I want to be positive, because I liked the effort and only nine turnovers is great. But...
We let them shoot 58%, while we shot a tick below 40%. Shot selection is a problem. We kept driving to the hoop, into traffic, against a team that's built to deny inside shooting. SLU is 40th in defending against two point shots, and (surprise!) we shot worse from two than we did from three in this game. We got away with it in the first half, because they had foul trouble.
SLU completely controlled the tempo in the 2nd half. Rebounding was bad-- outrebounded by 15 for the game, including the play where Okoro was surrounded by Ramblers, got the offensive rebound, and was fouled.
A lot of missed free throws kept us under 60 points again, which probably won't win many A10 games. We've scored under 60 points in 3 of our 6 A-10 games, and 64 points in one of the other three.
We were outscored by 13 in the second half. That's the fifth straight game where we've been outscored by double digits in the 2nd half, and we've been outscored in the second half by 12.3 points on average in A10 play.
Despite the improvement in turnovers, we dropped 11 more places in KenPom, into the 240s.
Need Marquise back, hope Dawson isn't out too long.
This team is still trying to find out where the bottom is.... so I'll end with a positive note. Last year, Duquesne had a similar season, starting 6-7 and winning their first conference game on the road before losing every game from there on out. 1-16 in conference, 6-24 overall, 280 in KenPom. This year, they're 13-6 overall, 3-3 in the A10, and 110 in KenPom. So it's possible to turn things around fast after a really bad year.
|