Still games left to play.

The Utah loss had nothing to do with lack of effort. We had a strong defensive game against a very efficient offense (shoots 50%). Their top gun was held to a horrible scoring night, and their team overall shot poorly. Our shooting stats were ALL actually better than theirs (39% vs 35% shooting, 31% vs 27% 3 point shooting, 75% vs 69% FT shooting).

Problem was they had more possessions than us, and that was due to turnovers and offensive rebounds.

The problem is lack of confidence.

Turnovers are often due to lack of confidence, as you're tentative and hesitate. You brick shots and FTs because of lack of confidence. You don't hit key shots or score because of lack of confidence, as players are afraid to take the shot, and as time winds down, someone is forced to take a bad shot. You lose your aggressiveness with lack of confidence.

So how do you fix? Success helps. Team leadership helps (ex: Solo vs Utah), but it's hard to break out of a slump as an individual player, and even harder when it's a collective team.

Certainly having a strong home court crowd helps confidence, and that's something we can do.

After the season we have months to id the guilty parties.

This is our team. We need to keep together.

Let's fill Haas and get the win

We are in the Tournament. For us it starts on Saturday at 3:30pm. We were fortunate enough to host a home game in our first round and play a CU team that is mortal on the road and is coming off the high of a big win over Stanford

Margin of error has been eliminated. We'll see how this team plays with their backs against the wall

All good points. Unfortunately the attendance at the Utah game was like an OCC game. Pretty pathetic.

Wed 8pm games are rough. i expect a much better crowd on a weekend for senior day

I'm expecting a loss, but unlike the Utah game, I think this is a classic, catch up game in the 2nd half. Whatever their confidence was last night, it's probably lower now.

Our MO is to flat line come tournament time so I don't know how effective that mentality would be for us. For a team like Utah, probably very effective. But who knows, without the pressure of expectation . . .

Civil Bear;842289902 said:

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All good points. Unfortunately the attendance at the Utah game was like an OCC game. Pretty pathetic.

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I plead guilty. After the last Wednesday night debacle, I decided I'd rather see my kids before bed than witness another half-$%^ed effort, which except for Solo is what we got.

HoopDreams;842289894 said:

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Still games left to play.

The Utah loss had nothing to do with lack of effort.

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I disagree. I don't think we played that hard except for Solo in the 2nd half. Whether it was being slow on help D or failing to box out or close out on a shooter, the effort was lacking.

HoopDreams;842289894 said:

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Still games left to play.

The Utah loss had nothing to do with lack of effort. We had a strong defensive game against a very efficient offense (shoots 50%). Their top gun was held to a horrible scoring night, and their team overall shot poorly. Our shooting stats were ALL actually better than theirs (39% vs 35% shooting, 31% vs 27% 3 point shooting, 75% vs 69% FT shooting).

Problem was they had more possessions than us, and that was due to turnovers and offensive rebounds.

The problem is lack of confidence.

Turnovers are often due to lack of confidence, as you're tentative and hesitate. You brick shots and FTs because of lack of confidence. You don't hit key shots or score because of lack of confidence, as players are afraid to take the shot, and as time winds down, someone is forced to take a bad shot. You lose your aggressiveness with lack of confidence.

So how do you fix? Success helps. Team leadership helps (ex: Solo vs Utah), but it's hard to break out of a slump as an individual player, and even harder when it's a collective team.

Certainly having a strong home court crowd helps confidence, and that's something we can do.

After the season we have months to id the guilty parties.

This is our team. We need to keep together.

Let's fill Haas and get the win

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Some of those offensive boards were given up through lack of effort. As for leadership, I don't think playing tough and hard for 10 minutes really qualifies.

The defense varied from very tough to letting guys drive down the middle for unopposed layups. And Utah shot a LOT of real bricks.

I agree about lack of confidence. There's way too much hesitation in pulling the trigger on open shots by some guys (maybe not enough in other cases). But some of it was bad execution, bad recognition of situations and lack of intensity.

And Utah got a few totally lucky breaks as well.

If Wallace stops shooting 3 pointers after his first miss and sticks to inside the arc jumpers and drives; if we make our free throws; and if we get more offensive rebounds than the Muffs then we have a puncher's chance to win. Otherwise, not so much.

Lack of effort/intensity
Still can't agree with that

Leadership is hard to see, so your guess is as good as mine, but any team that slumps this poorly can't all be explained by teams figuring how to defend us.

Execution lapses. Yes! This team is not the precision team that gets good shots.

Focus. Absolutely, but it's hard for most teams to maintain their focus for 40 minutes.

Again, besides the opponents changing how they defend us, I think the bigger factor is confidence. It's not just hesitation on shots....it's everything...tentative or bad passes, not catching ball cleanly, traveling, poor shooting.

Everything is effected by loss of confidence, at least for me and many of the players I'm around. I don't think I'm different in this regard.

bluesaxe;842290054 said:

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Some of those offensive boards were given up through lack of effort. As for leadership, I don't think playing tough and hard for 10 minutes really qualifies.

The defense varied from very tough to letting guys drive down the middle for unopposed layups. And Utah shot a LOT of real bricks.

I agree about lack of confidence. There's way too much hesitation in pulling the trigger on open shots by some guys (maybe not enough in other cases). But some of it was bad execution, bad recognition of situations and lack of intensity.

And Utah got a few totally lucky breaks as well.

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HoopDreams;842290374 said:

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Lack of effort/intensity
Still can't agree with that

Leadership is hard to see, so your guess is as good as mine, but any team that slumps this poorly can't all be explained by teams figuring how to defend us.

Execution lapses. Yes! This team is not the precision team that gets good shots.

Focus. Absolutely, but it's hard for most teams to maintain their focus for 40 minutes.

Again, besides the opponents changing how they defend us, I think the bigger factor is confidence. It's not just hesitation on shots....it's everything...tentative or bad passes, not catching ball cleanly, traveling, poor shooting.

Everything is effected by loss of confidence, at least for me and many of the players I'm around. I don't think I'm different in this regard.

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I agree about the confidence. I think it's two kinds. Some of them lack confidence in themselves right now. Others seem to lack confidence in their teammates. I think there's a lack of trust in each other. It's hard to play like a team that way.

I also think it's tough whenever you're relying an a bunch of freshmen because, unless they're particularly unusual, they have to think about things they've learned in practice. You can see guys out of position on defense and hesitant on offense. I'd hoped that would be over by now.

Sure, defenses are more tuned in to what we do and who does it now. That should not stop an offense cold though. This one has gone dead in the water.

Hoping they totally surprise me today, but not expecting it.

I think the change in how teams are defending us is to pack the paint, including doubling Solo. This works against Solo for the reasons we already talked about, and it also greatly limits Wallace's drive game. That leaves us to be jump shooters, and we'll not good enough at that to burn this strategy.

bluesaxe;842290390 said:

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I agree about the confidence. I think it's two kinds. Some of them lack confidence in themselves right now. Others seem to lack confidence in their teammates. I think there's a lack of trust in each other. It's hard to play like a team that way.

I also think it's tough whenever you're relying an a bunch of freshmen because, unless they're particularly unusual, they have to think about things they've learned in practice. You can see guys out of position on defense and hesitant on offense. I'd hoped that would be over by now.

Sure, defenses are more tuned in to what we do and who does it now. That should not stop an offense cold though. This one has gone dead in the water.

Hoping they totally surprise me today, but not expecting it.

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