That sucked.
- Thread starter FeralFelidae
- Start date
It was that type of game. I’m not as worried about that. It’s crunch time where fatigue is clearly becoming an issue due to a lack of depth.
When Ty went down, I thought the rest of the season would look like this. Ranking that on a scale of 10 in NU Sports Heartbreaks, that is at least a 9. NU WAS on its way.
But NU is going nowhere with a second starter on the bench. Got away with it in MD, but that was just good luck.
In addition to losing games, the injured starters can't practice to develop the new team w/o Ty.
Here's hoping NU can at least get healthy enough to compete.
But NU is going nowhere with a second starter on the bench. Got away with it in MD, but that was just good luck.
In addition to losing games, the injured starters can't practice to develop the new team w/o Ty.
Here's hoping NU can at least get healthy enough to compete.
While MSU lacked the talent at the 5 to take advantage of our weaknesses there they really exposed the weak help D with MN gone. Martinelli and Hunger were awful at helping to slow down or stop a driving MSU guard. Martinelli also got exposed with his on ball defense since MN wasn’t there to cover for him and discourage driving. MSU just happened to blow a lot of open shots.
It was pretty obvious at the start of the second half that Izzo wanted to attack the basket. 3's were not falling and Matt was not there. The 5 pt margin, which in yesterday's game felt like 10, evaporated.
But, realistically, with or without Matt, what do we have to complain on defense when we gave up 53 pts?
At the game it just felt very infuriating seeing all those open looks for MSU. They weren’t hitting the broad side of the barn but they were good looks. I could complain about blown lay ups and sloppiness on the boards. Those are fixable without Matt. I worry the defense is not.
We would have given up far fewer points without the 20 or so offensive rebounds we gave up.
If Big Matt played in that game, we’d have dominated MSU. Injuries suck!
1 point on our three 1-and-1 trips to the foul line late in the game. Make 4 or 5 and we probably win.
You are taking the logic that if you just introduce one variable in the game, everything else remains the same. Which might, or might not be true.
Imagine Matt is a fraction slower on some initial rotations and that leads to threes more open, like a fraction of a second more open, and they fall. Game unfolds with MSU better on offense. It's possible.
I am not advocating we are better defensively without Matt. That would be dumb. I am not defending we were elite on defense yesterday and there was not lack of inspiration involved by the Spartans.
But what I am saying is that, yesterday, we have zero to complain about the deliverable on defense. Can't really aspire to much better than 53.
They had so many open shots, both from 3 and around the rim, that any team on most nights would have made more shots. 53 points is a maybe 1-in-100 outlier, not what you would expect with the defense we played.
I know that missing the front end of our 1-and-1s during crunch time was killer. That's a bad "variable" no matter what.
It probably had something to do with being tired.
Agreed 100% on defense. Even if you give MSU a much larger 3 Pt %, it's still a good defensive performance. Where the game was lost was 1. pretty bad and sloppy offense for stretches and 2. an absurd offensive rebound situation that allowed MSU to rack up a pretty ridiculously large shot advantage. MSU had 9 more shot attempts and 10 more free throws. That's pretty brutal.
And yet, if NU hits a few more free throws, or if Langborg is his “normal” self, I think we’d have won.
We’ve been dealt a tough hand, for sure. I still think we can beat MN. We’re going to be there live to watch it happen.
We’ve been dealt a tough hand, for sure. I still think we can beat MN. We’re going to be there live to watch it happen.
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