No it is not time for a new coach, but it is time for Coach Moser to ditch his “6-4 & under” over-used line up. It cost us the Furman game & will do the same when we meet other big talented teams.

Why we lost to Furman:

LU had our 4 bigs (Krudwig, Agunanne, & Negron at center for 39 minutes & Uguak at power forward for 28 minutes & center for 1 minute).
Meaning a 3 guard line up for 28 minutes & a 4 guard line up for 12 minutes.

Furman played its 3 bigs (Rafferty, Mounce, & Gurley) for 87 minutes.
Meaning a 3 guard lineup for 33 minutes & a 2 guard lineup for 7 minutes.

Their 87 minutes of bigs on offense on 2 pointers shot 14-23 FGs
Our 68 minutes of bigs on offense on 2 pointers shot 4-14 FGs

Our failure to score on the inside & their successful inside offense & defense beat us.

Our coach’s abandoning the inside play cost us the game.

SO WHAT TO DO.

FIRST: Quit using 3 of our 10 scholarship players (Krudwig, Agunanne, & Negron) solely at center & only 1 big (Uguak - when he isn’t subbing for the other 3 at center) at power forward, sharing time with back up by guards at the power forward position.

SECOND: Move Negron to power forward (if he is, or ever will be, healthy).

Playing Skokna (who is neither strong offensively or defensively) 15 minutes & Negron only 3 minutes against Furman was not helpful either in development or winning.

I don’t mind if LU loses a few pre-conference games, if we are developing our newcomers & building up our team play in the process. Winning the MVC tournament (& getting the advantages in the tournament seeding by finishing 1st in conference play) is the way to a NCAA bid. Preparing for the MVC tournament is the name of the game.

I agree that we don’t have 5 fourth year starters who had at least 2 year of experience starting in Division 1, like last year, plus two freshmen 1st team Illinois All Staters like last year. But I do think we have 4 returning proven blue chip players (Custer, Krutwig, Townes, & Williamson), & with the help of Negron & our 5 promising newcomers, we have a lot of hope. And we have a proven power forward as an assistant coach, Drew Valentine, to help Uguak & Negron learn the position.

GO RAMBLERS!

I think one issue is that Porters system requires a lot of spacing, and Negron can’t stretch the floor.

Also, Bruno did not lose us that game. I thought he played very well and in the system

Counterpoint: Just an awful offensive night shooting for a young team.

-We held a solid Furman team to 38% from the field and somehow shot worse at 37%.
-We held Furman to 6-22 from 3 (27.3) and somehow were worse at 3-20 from 3 (15%). You go 4-20 and we win the game. A fair amount were open looks as well.
-15-25 from free throws; that can't happen, need to hit at a higher rate.
-They really mucked up the tempo of the game with 4 players with at least 4 fouls; their top 3 scorers all had 4. If we could have gotten one out we'd be in much better shape as only 5 players for them scored.
-Only 10 assists; ball movement is a work in progress. It flashed at times but the shots didn't fall
-With guards we actually out rebounded Furman; Williamson quietly had a double double
-I thought Skokna's defense was actually solid..?
-One thing both UMKC and Furman did was do everything they could to deny Krutwig the entry pass in the post. Rafferty was over extending and trying to tip every pass and more often than not affected the play in doing so. We had a lot of balls tipped the first two games. Have to find ways to get him the ball in the paint; I actually liked seeing Krutwig high post; not sure you can do that with Frank or Christian yet though
-Didn't see a lot of driving and kicking which i found interesting

The numbers will rise. Teams have games like this every year. I actually thought team defense was pretty solid overall.

Our problem is simple. We need to make more baskets. Our shooting percentages are awful.

And the solution is simple: Free Cooper!

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Bad shooting games happen. Last year they couldn’t hit shots at Milwaukee and lost also. Moser has always seemed to stick with his predetermined rotations in the non conference to figure out what he has, and then have it dialed in for the conference.
I don’t like that we lost this one, but reality is that we’re likely a one bid league so in the grand scheme it’s better to have this happen now.

Illinois State lost at Belmont as well; we're not alone in figuring it out...

In the grand scheme of things this was 1 bad game. If we had started off the year 15-0 and then dropped a game like this against Evansville (the team picked to finish last in the Valley), we would be saying it was "a bad game" or "an off night" but no one would be saying we should change this or that. It's a long season. I've already moved on from this game and am looking towards the next. If some of the issues we saw continue for a couple games past this one then, yes, I'll get a little worried, but 1 data point doesn't make a trend.

If we have to lose some, I’d definitely prefer they be early losses with Freshman trying to figure things out vs., for example, a year like Northern Iowa where they show big in the non conference and then lay an egg during conference season.

I went back and looked at all of our analysis and comments about our team in the Boise State game thread, and then looked at all of our analysis of the team in the Florida game thread from a week later. Made me feel a lot better about the Furman game.... turns out a lot can change in a week.