Bruins Lose At Mac Court For The Last Time

.. die by the drago

Makes 3s early.. bricks 3s for 14 mins… doesn’t hustle back and gives armstead easy assts.. gets a couple of board off miss fts.. doesn’t overplay a shooter with time winding down on the clock.. makes a nice catch on a pass to lay one in.. with 10 seconds left he’s looking for a quick 2 , only to get fouled and miss the front end.. Drago giveth and Drago taketh away.

Most of the game when TH is not rebounding on defense and RN on offense then no one is rebounding. Drago did however show up to grab a couple key offensive rebounds I suppose. TH will be great when he figures out when to attack and when not to attack on offense.

Our attacking the zone blew chunks after about the 10 minute mark. We lacked aggression. On one hand we did a good job not wasting the dribble, on the other hand we were content to pass it around the perimeter. We need flashers to the free throw line constantly to break down the defense (not Keefe there, because you need a player that is a threat to make a basket) Sometimes we figured out how to get it to RN in there, but we need to figure that out earlier in a clock and he needs to learn to recognize when and if to work it back out. You can destroy the zone if you get it into capable hands in the paint and we failed miserably on way to many possessions by turning into the long ball shooting team.

It is mischaracterized that you shoot teams out of a zone.. our zone has been successful for exactly that reason.. teams settle for the long ball. You beat a zone by breaking it down on the interior getting everyone out of position that yields open shots from a variety of areas. That out of position consequently allows you to gain offensive rebounding possibilities. If you just settle for the long ball it is easy to defensive rebound.

(sorry reposting what I said right before game thread ended)

Kind of surprised that Lee was ‘only’ given 37 minutes tonight.

And I completely agree with the point on Lee. I don’t blame Rago for everything even though I direct so much of my frustration towards him. However, he has emerged as the face of this awful team that has taken the personality of of mentally weak, dumb, and defensively pathetic squad that often tries to live by the 3. What he has done and gotten away with has set the tone and personality for this team. It’s not good. Howland is responsible for it and on court Ragovic is the face of it. No way around it. I will expand on it more in the am.

Good writeup.

I watch in befuddlement at the closing of the first half when CBH inexplicible stuck with JK while the lead slowly slipped away. I don’t want to harp on JK, but with him in there instead of RN, there is absolutely no post threat. Thus, we jack up lots of 3s that lead to long rebounds and easy baskets. I kept waiting for CBH to sub RN in and put a stop to the run to preserve the lead, but he seemed content to try and wait out the clock for some strange reason. Oregon may have made a run even if RN was in, but at least our offense wouldn’t have stganated to a point that it wouldn’t be able to recover from like it did.

It almost seems this guy doesn’t get minutes because of the potential that he MIGHT suck

Some 3’s. more bricks, no D.
He was what he has has been all year. We didn’t lose tonight because of Rago.
Getting nothing from ML tonight was the difference in this game.
Getting what we get from Rago is the difference in this season.

Ok. I gotta go to sleep. Why did I stay up for this nonsense?

and we’re down by 3, why did Drago go in for 2? He gets a foul and he’s going to shoot a 1 and 1. How does that help us?? We’re down by 3!! I don’t get why we didn’t hold the ball for the last shot!!

Somebody please explain it to me b/c I just don’t get it…

tough night shooting for Lee, but I don’t think he was awful.. 6 assts, 6 rebs, 2 tos.. a couple dumb fouls for sure in the 1st half. Lee is a little out of position imo.. unfortunately he seems to be the most capable to play pg at this moment. It’s tough having maybe your best penetrator play the point on a team that has no idea how to rotate a guard back to balance the court. His effort was there he just can’t knock down or does not have the confidence yet to knock down the open shot. As much as I grimace when he takes a shot I did not feel like many were forced unless the shot clock was winding down. Earlier on the season this was not the case for Lee. On the other hand Drago makes a few and he loves to check his temperature.. again and again and again.

