Tough after time out play call there by Drew, really don't understand that with that much time left

Stupid end of the half. 4 plus seconds, Dawson with the curl just shy of half court with a full head of steam and we throw a crazy pass to Alston. Give up a 3 off of TO. Stupid.

. Good first half for the Ramblers. Bamasille has 4, 3-pointers. Each was preceded by Loyola misfortune or giveaways. Twice Loyola had hands on the ball and twice right after turnovers. That's 12 gifted points. Nonetheless, very good half for the Ramblers. Keep the defensive intensity without the fouls and you'll be in good position lads.

Too many empty possessions. Love Phil, but he’s killing us tonight. Stop shooting 3s and make some buckets in the paint.

Guy who was 0-17 from deep on the year has hit three of them tonight. Including an and-1 just now. Bad foul by Phil, he is killing us tonight.

Looking like this one will be a loss. Bad, bad, bad 2nd half. Damn.

Falling apart in the last 7 minutes of the game. Have not defended the arc at all. VCU 9-14 from the 3. We were shooting 50% at half now down to 42% Difference is the 3 pointers. We only have 3.

Actually, I think they said Batsille missed his first 17. He’s got like 12 the last two games, including tonight.

3 pt shooting: LU 4-20 VCH 9-15. That is why we lost.

Another game where we didn't stop fighting. Love that. As we've said for some other games, last year's team would unravel and lose by 15+. Our awful 3-point shooting and awful 3-point defense did us in tonight. And we really need more from Phil on both ends of the floor. His FT shooting and fouling are just brutal. Know he's capable of so much more.

The possession that really hurts is near the end, when we cut it to 4 . Braden (uncharacteristically) missed his second FT. We got the board and a nice look from deep for Jayden. Missed it. Rubin grabbed a nice offensive board but rushed his put back a bit...missed a bunny. Huge chance to cut it to 1 or 2.

Props to Rubin for his first double-double with 10 rebounds and 11 points (to go with 4 massive blocks). And big props to Dame on going 6-6 from the free throw line (despite VCU's student section ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATING "super senior" chants at him....was that supposed to he an insult?). Breakfast club paying off.

Take the week to heal up. Some really physical battles lately. 5-2 is a great spot to be in. Couple winnable home games coming up. Don't let this loss linger.

FRUSTRATING! The Good, Bad, and the Ugly:

1. Ugly: 3 Pointers, both offensively and defensively. We had a bad day shooting the basketball overall, but three point 20% (4-20) was beyond Horrible. Defensively they shot 60% (9-15). Their post people were not hurting us and we over rotated a few times on defense and lost the guy Bamisille a couple of times. The 3 at the half played a role too.

2. Bad. Our offense really slowed in the second half. We had a 5 minute stretch where the wheels came off and we fell behind double digits. Phil had a horrendous day shooting the ball. VCU shot 82% from the FT (19-23). I had no problem with refs. Most of those FTs came when we were fouling. Watson 4-13, Phil 2-8, Dawson 4-12, Norris 0-5. You won’t win many games when 4 of you 5 starters shoot these numbers.

3. Good. This game was gonna be a big lift to win. We only had 9 TOs. We shot 76.5% (13-17) from the line. We got behind and we tried to mount a furious rally and had a chance at one point to cut it to 3 in last couple of minutes. THEY DID NOT QUIT! We out rebounded them by 5. Dolan second good game in a row. Miles was Miles. He had a double-double, 11 points (5-6 from the floor and 1-1 from the line) and 10 rebounds. Oh yeah and 3 blocks and disrupted a few more. Dame was solid, but got into foul trouble and that hurt us. Dame had 14 points and was 6-6 from the FT line. Thought Drew did a nice job tonight. He called time outs when we needed them.


Final thoughts: We lost our concentration and it hurt us as we fell too far behind. We looked a step slow in second half and looked a little tired as we left some shots short and overshot a few times. The week off should do us some good as we have been playing intense nail biters since the Richmond game. Good chance to rest up, film study next two opponents (St. Louis and Davidson) at the Joe. Let’s get back, pack the place, grab two wins. We have a chance to get to 7-2. If you would have told be that we would have been 5-2 at this point, I would have taken it.