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Our failure to make free throws lost that game

2chances at the line blown

Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory

Free throws missed. No excuse.

Tough loss but I thought we played well this tournament. Unfortunately our record still sucks.

Not going to win close games when you can't make FTs at crunch time and only 5-9 on the night but team looked much better in this tournament. Gives me hope we won't go 0-fer in AAC play. Back to our "usual" with 10 assists vs 13 turnovers tonight. Tough way to lose. Hopefully Todorovic recovers quickly from that turned ankle. Was good to see him back out there late.

Such a frustrating finish, such an SMU finish. We need to start playing Xavier Foster ASAP, our post defense is gross. Hopefully XF has hands and can rebound cleanly. I was so pumped to bring that dang trophy home. Stay hard, Pony Fans.

We quit playing midway through the second half. Then still had chances to win it at the end and can't make free throws. Of course we lost in the most SMU way possible with Hawaii making a miracle 3. This season is over, but I hope we can show some signs of life the rest of the year. I just won't be invested at all.

If you would have told me a week ago that we were going to travel to Hawaii and beat a Pitrino coached Iona squad, take down a 10-1 Utah St team and play a close game in the finals, I would have said zero chance…guys played tough, showed a ton of positives, I was invested. It was fun. Well down guys! #PonyUp!

If these guys keep improving and can add Foster to the rotation (assuming he's the player that was advertised coming out of H.S.) I could see this team going 6-12 in AAC play. That would be a plus vs what we saw before the Hawaii trip. Tulsa game will be very telling

We also need to work on blocking out on the defensive boards, some improvement, but still wide open offensive bounds all too often. Free throws need to be a priority. Run yo yos and then make them shoot free throws when their hearts are pounding. Sooner or later they'll learn. I noticed Nutall and Williamson at the end bent their knees when they didn't have the ball and then appeared to shoot stiff legged. Shooting frees is all about the knees.

3 bench points. Still two more wins than expected. Looked like a different team in some respects - lots of hustle. Might pick up 10 wins by season's end.

geezerdonk wrote:3 bench points. Still two more wins than expected. Looked like a different team in some respects - lots of hustle. Might pick up 10 wins by season's end.

I think we'll be about the same as football. We'll finish somewhere between 4th and 6th in conference.

I'm still working out my opinions about this year/team. I WANT to say: "ok, typical year 1. everything's new. don't judge Lanier or the team on this year at all. next year is the year." however, the losses at Moody just can't be forgiven. We don't lose in Moody. Period. And we lost to some bad teams. Absolutely unacceptable.

From a stats standpoint, the overall glaring issue is lack of bench production. If you look at the box score of the losses, we have gotten VERY little of anything at all out of our bench. With the wins in this tourney, we got "good" (ie normal) production from our bench. That's the biggest difference I can see from just an Xs and Os perspective so far.

I'm going to be patient for next year but it will be very very thin. Such a disappointment this year is. Ugh. There's some talent on the roster for sure. But the results are just ... bad.

The outcomes in this tournament are pretty good for SMU. They won a couple of games - one against a 10-1 team - they played well enough to win the championship save for the final 3 minute collapse, and came away with many teaching moments.

The collapse offers many teaching moments:
- criticality of free throws … every single one
- importance of not joking around in the huddle when up by only 2 within the final minute of the game
- keeping yourself composed: Koulibaly has shown outright rejection of authority in the way in interacts with referees, including at the end of the Hawaii game. He needs serious coaching on that point.
- overall focus and intensity to close out tight games

The situation with Foster is just weird, unless he is hurt, but they are not saying he is hurt. SMU desperately needs some competent interior play that he might be able to help with. And if his conditioning is an issue, you’d expect that he’d slowly get worked into games, but he’s not.