I'm not saying the refs cost us the game, but there was quite a disparity in fouls: Loyola was 1 of 2 at the foul line while Fordham was 21 of 23.

On edit: In looking at the game play-by-play, I see that 14 of Fordham's foul shots were taken in the last 1:21 of the game when Loyola was in desperation catch-up mode, so the foul disparity isn't as bad as it looks at first blush.

As for the issue of fatigue being a factor, Fordham had two players playing the entire 40 minutes and one who played 38 minutes.

Another game, another rough collapse. In regards to the free throws, the refs were conservative with the whistle on both ends. It was mainly just Loyola fouling to extend the game that made the free throw discrepancy that huge.
Biggest thing was Fordham adjusted at halftime and Loyola had no answer. The Rams' guards starting driving to the rim and either dropping it off to the bigs or kicking out for open threes. This Fordham team is solid and probably a bit better than its record, but no reason Loyola should have lost this one after leading by 11 late in the first half.

Anyway, here's my recap with some quotes from Moser and Turk.
http://thecatchandshoot.com/fordham-blo ... nce-match/

after reading the quotes and looking at our collapses and foul trouble maybe it makes since to go to a zone. We have some tall lanky players. Maybe it is time to go to the zone.

Glad I had to miss this one.

Jesse quotes Porter: “With these new rules, with all the hand-checking, it’s going to expose to the athletes — and really expose the non-athletes. If you can’t defend laterally you’re going to get exposed. And that’s where we’re at right now — we can’t defend laterally. We can take teams out of their plays, like we did in the first half, and then teams just start to drive us, and we haven’t been able to stop it.”

Does he mean we have non-athletes or athletes who don't defend laterally? Or athletes in the first half but not in the second? More important, what do you do to improve?

BTW, I totally agree that the new rules favor the athletes and the blue-collars and that's why I like the change.

Scream,

Thanks for your deconstruction of Porter's post-game comment. You're right; it does nothing to explain the second half collapses.

I also think it is another not so subtle dig at the players. He seems to imply that his defensive system works ('We can take teams out of their plays") but that his system can only do so much to overcome his players' lack of athleticism when the opponent starts to attack the basket.

Porter, as GoRamblers said, is the problem. Grace is the bigger problem, but that's for another thread...

It's true that Moser basically dodged the second-half collapse question I asked him. He essentially gave the "how" but not the "why", which is really what I, and all of us, want to hear.
Didn't want to nag him too much about it since they had to catch a flight, but I have to say this loss in general was not as much about Loyola blowing it as just Fordham executing and using its size and home court advantage to get a win. Still, never good to blow a comfortable halftime lead, but I would not quite put it in the same league as NIU, Portland State, etc.

At this point, I'd be somewhat ok with the losses if the coach accepted responsibility. As it were, he pushes the blame on his players. Not his fault! He makes the right adjustments!

Porter's act is getting old...

_________________
Cigarboy sucks!

Well, folks, I must say that come FEBRUARY, I would love to write a retraction of what I am about to write--
--Terribly disappointed in this specific RAMBLER team--
--We cannot even win games scheduled to do just that--Our opponents are generally worse than us or were when we put this schedule out
--All things considered we should have but ONE loss this year to date--and that was MS ST--whom we almost beat at their place.
--Maybe our team is / was over-rated--I do not know, but just look at the schedule
--All these losses--the way we lost--time after time, I lay squarely at the Coaches feet--all of them but Moser is the leader--HE must shoulder the blame--I hear he is passing it off to others. That is deadly
--One of our posters --a great friend of mine--says Porter works so hard.....
--------Well, sad to say, if our team is truly good --well it is his fault--If his players are not so hot--well , still his fault--Where are better recruits ??

Mistakes ?? an example, by now Osborne should NOT be making them-after all this time.

As I say, I hope in February I will have TO EAT MY WORDS--AND I gladly will--BUT as of now Porter Moser is not cuttin' it

Gosh , after all LUC has done for me, I am truly upset for having to write this.

I agree 95% with your post, Brot. Almost all of the non-coaching explanations for this team's performance so far have pretty much been eliminated by facts, statistics and evidence.

For instance, if it's simply a matter of insufficient talent, how do we continue to build double-digit leads against teams in the first place, before we collapse like a house of cards? It is impossible to be continually talented enough in the first half to repeatedly build up a 10, 12, 15 point lead, and then have the talent completely disappear in the second half to the point where we're outscored by 20+ points. If we were always tied or ahead or behind by four or five points, that could be chalked up to energy/hard work/defensive intensity. But we repeatedly dominate teams in the first half almost to the point of their embarrassment-- as though we're an above-average BCS team-- and then we play like a bunch of somnambulent scrubs in the second half.

