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We lost to a superior team tonight......That is a talented bunch - they have a bunch of athletic players. They can play a big lineup, a small lineup or mix and match..... If UTEP's coach doesn't take the air out of the ball with 6 minutes to play, we lose by a bunch. Their athleticism made us play at a faster level than we are accustomed to and it showed in the first half.......Our guards tried to penetrate and when they did, they were surrounded with no where to go or to pass.

Having said that, if we make our free throws, tip-ins, lay ups, and dunks off misses, we make it a very interesting game and quite possibly we pull off an upset.

Culpepper has the most butt ugly shot I have ever seen but his shots go in.....I hate the offensive charge call deep in the paint. It allows you to play crappy defense and then have some guy assume the position protecting his cookies and get a cheap foul call or the reverse of that - make a million dollar move, attack the basket, leave your feet and some dweeb slides over, assumes the position and you get screwed - like Williams did tonight........Absolutely the most unfair call in basketball.

What is it with the refs??????? Tonight we had the 3 stooges - except they were sticking their fingers in our eyes. These guys weren't qualified to ref the "Halftime entertainment brought to you by the Cox School of Business YMCA first grade girls basketball game"......Bush. League.

UTEP fans brought it tonight. Thanks to the SMU swimmers and their lungs. They answered all night long.......Oh, and to whomever runs our scoreboard, it is sooooo bush league for you not to stay on top of who we have in the game. Papa Dia scored 4 points in his first rotation on the floor and never did his number show up displaying his stats on the scoreboard - nice................

I thought the fight back was nice.

I didn't see great movement by our guys. The drives down the lane do tend to go nowhere as nobody is in position. We have no pick and rolls or backdoor cuts ever.

They seemed to be all over McCoy all night.

The 5 minute drought killed us.

I agree - we showed some spunk in making our run. It is frustrating that we never complete a pick and roll.........Our guards don't look for it and the guy setting the pick never breaks hard to the basket.............

I was disturbed by Fall and his consistent traveling.

UTEP should do fine this yr. 2nd or 3rd.

Tonight was a fun game, even if the result was not what I hoped. The refs were awful. They were climbing over our backs all night long and we were getting nothing!

They were near flawless from the line, had we been better we could have stolen that one.

UTEP is a good team.......they should finish in the top 3 of C-USA. One of their losses was to undefeated #4 Wake by 3 pts in which they had a shot to tie the game with :10 left.

As usual, FT shooting killed us….we shoot 63% and UTEP 88%. It is pretty simple against good teams, when McCoy plays well we have a chance, when he doesn’t – we don’t.

but one big positive as those around me mentioned tonight - at least with this team you can see hope for the future. McCoy and Faye are legit upper level college b-ball talents.

Utep has played a much tougher schedule then anyone else in CUSA - they are better then their record - I think they will contend for conference champion this year.

Pretty good showing by SMU -

FREE THROWS!! What a killer.

Faye kept us in the game. If we can Dia to play mad the whole game instead of 4 minutes seperated by 25 minutes, then we could make big headway this year.

Otis is a hoss also.

I was there last night. My thoughts are these. As for the players, I was impressed with the effort (if not always the execution) in the second half. We apparently have a decent offensive inbounds play judging fom the one time it worked in the second half, why can we only execute it at a 15% clip and have to throw it past halfcourt the rest of the time? Faye is a nice player but needs to get his engine warmed up in the first half. Fall was a liability, plain and simple (a freaking lane violation by a senior, asinine). We gave them so many offensive rebounds I lost count.

As for coaching, Doherty should know you cannot win at this level running a zone defense. Ridiculous.

Huh? The zone is used when you are out manned - which we were by a team with better athletes on average. It is not uncommon.

I'm just glad I made the game after sitting in the parking lot called Central Expressway for 40 minutes while a major wreck was cleaned up!

gostangs wrote:Huh? The zone is used when you are out manned - which we were by a team with better athletes on average. It is not uncommon.

It is uncommon for winners. Our best runs in the second half last night came when we were playing an agressive man to man. Were you even watching the game?

We should win some away games this year becuz we sure know how to
travel.

Missed free throws, tip-ins and lay ups were killers. Roughly 5 minutes into the 2d half Williams drove the lane and missed an easy lay up and Fall missed the tip-in. A score at that point would have closed the gap to 2 points. Instead UTEP started a fast break, scored went up by 6 and immediately stretched the lead to 16 as the Ponies looked disorganized. Sometimes small plays really make the difference.

kinda wish we had a big man coach. Time after time it seemed like Bamba got the ball too high in the post, then when he'd pivot I swear he pivoted to the least convenient side. If someone would teach him to get the ball lower in the post and an up and under move, he'd be much better off.