ESPN says UH by 10
- Thread starter mcane
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They beat us by 30 last year and we’re in a bigger slump now than we were in then. 10 would be pretty amazing unless Horne and Griffin are shooting lights out.
Amen....Houston will win by 18,......I finally got up the courage to watch the Temple game......
We are playing as poorly as at any time in the Haith tenure....This is by far, the poorest of the
Haith teams, but is more individually talented than several of our worst.....It's chicago street
BB, with very little structure....Team after team is scoring lightly contested layups, and on the
other hand, open threes......
On offense, we have quit sharing the basketball!!!!
All of a sudden, Haywood is back to the Haywood of last year.....Very little contribution.....
Griffin was benched for most of the late game action, although two would tie....He is our very
best driver of the ball, to either score or to get an 'and one'.....Strange decision making from
the bench......Dalger has disappeared again, and despite unexpected contributions from
Draine and Idowu, we can't get it across the finish line...But on the other hand, what is the
breaking news? It really looks like a long season....Haith in a very open way, shows very little
confidence in his players....They look less drilled than their opponents in almost every game..
Our talent is better than our record, and the execution of the team......Wait a minute----Is
there a hint to the problem here??
I have never felt as flustered as a TU BB fan as I do now......We will finish in the botton three
in the conference, with little chance to improve that situation going forward.......
Is our AD totally asleep? Or, is he too job oriented to do anything about an obvious (and
very important) shortfall in our BB program.....He needs to get off his Butt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every year I go to pre season practices and am somewhat enthusiastic about the new players. But when they hit the bright lights, they are not prepared to play together and have no continuity of play. And the starting lineup changes 12 times in 13 games. If one player or two gets hot we win but we also have to have the other team miss a season high of wide open threes . Opponents have now made a total of 789 wide open threes from the corner during the Haith era. I will still be there cheering for us to beat Houston.
You have something to back up stats for wide open three pointers versus contested 3 pointers? Or is this just 3 pointers in general and you are venting that all of them are wide open, which they aren't? We get hands in faces on most of the threes taken. If its gonna go down, then its gonna go down no matter what we put in front of them. We also need to remember the players need to execute the plays as well. They are on the floor. If everything is going right then everyone praises the players and when it isnt going right, everyone blames the Coach. Most of our losses this year have been by slim margins. a few of these losses are due to the last 2 minutes of the game when Horne is throwing up a fadeaway 3-pointer, off-balanced with 12 seconds left on the shot clock. Then you have Griffin or Jackson getting a steal and then missing the layup. Then there is the many clear path layups that they bounce hard off the backboard.
The other issue is we allow ourselves to get in these deep holes that we have to climb out of. We get out of them close to the end of the game and then BAM we lose or we squeak out a win. To me this is our Achilles heel this year. If anyone besides Idowu and Draine could have done anything offensively other than foul, then not only would we have won on Wednesday, but we would also have dismantled Temple. We should be 3-0 in Conference play right now and we should have no more than 2 losses right now. Before the big break in games that I discussed in the "And 1" on Thursday due to COVID, we started to get some good flow. I just hope we get it back soon and take it into the Conference Tournament.
Last thing is that not all teams play each other the same way. That is how you have really good teams lose to a team they shouldnt lose to and then everyone else wipes the floor with. We have beat Houston at home and then tuned around a couple weeks later and get ran out of their gym by 50. I do not feel we will win today and if we lose I hope that we get back shooting that good percentage like we have been, even in our losses. Wednesday was just bad all the way around.
The wide open three number is obviously in jest. But you will have to admit we give up more wide open threes under Haith than any previous TU coach. Yes we are losing a lot of close games and those to the NCAA committee still count as losses. Good teams and good coaches win most of the close ones. We won a ton of very close games under Self by finishing at the end. You can say that was coaching or execution by correctly recruiting players who can finish. Whatever the reason it is not successful now.
I figured it was but ya never know. lol. I do not feel as I can "admit" that we give up more "wide-open" three's than other coaches in the past. The only thing I will say on that is teams are shooting a higher number of 3 pointers. Open or contested is not a statistic that is measured. I most definately cannot say how many open three pointers we allowed over 20 years ago (Bill Self Era 1997-2000) and if it is higher or lower than today percentage wise. You cant use cumulative due to the point I brought up stating that the teams shoot a higher number of threes.
Since you brought up Bill Self, lets use him. I can only go back as far as the 2002-2003 season. This would be his third season at Kansas. This is also the year we beat Kansas at the Reynolds Center. In the 2002-2003 season his Kansas team shot 454 three's for the season and made 155 of them for a 34.1 percent on the year. In the Tulsa game they 3-11 from three. Tulsa was 8-12 that game. In 2018-2019, right before the pandemic, the Kansas squad shot 702 three pointers and made 246 for 35 percent. Over the years teams are looking for more perimeter shooting to get those game changing shots. So it is really hard to feed the argument on our three point defense compared to over 20 years ago.
I didn't want to have to go here but here goes the dirty answer: Let's look at the current season:
1. We are 314th in the nation in three point FG defense... That will cost you wins.
2. We are 344th in the nation in Rebounds per game.....That will cost you most of your wins.
No team can keep that up and survive . We are down there with Cal-Poly and UIW.
1. We are 314th in the nation in three point FG defense... That will cost you wins.
2. We are 344th in the nation in Rebounds per game.....That will cost you most of your wins.
No team can keep that up and survive . We are down there with Cal-Poly and UIW.
I will agree that the stats do not look good. That one statistic is not the reason we lost these games. So its not that it will cost you it is that it can cost you. This discussion has went from one extreme to the other. IT all started with the talk of "Wide Open" 3 pointers to contested 3 pointers. now we are just talking percentages. What is costing us these games is inconsistent play by ALL members of this team. We have sloppy ball handling, especially in the last 2 minutes of the game. The shot selection in the last two minutes is absolutely mind boggling. These are not Haith problems per se. These are individual players making bad decisions.
I love Jeriah but he has absolutely irritated me the last few games with some of his shot selection. The games we lost except for 1 or 2 were lost in the last two minutes when we could have won those games. Airforce, Boise, LMU, SMU, Memphis and Temple we were within 5 points or had the lead in the last 2 minutes of the game. We had the opportunity to put it away and we choked. That is not on Haith that is on the players.
What you describe is a serious recruiting problem that Haith has. He chose these individual players. These are not players Wojcik recruited or even Danny Manning. They all belong to Haith. He is responsible for making them a team. The 344th in rebounding is a resounding recruiting and coaching failure. I don't blame these kids like you do. ** By the way don't let this discussion reflect on your excellent coverage of all the games and being the loyal supporter you are.
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Lol that’s why it’s a discussion. We all have different points of view. My thing is that we just get so focused on setting blame. I am not “blaming” the players. Both the players and the coaches have onus on how this game is played and the product on the court. The players are to blame just as much as the coaches. The players will even tell you that they have to execute on the court regardless of what the coach has said. Also I don’t take this personal lol so we good. I will continue with trying to provide my best each post.
The fact that nobody could tell if you were joking or serious is pretty damning
I can't tell you if the problem is 60% coach and 40% players or 40% coach and 60% players. But what I know is that you can't fix a player problem as long as you have a bad coach, but you can sure fix a coach problem while you still have bad players. So while we might not agree fully on who is responsible, I suspect we mostly agree on how this particular Gordian knot is to be solved.
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