lv20gt
Helluva Engineer
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Get over your little brother syndrome. I'll take literally any win over an ACC team over beating UGA in basketball. It doesn't hold much meaning at all especially with the way the post season is determined.
Anyways to the actual game a couple of notes.
Neutral -
We were effectively down 4 scholarships today. We aren't using 1 as is, Usher isn't playing, Sjolund is redshirtting, and Jose was clearly not well and then didn't return after a certain point. I thought that the decision to redshirt Sjolund was a bit odd due to Usher sitting until after the first semester and we are starting at 12. That will be something to watch out for in the next couple of weeks.
Good - Devoe had a monster night and it certainly seems like he has improved the inconsistency problems he had last year. That is a good sign for us going forward even though it wasn't enough tonight.
Moses played well. 18-8 on 50+% shooting. A couple ill advised shots but he definitely stepped up. I've said before but while he does some dumb stuff he has always seemed to have the desire and willingness to try to make a play when the team needs it and nobody else seems to want to.
Team showed poise on the road to some degree. When UGA pushed the lead into double digits and Jose went out it would have been easy for the team to just pack it in. Instead the second half was a back and forth deal where the main difference most of the time was that UGA started up 8 at the half. While it didn't lead to a victory tonight, that type of thing is how you steal some games on the road, as we saw against NCSU.
Bad - Jose. We need him healthy in a bad way. Maybe later in the year we'll be able to absorb an injury to him better but right now we just can't.
Banks - Credit to him for being a blocking threat, but he was a noshow on offense tonight, with just 4 points to 6 turnovers and 0-4 from the line and only 4 rebounds. He has to do better than that.
Parham - There are games where getting 10 from Bubba is enough. Tonight wasn't one of those games. It seems to me that he looks like he's afraid of trying to force his own shot but he was brought in as a shooter. On a night where Jose can't go Bubba needs to be looking for his shot more.
Defense - Defense in the first half was okay. Not great but we can live with giving up 70. Second half defense was just bad. Need to get that fixed asap. The inability to get stops is what prevented us from making a comeback. Even before the late flurry at the end we had 42 points in the second half. That should have been enough to have a chance to win but we just didn't defend well.
FTs - This is what lost us the game plain and simple. If we shot what they did from teh FT line we get 5 more points and we lost by 4. Now obviously that isn't the entire story but the truth is if we hit our FTs they don't build such a comfortable lead and we could have really built some momentum in a comeback. It's very different coming back to tie or take the lead than simply cutting the lead to 6 and the difference is making the freethrows.
Ultimately, this loss sucks. Fortunately there is a lot of room for improvement with Jose getting healthy and the addition of Usher. But if we want to seriously improve we desperately need Bubba to find his place and look for his shot a bit more.