Probably the best example is NIU. We held them to 14 points in the first half. 14 points! UMass-- which was 8-0, #1 in the RPI, and ranked #22 in the country-- gave up twice that much in the first half at home against them in the game before they played us. Nebraska gave up 28 to them in the first half. In all likelihood, that will be the lowest first half point output they have all year.

Tulane scored only 19 points in the first half against us. Tulane's lowest point output of the year was 52 points against Texas State, in which they scored 28 points in the first half on a neutral court. Their largest point loss was at Wake Forest, where they scored 27 points in the first half. We led Tulane by 12 at the half, and began the second half on a 9-2 run to build up a 19 point lead with 17 minutes left to play. Yet somehow, it took 23 minutes of the game-- in which we built a lead as large as their entire first half point output-- for our vastly inferior talent to be exposed? That's just not plausible, even in a single game on the road. And it's completely out of the realm of possibility when a similar pattern has happened in six of our 12 games so far this season.

Fatigue? Injuries? We've blown large leads in games where that has been a plausible excuse, and games where it really hasn't.

Foul trouble? New officiating standards? We've won games and blown leads where that has been an issue, and where it hasn't.

Playing on the road? The NIU game was at home, and we lost to UC Davis after building up a 10-point lead on a neutral court. We had a 7-point lead with 3:28 left at home to UIC, and they cut it to two with :11 left and missed a three pointer to tie with :03 left.

Inexperience? An exceptionally young team? The only freshman we're playing considerable minutes this year is Milton Doyle, who is a transfer from Kansas with a great basketball IQ and the most talented and athletic player we've had at Loyola since Blake Schilb. And the same pattern happened last year-- particularly in the second half of the season, during conference play-- in many games where we had fifth-year senior Jordan Hicks, senior Ben Averkamp, and junior transfer Cully Payne available:

January 5, 2013 - 50-36 lead at home over YSU with 14:10 left turns into 68-66 loss. (Outscored 32-16 in final 14 minutes)
January 11, 2013 - 36-25 lead at home over Wright State with 17:42 left to play turns into 62-61 loss. (Outscored 37-25 in final 17 1/2 minutes)
January 20, 2013 - 38-24 lead at Chicago State with 17:45 left to play gets forced to overtime. (Outscored 33-19 through end of regulation)
February 4, 2013 - 53-40 lead at Wright State with 6:34 left turns into 62-58 loss. (Outscored 22-5 in final 6 1/2 minutes)

Which pretty much narrows the remaining possible excuses to: coaching ability, lack of player self-confidence, and lack of an on-court leader stepping up. It's only my opinion, but I think the coach can do things to overcome, prevent, or hasten the latter two issues. But if the coach doesn't pass muster on the former, the latter two issues are more or less moot. I don't see how blaming the players for lack of confidence, lack of floor leadership, or inability to guard laterally moves things forward.

I've seen something like this situation before. In the 2000-01 season, Loyola had a whole lot of talent, but was ABSOLUTELY ABYSMAL. The team went 7-21 (2-12 in conference) in spite of having David Bailey, Schin Kerr, Ryan Blankson, Jerrell Parker, Corey Minnifield, Silvie Turkovic, Louis Smith, Hubert Radke, Jon Freeman, and Jason Telford. They were winless on the road, and lost to some really God-awful teams, even at home. There were also some big blown leads, most notably a home loss at the buzzer to Wright State on 2/24/01, in which Wright State came back from a prohibitive lead.

The following year, after several players transferred out and one player sat through a year to transfer in, the coach deliberately backed off of a micromanagement coaching philosophy and let the players develop some floor leadership and trust in each other in hands-off scrimages. In 2001-02, Loyola went 17-13 overall (for its first winning record in 15 years), and 9-7 in conference (for its best conference record in 15 seasons). They broke a 25-game road losing streak midway through the non-con season, and went 3-6 on the road thereafter (including a very close loss at #7 Illinois), 5-7 away from home through the rest of the season.

Here's what I would recommend: Hold scrimmages in which players with floor leadership potential are named coaches of their scrimmage squads. They can choose to play in the games, or sit on the sidelines and make substitutions without interference from the coaching staff. If the player-coaches want, they can choose an assistant as their coaching assistant. At halftime, one squad is told to mimic the offense or defense of one of the teams that overcame a double-digit lead against us. In-depth coaching counseling, advice, and analysis can be given privately and personally after the scrimmage.

We've got 7 1/2 days until conference play begins. Unless something changes dramatically, we're headed for a 2 or 3 win conference season. The players need confidence, and having the autonomy to make educatated decisions will help them get there. Maybe the coaches will also learn things that the players wouldn't tell them outright.

I've gone on way too long, haven't I?