Let’s face it everyone.We are not a smart team or a smart coaching staff right now.

Coach or coaches- picking up a technical foul today.Cost us big time
Player- picking up a flagrant foul

Players: committing too many unnecessary fouls
missing crucial free throws again.

Lot of stupidity shown today.Hopefully they can turn things around,but I have my doubts.

I would generally agree about stupidity. I'm not sure I'd throw the coaching staff under the bus on the majority of our stupidity. Here are things I see that lose games for the Ramblers:
(1) Missing FTs .
(2) TO's
(3) A lot, a lot, a lot of missed layups or shots within 2 feet of the basket and I'm not talking about highly contested shots.
(4) Poor BB IQ at key moments in games like running the baseline on an inbounds pass when it was off a time out. The first thing one soul always do is ask the ref if they can move any time it's an inbounds pass. This is a best practice that takes the herculean effort of less than a sconed and speaking up loud enough for the refs to hear.
(5) Poor at converting on 3 v 2 fast breaks. Ramblers conversion rate on 3 v 2 is abysmal. There's one guy who struggles immensely on fast breaks even having missed 1 v 0 fast breaks once both last year and this year.
(6) Injuries to key players.
(7) Fumbling rebounds on the defensive end at inopportune times. I .e. Oakland with about 3 seconds left when the Ramblers had the rebound but mucked it up.
(8) The inability to make DeLoach comfortable offensively or DeLoach not being able to get comfortable in the flow of the offense. He's also been our most unlucky player this year. How many 50-50 calls go his way? Zero.
(9) Not attacking the opposing team's press aggressively. I learned from my limited, low-level playing days, that any time a team pressed, it was an opportunity to score a quick bucket if the press break was execute properly.

How many of these are really and truly on the coaching staff?

What I like about this team:
(1) They don't quit. Both Oakland and Murray State are examples of recent games where LU fought to the end.
(2) Good defense. Especially shot blocking.
(3) Entertaining
(4) Work ethic on the court.

BT, if you want to grow your BB IQ, it's generally difficult an only comes with experience at the level LU play.

I have pretty much been negative towards Drew and the decision to put him in the seat...but this team ain't bad. It was always going to be a "win and you're in" situation at the A-10 tournament, so this trip to Hawaii did nothing to change that.

Drew's system has evolved on offense, and he has the type of player he wants to play in it. The development of Rubin is solid, and I think this team might have a chance to pull an upset come March.

The whole point of joining the A10 was to increase our at-large chances. If wanted to rely on the conference tourney every year, we were better off sticking to the MVC.

I'm willing to cut a lot of slack due to the injuries, and aside from the weak scheduling they are largely the reason our at-large chances are now gone. But come on, you still gotta beat Oakland. You gotta beat Murray State. Probably should have beaten Charleston too. Definitely can't lose all three.

I wonder if Will Bailey leaving has hurt us, because the in-game coaching is once again very poor. I can't say there has been a game this year that I thought, "wow Drew had a great gameplan drawn up." It's always, we do the same stuff we always do, the other team has an experienced coach that throws curveballs at us, and it takes us too long to counter them. Or worse (and more the norm this year), we panic and do a bunch of stupid shit.

As painful as these games have been, I don't think it has been a coaching problem. Coach Valentine has prepared his team and lets the players play. I think we have been sloppy, but I think that is because of the injuries and the change in depth. We had chances to win all of the games we lost. We failed to execute. A missed free throw, a bad foul or a bad shot. I hope we learn and improve.

Trip was nothing short of a disaster. Two Q3 losses and a Q4 loss. Unmitigated disaster. Drew is now 2-9 in MTEs (1-2 Atlantis, 0-3 Myrtle, 1-1 Hall of Fame Classic, 0-3 Diamond Head). Brutal.

Hey, at least the aLoha shirts with the script L were cool.

Not to mention... zero A10 tournament wins, zero NCAAT wins, zero NIT wins...

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Some of these I agree are on the players, like 3 & 7. Some of them are on the players but indirect bank shot blame falls on the coaching staff for not adequately emphasizing fundamentals (FTs and TOs) that are the difference between winning and losing. Some of these are solely on the coaching staff. #9 definitely stands out for me. I cannot stand how Drew has seen us be full court pressed by almost every team we've played for the last 3 seasons and we still have no idea how to break it. How much longer can he stand on the sideline watching it go on before we figure out a game plan for it? At this point, it's becoming a major sign of coaching incompetence to either not have this addressed in practice or plain stupidity for seeing the problem and thinking we can whistle past the graveyard on it.

A-10 schedule about to start. Any news on the injured players?

I agree that we make the game hard on ourselves. The fouls 45 feet from the basket are unbelievable. The FT shooting is a major problem as are the turnovers. We were down 3 starters at the Diamond Head and could have won all three games if we did not turn the ball over and made a few more FTs. Most of the TOs were silly to boot.

Now, we did have several Freshman playing, Turner even got in, so did Reese (who I thought played well) so we had some odd lineups at times. You expect there to be some rough patches. The only major bright spot is we saw what a truly dominate player Miles can be when the leash is off.

Jayden could be back Saturday and that should help. I will be looking to see a few things if he plays. I want to see his conditioning level, if he is moving in a fluid manner, if he is getting lift on his jumper and going to the basket. One year when he came back, he was not the same player. Hopefully, he will recover better this time.