That was a microcosm of everything frustrating about this team, all in one short evening.  We got a taste of all of it, all in one night.  We saw:

*Our inability to put teams away when we have big leads.  Honestly thought this could be a laugher and I'd have to find something else to do vs. watch a blow out.
*How limited we are in the paint.  Our inability tonight to get rebounds; scrap; guard guys posting up on us; post up on them--just all around poor interior play.  Or as Groce must have said--being soft.  Reggie and Jon verus their entire squad.  Then when our jumpers our falling, how limited we become in finding other ways to score. 
*The up's & down's of Ivo's Junior season.  Tonight it almost felt things were too rough for him underneath, so he turned into a perimeter shooter.  Hit a couple, but we got plenty of jump shooters and not enough of what he should be for us and was for us last year.
*DJ amazing ability to bring us back by getting hot late.  Then the ability to totally force a shot that results in an airball at a crucial time.
*We're reminded how special it was to have A. Bassett (the hoops player) for the magic carpet ride.  With 2.2 seconds left you know he would've wanted that last shot.  Instead, we get our shorter player lobbing to the rim?  Great chance to get fouled, but do you trust Ivo to hit 2 free throws?  I would've like to have had Walter get something going to the basket, but I'm not sure he demanded the ball in that situation or that it was obvious to draw up a play for him in that situation?

Chalk that one up to frustration and let's get on with it hoping we got it out of our system. 

Last Edited: 2/8/2012 10:35:43 PM by Chicken George

“This one’s really simple. Thirty-six points in the paint to our 20, 20 offensive rebounds to our 19 defense rebounds. I don’t know what the final score was with the loose balls, but they won the loose balls. They were tougher. Bottom line. … It was the first time we have been that soft since Bowling Green.”

“(Pearson) certainly is one of the better players in the league,” Groce said. “He’s a tough cover. I was really impressed with him. He got nine offensive rebounds against our quote unquote tough guys. (Walter) Offutt and (Ricardo) Johnson are our tough guys, but he was tougher than them tonight.”

“I hope it’s a punch in the stomach. The last time we got beat this badly and again I want to emphaisze that’s not all us. We didn’t play well, but they have a lot to do with that. We just didn’t get it done in some of the hustle statistics. The last time we got dominated in the hustle statistics was at Bowling Green and we came back and played with desperation against Buffalo. … You’re hoping they respond the same way on Saturday.”

“The deep Cooper 3, we’d prefer he drive it obviously,” Groce said. “They defended the ball screen pretty well and shot clock, he took the shot. He had made a couple. In a perfect world, I’d rather him drive. The play at the end of the game, I haven’t watched the film yet. My kid (Baltic) is upset because he thinks he was fouled. I thought he was fouled. … Bottom line is you have to stay on your feet and catch the ball. … You can’t put the game in the hands of the official on a 50-50 call.”

“Their kids played with more of a sense of desperation than we did and that’s disappointing at this point in the season.”

“Other than Keely, who I thought did have a physical disposition tonight, I don’t think any of our other four or fives wanted anything to do with them. .. Ivo’s been a good player for us, but the game plan wasn’t for him to shoot five or six fadeaways on the baseline over a guy who is 6-4. By the time he’s a junior, he should have that figured out.”

“I thought our guys played really hard the last five or six minutes of the game. They could have cracked at that point. I guess that’s the one bright bright point in the game.”

Last Edited: 2/9/2012 7:34:55 AM by UpSan Bobcat

The way I see it, we have the same problems every game we lose:

-They're getting out rebounded/out hustled - "toughness" as coach said.
-DJ forces too much from the outside(last night it worked). 
-Ivo and/or Reggie are playing nearly as big as they are, or as big as they're capable of.  Are the problems there when we win too?  I'm sure they are. I just see them more when we're struggling.  

Last Edited: 2/9/2012 2:14:54 PM by bobcatsquared

Alright, since 1995, name 3 Ohio teams that have had better success.  I was a student in 95-96, so for me that's as far back as I can go.  I can think of a couple teams that might have been better than this one, but didn't produce the results. 

*The 98-99 team with Stoney, Adell, and Whitehead might beat this team, but they didn't have a good point guard, and they didn't defend nearly as well as this team does consistently.  They'd outrebound this team like UT did the other night though.  The next year was some of the same crew minus Whitehead but plus Brandon Hunter as a frosh.  To me they were not better. 

A few years later, we still have Brandon, then Esterkamp and Sonny Johnson.  Still, no guards that really got it done, which cost us because we had everything else. 

I might give you the '05 team because we had leaders on the team, and we had the sick talent of Jeremy Fears.  The next year we had the talent, but the wheels fell off when O'Shea & Co. couldn't keep the team together and Fears left.  Next year, again, Chatman leaves - no point guard...which becomes a recurring theme until Groce is hired. 

Groce is hired - year one is rough because we're basically 7-8 deep all year with, what, 9 scholarship players?  Groce & Co with Bassett leading the way get us through a hot run in February and March all the way to the last 32.  Because we had Bassett, that team was better.

So, I can with certainty, point out 2 past OU teams since '95 that might have been better than this year's team.  That's it.  One of them has a number of the current group of players on it.


Edit:  To add to this /\   The reason I disagree with you with a couple teams as exceptions is that we've never had good ball handling guards.  We had good teams in the late '90's that lost because we couldn't beat good teams (Kent, Miami, etc.) that had GOOD guards.
 

Last Edited: 2/9/2012 2:36:50 PM by OU_Country