depth has thinned considerably if Sasser can’t give us 35 minutes. We have to get back on defense and make them take tough shots. Slow things down on offense like we normally do, and like @pesik said, make Broome really uncomfortable all night. We can do it, but the difficulty level has gone up quite a bit. There is where culture needs to shine much more than it did last night.
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The NK game was a terribly ugly win, but nonetheless a win. Had they made a few more of those many 3’s we’d be on a flight back to Houston, and looking ahead to next year. Surely we won’t play so Terribly the rest of the tourney.
My second negative: Our path to the Final Four seems a little difficult as compared to other number one seeds. Case in point, Northern Kentucky was much better than their 16th seed indicated. Now we have to play Auburn in their own backyard, and finally, we if we survive we’ll have to likely play Texas, who probably should have been a #1 seed.
Hopefully, the basketball god will be with us!
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I should have probably noted this, but I’m not really worried about turnovers. We have 33 games worth of sample size to show we aren’t a high turnover team
NKU ran a zone and one we weren’t familiar with and haven’t seen all year, Tulane is the closest in conference and they don’t extend it full court like NKU… between experimental passes we don’t normally make just to beat their system, and trying to take normal passes that would work against a regular team that their zone defends there were a ton of turnover…
Auburn is regular man to man, I don’t see the high turnovers. I think we’ll go back to our norm
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Oh pes, I sure hope so.
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I hope we come out with energy like we did against cinci after ECU. I think we’ll be ok without Sasser as long as everyone else comes to play like Shead, Mark, Walker, Roberts
We also only turned them over 7 times which was maybe even more odd than us committing 17 turnovers. I watched Auburn and Iowa yesterday. If Auburn plays like that against us, we should get them to turn it over much more. The key to us winning tomorrow is to flip the script from yesterday and get double digit more shot attempts than Auburn by capitalizing on turnover and offensive rebounds. Efficiency has been our bread and butter all year and is going to be key whether Sasser can play or not.
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Don’t really know how odd that stat is without Sasser.
He’s a menace on defense.
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I heard the announcers call it a match-up zone. I don’t know the X’s and O’s, but it’s different than a traditional 2-3 or 3-2 zone and you don’t run into that type of defense a lot. Didn’t we run something like that with Penders?
Any idea what defense Auburn runs? Man?
No turnovers by Shead and UH wins!
But going to be a tough game to win without Sasser.
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Sasser being out or at about 75% would be a major problem, not because we would miss his offense; we would miss his defense. He is our best defensive player as well as offensive. He has had off offensive days and we didn’t miss it because other guys stepped up and his defense kept the other team’s best guard in check.
However, we have a way of bouncing back after a poor performance. This is where our culture needs to take over and get back to playing Coog basketball.
mostly man to man
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I figure any coach that scouted our NKU game will be coming out in a zone, right?
thats the beauty of the tourney, you have to stick with what you are good at. they arent going to try to replicate nkus defense in 1 day
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This is a game where Mark really needs to exploit his height advantage.
Obviously the staff will take advantage of the mis matches he can create……TM just needs to do it….something like we saw in the first half of the 2nd Memphis game.
Defense has to get turned up which I think we will….The fellas will know headed into the game that MS is out ……should help their mindset.
Needs to turn it in to an Uber physical street fight……win this one and Marcus will have a had a weeks worth of rest and treatment.
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So f’n what, that big rowdy crowd didn’t help NKU win did it?
Agree. This is how I would have approached Game 1, too. We have the dudes to win this game.
Refs letting them play, advantage UH.
Refs calling it tight, advantage Auburn.
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