GAME THREAD: SMU MBB vs. Memphis

[Pony81]

Thankfully, Memphis is less disciplined and more sloppy with the ball than we are.
Equally poorly coached teams and we win.....

[Arkpony]

Memphis with 21 TOs and poor 3 Pt shooting saved our rear ends in another sloppy game.

[shadowman]

Thankfully, Memphis is less disciplined and more sloppy with the ball than we are.
Equally poorly coached teams and we win.....

Just back from the game, and I will disagree just a bit. This SMU team defense is the best I have seen in quite some time, even including the tournament teams. It is very frustrating how some of scorers decide to disappear and we get offensively struggled at points, but the defense is solid.

Even more perplexing is how we cannot win on the road, even against very bad teams. At home, we rock it, on the road, we have lost to the two worst teams in the conference.

Just have to finish the season strong, get a bye in the tournament and see how we do on a neutral court for the tournament. You would expect a conference tournament in Ft. Worth to be lightly attended. It is up to us to turn it in to a home party.

/cheers

[tristatecoog]

Attendance: 5,211

Tulsa attendance: 3,443

[shadowman]

We beat the 4.5 line

Wish I had your bookie, I got SMU at 5, the push juice hurts!

[Stallion]

Mike had 5 great defensive plays in about 2 minutes and C.J. with 4 steals. SMU definitely won ugly but the effort was there on defense-and we are among the worst defensive teams in the AAC. Shirley we can't be this pathetic from the 3 point line --in a major shooting slump. Has the extended 3 point line really been good for College Basketball-its getting ugly out there in many games-geez put the line back where it was-terrible basketball

[mustangxc]

Glad we won. We have to beat Wichita State because we’re losing to UCF and USF to close out the regular season.

[shadowman]

[quote="Stallion"Shirley we can't be this pathetic from the 3 point line[/quote]

Don't call me Shirley.

[skyscraper]

My eyes are bleeding after watching that excuse of a game.
Jank is a bad coach but Penny is worse. Imagine being a Memphis fan with the expectations you had coming into the season and watching your team play like that. Terrible performance from Memphis.
40 minutes of bad passing and jacking up 3 pointers from both teams.

[Stallion]

what's really depressing is that we are getting some wide-open 3 point shots and are hitting about 15% over an extended period. I can't really say we are jacking up bad shots- I can remember several times tonite that Mike, Davis, Bandomel, C.J., Hunt, Chagois and Jolly each had clear, uncontested 3 point shots and couldn't hit them. Davis should have had about 10 assists tonite but you can't get an assist when your teammates make 14 baskets against Memphis, 17 against Tulsa and 19 against last place Tulane. One difference from 3-4 years ago is that we aren't getting as many inside out passes which are usually the better 3 point shots. We're passing it around the perimeter which doesn't lead to as many spot up 3 point shot

[Charleston Pony]

Just very fortunate to have won this game after shooting 25% in 2nd half including 0-9 from three

[One Trick Pony]

That might be the worst anthem performance I have heard in years. Shockingly bad.

I think it was one of our football players.
Bless his heart.

[JasonB]

Thankfully, Memphis is less disciplined and more sloppy with the ball than we are.
Equally poorly coached teams and we win.....

Just back from the game, and I will disagree just a bit. This SMU team defense is the best I have seen in quite some time, even including the tournament teams. It is very frustrating how some of scorers decide to disappear and we get offensively struggled at points, but the defense is solid.

Even more perplexing is how we cannot win on the road, even against very bad teams. At home, we rock it, on the road, we have lost to the two worst teams in the conference.

Just have to finish the season strong, get a bye in the tournament and see how we do on a neutral court for the tournament. You would expect a conference tournament in Ft. Worth to be lightly attended. It is up to us to turn it in to a home party.

/cheers

That was by far the best defensive performance we have seen in quite a long time, since early season home conference games an OOC games.

Memphis, like us, were very quick to heave up a three. But our activity defensively was much, much, much better than it has been. Davis set the tone on the very first possession of the game by picking up his player in the backcourt and playing physically with him all the way up the court. Lots of pressure on the ball, not sagging in too much to leave wide open kickouts unless it was a player we wanted to shoot from outside. This was a much more intense, focused, and well prepared defensive effort than we have seen in a long, long time.

They showed some information on our home/road defensive stats during the game, and it was shocking the distance. Some of that is influenced of course by the week OOC schedule. But our defensive workrate just isn't travelling right now.

Offensively, I'll disagree with some of the takes that we took good shots from three. We rush every single three. We might have a little space, but we really rush those shots. Both teams, for large stretches of the game, looked very disorganized on the offensive end.

The difference in the game, beyond the turnovers, is that we would feed the ball down low. Ethan had his best, most active game in a long time. He was willing to go down low, demand the ball, and try a turnaround or go hard to the basket. If we got that Ethan every night, we would be a much better team as a whole. We would be able to play more patient offensively, be more efficient, and create more space for quality three point shots.

[PonyTime]

Chargois playing the best game he has in quite a while

I have been dogging Chag for a while. This was his best game in the last year. He was the star of the game and why they won last night. Still think he may have peaked around the time of the Atlantis Tourney when he shut down Arizona's big guy, which was our key to that W.

9-3 vs. Memphis since formation of the American Athletic Conference. Memphis Owned.

[gostangs]

That might be the worst anthem performance I have heard in years. Shockingly bad.

I think it was one of our football players.
Bless his heart.

He started in the wrong key and then had to just tough it out (as did all of us). Gotta give it to Turner to jump in there and encourage him as he came off the floor pretty bummed.