If our 3's aren't falling, we aren't going to beat many good teams. And as pointed out, everyone is ice cold from deep except Braden and Lucas. That needs to change.

Spot on, you can’t expect to keep up with an offense as good as MSU’s when you shoot 9/34 from deep.

Didnt get to see the game...so help me out....where the 34 3 point attempts....cuz we were behind? a sign of good ball movement...or were a lot of them bad shots? or cuz we couldnt get anything inside ?
Also there were a lot of comments about MSU being in our face....do you think we got intimidated at all ?
Thanks

Definitely agree issues run deeper than just line ups. We are mostly getting the right players out there outside of an injured Clemons (which appears be on the upswing and getting healthy) and Welch (who should see more minutes in my amateur opinion). Hutson is still an important part of the team, just don’t think he should be getting major minutes outside of bench role and quick energy.

Team needs to take a step back and look at strategy, clearly Coach V is pushing for a lot of 3 attempts which is great when we hit but for several games in a row now we are cold and it’s hurt the offense. Also when we are close to or in the bonus we don’t drive as much and still just shoot threes. It’s maddening because we are actually decent at freebies this year and when you’re at the bonus we should almost be driving every look and only shoot 3s if wide open. I’m not a pro and Coach V knows what he’s doing but you’d think that would be an easy tweak to generate some offense.

Hoping the boys come out next game and make a statement, we need a big win to rebound and gain confidence back.

Agreed, they need to have a backup plan when 3 point shots are not falling, I also think that’s it’s strange that it was rumored the refs had told the team that the game would be called tight. After knowing that information, why would we settle for 34 three point attempts? I’d much rather change the game plan to drive the ball in hopes of getting fouled. Outside of Hutson and Knight, everyone on the team is shooting above 70% at the line. I think Kennedy and Lucas are two guys that you can trust to drive the ball when you need points and 3pt shots aren’t falling.

I’m not a basketball expert or coach, but I hope Drew figures something out.

A lot of the attempts looked to me like good looks. We were moving the ball pretty well early on, IMHO, with a lot of pretty open looks. We just couldn’t hit the ocean from the beach.

We only had 6 turnovers for the game, and at least a couple of those were just balls we flat out dropped dribbling down a wide open lane without being touched. Just one of those days.

Honestly - not the worst loss, similar to the Drake loss last year it could help the leagues NET and give us a Q1 opportunity when we play there.

Honestly this stretch is pretty similar to our last 4 games of the regular season last year where we went 4-19, 10-24, 5-27, and 3-18 from three down the stretch and played in 4 straight really tight games. Teams are gonna hit lulls and we were hitting threes at an alarming rate to start the year (including games with 20 and 17 makes). Schweiger has been a 37% shooter the last two seasons so he was due for some regression to the mean. As a team at this point I wouldn't be shocked if we have maybe 1-2 more rough games from deep before it evens out. Honestly I thought we got really good looks and moved the ball fairly well- just couldn't make them. I'd be curious to see how much Mosley scored with Williamson on him - I don't really recall him getting more than one basket.

Losing sucks, but I'd rather have this now, than peak too early.

The sky is not falling-- at least not yet.

Here are a couple of thoughts having attended the game and not having the benefit of replays or hearing experts' analysis:
• Master of the obvious here: 3-pt shooting was bad, really bad, again. We did not get a lot of inside-out looks opening up shots beyond the arc, especially the first 30 minutes of the game. I'd like to see us be more assertive, drive to the hoop, get some layups and kick-outs to the arc, like we were doing the last 10 minutes of the game.
• That being said, Missouri State didn't necessarily force us into difficult 3-pt attempts. Hall, Schweiger, Kennedy and Hutson all seemed to rush 3s early in possessions instead of getting shots off the flow. I only recall them hitting a combined two or three and missing quite a few.
• Lucas and Aher being in early foul trouble really hurt us (just like against Oregon State last year). Mosley got his rhythm and kept it going.
• When we doubled Mosley hard off the ball screens, it pushed Missouri State away from the basket and forced them to go deep in the shot clock, scramble a little, as well as making Mosley give up the ball. We seemed to go away from that when Uguak and Williamson got in foul trouble.
• Donovan Clay hit some big shots. He's a great no.2/no.3 option if you don't make him work for it. Just make him work for it and he will only get 8-9 points, not double figures.
• Fouls. We gave Missouri State too many cheap fouls. Being at the game and highly biased toward the Ramblers, I'd say a lot of those were soft fouls and we seemed to pick up a lot of them which helped Missouri State get to the line often.

If we increase our 3-pt production by 2 per half, which would get our percentage up the mid to high 30s, reduce the soft fouls flipping the FT script, and keep Mosley to around his average, we can handle the Bears. It wasn't like Auburn where their pressure defense was scary; we were pretty poor offensively for about 20-25 of the 40 minutes.

My bigger concern is that we've seen a pattern over the last three seasons where we go into long stretches where we struggle to get baskets. I think we went something like 12 minutes in the second half with only two field goals. We've seen this happen many times since the year after the Final Four run. I wonder if it has something to do with our offense?

I agree it’s one loss. No need to overhaul everything. But there’s a major difference from Drew’s team this year and Porter’s teams of the past - and that is they can get kicked in the mouth go down by 12-20 points and then then it on and go on 16-4 runs. We were always food for 2 to 3 beatdowns a year in the Moser era.

What’s so interesting about it over a 5 game stretch is they make these runs with no Hutson and sparing Hall. Whether there is something to that - I don’t know, but I’d like to see them try it to see if we can build a lead early.

Hutson (and Hall) are valuable members of this team, and they deserve minutes. I’m just wondering if Hutson’s minutes (even kept the same) would be more valuable off the bench as opposed to starting in the first 5 minutes - similar to when Tate got moved to minutes off the bench last year.

I think you nailed it, honestly. During the game, it felt like we were too easy to defend. It's not that we took contested shots, but they didn't feel like high percentage options. On the flip side, we made it way too easy for Mosley to get into the lane.



I lean toward this being the nature of conference play and teams knowing each other so well. It was pretty extreme on Saturday though.

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