 I think Lee needs to keep shooting ones that are given to him or if coach feels like he can’t make those open shots with confidence one day he needs to make Lee an aggressor which means other players need to be aware of an attacking guard and rotate back so we don’t give up easy transition chances.

or however the line goes, since I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night and I’m somehow still awake….

I was being seriously distracted by the Oregon students.

I heard Tompkins apologize for what the students said and I wondered what the heck was said. Then later on they’re singing their silly song and I blatantly hear sh*t in the lyrics. Classy. I hear “Drago-brick” which was actually helping hit his ministreak of three’s in the first half, and amazingly they wisened up enough to stop that insanity.

Then I hear chants of USA, USA. Genius. Wow, he’s not from the USA? AMAZING.

Then I hear a voice distinctly telling Coach Howland to sit down. So apparently this student doesn’t pay attention and realize that he doesn’t sit down. Just because Ernie Kent is sitting in his corner waiting to be fired doesn’t mean that every coach should be that meek. Then there’s a shot at Coach Howland’s hairline.

On and on. I think Tompkins likened them to European Soccer fans, and it is so true. Obnoxious, annoying, but probably do not understand the game like the European Soccer fans.

I’m still bitter over what they did to Kevin Love 2 years ago, and apparently the student section will never learn.

This is why the cheer needs to be emphasized as “BEAT SC” and not “F SC” because I hate stooping to the level of other student sections.

I wasn’t in the gameday thread – does anyone know why Bobo wasn’t on the bench? Did he not travel with the team?

I thought we had decent outside-in game against the their 2-3 for however long that lasted (by ok, i mean better than anything i have seen out of this team all season) – and aggressive, albeit not perfect, doubling on the defensive end out of the zone for the 1st 15 minutes of the first half. The way I see it, we’re still ugly, and young, and raw – but there are incremental improvements. McCourt is not an easy place to go into and stay competitive, even against an underachieving, overdressing, last-game-vs-ucla-on-this-floor-playing squad such as this one. Our guys played with heart and intensity (again, relatively speaking) and even after dropping behind by 5-7 points, came back and pushed it OT. After that, they were as lost and befuddled as usual, and I agree CBH has a ways to go in his evolution as a coach under adversity.

I thought no one on this board expected to win this game …This is a rebuilding year – tonight was a rebuilding effort.

Not that they would make any difference.

1. Hamid should have played more than Lee, especially in the second half when the Ducks went to their match up zone. Hamid is better at 3 point shooting, setting up the offense and HUSTLE.

2. When our game deteriorated in the second half to just shooting threes we should have shot in 15 seconds instead of 30, especially when we were behind. We were not keeping up with Oregon in shots taken and actually have better outside shooters than Oregon IMO.

These may have been enough to swing the game in our favor, but that is speculative. Of course, we were helped by Oregon’s best player cramping up after he got four fouls. He never played any more after that allowing RN to be more of a force.

Like everyone, I am disappointed, but overall I think the team played well despite the loss. We had balanced scoring and a tough defense. We just don’t have a big man in the center to help RN and our guard play, frankly, is average at best. Remember what Coach used to say? The team with the best guards wins.

TH stepped up big time all around. If he never plays point maybe we should run more of our offense through him anyway. He could be great someday.

Tough loss on the road. If we had made a few buckets at the right time, we could have won.

I know, could of, would of , should of.

At least they played with pride.

GO BRUINS!

Oregon 71, UCLA 67.

Our team is not great, its ok. When we shot well, we went ahead by 12. When they adjusted with pressure, we wilted. When they got hot, they went ahead. Two bad teams, either one could have won. TH continues to shine. He’s going to be a great one. No way he lasts through his senior year. RN is overrated by Bruin fans. He is too small and gets shots blocked or misses in close. He’s a 4 not a 5. MR played horribly in spurts, turning the ball over and taking crappy shots, then hits key threes near the end to get us back in. ND and RN are not in ready position on defense. Play hard only in spurts. MAH played another good game, but didn’t hit from the outside. ML’s outside shooting is a joke. He was our leading scorer for the first half of the season. Still, we were in it throughout, the game was entertaining, and only lacked a Bruin victory at the end. Go Bruins.