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We lose, 64-49 I believe was final score. Only chance we had to win against an athletic Houston team was to limit turnovers. We didn't. 21 turnovers, many of them unforced mental errors. Houston had 12 and also out rebounded us. Cannot wait for this to be over.

Watching our guards bring the ball up the court is painful. Killen continues to bring the ball up the sideline where the trap is just waiting on him and then he picks the ball up when the pressure gets applied...............Dez does better but he winds up doing the same thing - picking the ball up. That is junior high stuff. To be fair, none of their team mates want the ball against the pressure so they don't get much help. The other 3 just run to their spot and stand. But, you have to look up the court early and keep looking up for an opening and they don't - they keep their heads down too much. Frustrating.........

My neutral party friend (Hawaii grad) wondered why SMU didn't go inside and drive the basket more. Like you said, the guards would often pick up the ball and pass to the outside.

I expect a good game on Sat night. SMU is a good team, and Rice had a nice win tonight.

doesn't look like they are coached to attack the press - dez didn't do too bad at all - only 1 turnover

we never boxed out

angryfan04 wrote:doesn't look like they are coached to attack the press - dez didn't do too bad at all - only 1 turnover

How many turnovers did our "other PG" have?

The war on turnovers didnt work too well. I'm getting tired of watching this. Can we get to 4 conf wins?

It also looked like UH was twice as fast as we were, and we were playing at half-speed. UH destroyed our attempt to press them easily. We looked so slow last night compared to UH.

None of this is surprising. Previous coaches left the program pretty empty. We only won 4 conference games last year and we lost our top scorer. I do appreciate the hustle and attitude this bunch brings us.

Several points. Doherty was interviewed at halftime and said we need to attack the press which when we tried to do it, UH changed their press and we had even more turnovers. We don't have an natural point guard and as a result other teams know they can press us into oblivion. Fall clearly needs to hit the weights this offseason. Perhaps Doh will make a deal with Vic to beef up Bamba (just no cheeseburgers). The fact that we were out rebounded by a smaller team says that our big men are not very agile and not able to box out. Despite a huge height advantage our guards are not able to get the ball inside on a match-up zone because that requires the ability to drive the lane which our guards do not have especially against a team as quick as UH. Lastly, when they did get the ball inside, our big men can't shoot from more than about 3 feet out. So if they don't have a dunk or lay-up its an iffy proposition.

EastStang wrote:Several points. Doherty was interviewed at halftime and said we need to attack the press which when we tried to do it, UH changed their press and we had even more turnovers. We don't have an natural point guard and as a result other teams know they can press us into oblivion. Fall clearly needs to hit the weights this offseason. Perhaps Doh will make a deal with Vic to beef up Bamba (just no cheeseburgers). The fact that we were out rebounded by a smaller team says that our big men are not very agile and not able to box out. Despite a huge height advantage our guards are not able to get the ball inside on a match-up zone because that requires the ability to drive the lane which our guards do not have especially against a team as quick as UH. Lastly, when they did get the ball inside, our big men can't shoot from more than about 3 feet out. So if they don't have a dunk or lay-up its an iffy proposition.

I can't really agree with your point about getting outrebounded by a smaller team yesterday or our huge height advantage. We ourselves were a small team last night. Bamba logged only 13 minutes. Rack got a DNP. Ike and Pearson were our bigs at 6'8 and 6'6 while Thorpe and Dowell are their "bigs", both about 6'6. Basically being that UH is so much more athletic than we are, we felt like we had to go smaller to have any chance of defending them.

Didn't get to listen to the game last night - why did Rack log a DNP and Bamba only play 13 minutes? I can see Doherty going away from Rack at this point, but am surprised that Bamba, not being in foul trouble, wouldn't play a ton each game to try to keep moving his progress along.

RI Stang wrote:Didn't get to listen to the game last night - why did Rack log a DNP and Bamba only play 13 minutes? I can see Doherty going away from Rack at this point, but am surprised that Bamba, not being in foul trouble, wouldn't play a ton each game to try to keep moving his progress along.

I do not know if this was the reason but everytime they passed Bamba the ball, a Houston player would politely go over to him and take it away.

RI Stang wrote:Didn't get to listen to the game last night - why did Rack log a DNP and Bamba only play 13 minutes? I can see Doherty going away from Rack at this point, but am surprised that Bamba, not being in foul trouble, wouldn't play a ton each game to try to keep moving his progress along.

UH shoots from the outside a lot, to say the least, which means you really makes it difficult to play zone against them. UH plays too small and athletic for a lineup for Rack or Bamba to guard anyone they play man to man. Bamba is much quicker than Rack but still not quick enough to do a solid job man to man on Thorpe, Dowell, etc. That is why I'd guess you didn't see our bigs play last night.

two or three times ball was thrown to bamba and bamba wasnt able to catch or if caught just lost the ball