road trip thoughts

[Hoop Fan]

good win at Boise, really like seeing the vibe the team has going, very much playing together right now. But even so, the rebounding has to concern you as much as ever coming into the stetch run. Boise outboarded SMU 38-30. And thats with 13 boards from Pearson. Utep is too complete of a team and will expose that weakness again. Its probably senior day in El Paso, so lookout for a buzzsaw. Wish I could be more optimistic buts it next to impossible to beat quality teams on road without good rebounding and post defense. Thats what the oddmakers see and what makes us a 10 point underdog today.

[PK]

In our last game with UTEP, although we lost 60-55, we out rebounded them 33-26 and out shot them 59% to 43%...what lost us the game was our FT shooting...30% vs their FT shooting of 67% and the fact that we didn't make any 3's. Oh, and one other thing...Hopkins didn't play.

Friday's stats, other than the rebounding, looked pretty good to me:

TOTAL FG% 1st Half: 15-30 50.0% 2nd Half: 15-24 62.5% Game: 55.6%
3-Pt. FG% 1st Half: 4-10 40.0% 2nd Half: 3-7 42.9% Game: 41.2%
F Throw % 1st Half: 6-6 100 % 2nd Half: 7-13 53.8% Game: 68.4%

I think tonight's game will be very interesting and probably a good close game. UTEP has the home court advantage of course and that may be the determining difference, but being a 10 pt dog sounds a little off to me.

[Sasser Rules]

We can play with UTEP. Sure, they should be favored. But we can hang with them. We played them tough in Moody without BHop, and I don't think they're as unbeatable as they were reported to be at the beginning of the year. They're still a very good team, maybe the best in the WAC, but they're beatable. An upset in El Paso would be huge.

[Hoop Fan]

I have no idea how we outrebounded Utep last time, but facts are facts. I seem to remember they got inside buckets and a few second chances in the last 3 minutes when it counted.

If we win the rebounding numbers and don't give up a career night to Omar Thomas like we tend to do alot of power players, we might have a chance to win at the end.

[Pony_Fan]

UTEP is 1st in scoring offense, 2nd in scoring defense, and 1st in 3 PT %.

Rivera kills the WAC in assists with 7.3 and #1 in assist/TO ratio.

Individual rebounds, O. Thomas and Tofi are tied for 11th. Castro is 8th.
Team rebounding tied with SMU at 34.9 avg but have more actual rebounds.

PK is right, the FT's killed us and UTEP went on a 8-0 run in the last minutes which "should not" have happened.