Northwestern at Purdue today.

NW shot 47% from the arc and had only 10 turnovers, and still lost by 13. But they shot only 16 FTs to Purdue's 33 and got beat by ten on the boards. It is not enough to do well what you do. You have to take away at least a little of what the other team does well.

Our five starters are not good enough defensively to offset our lack of balanced team scoring. Too few players scoring the points. Too many players playing too many minutes who score very few points in a lot of games. Answer is simple. More players scoring more points. Yeah. I guess that is an oversimplification, but probably true. I guess we just don't have any scorers on the bench. Otherwise it would probably make sense to play them, wouldn't it?

(12-31-2010 02:54 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  Our five starters are not good enough defensively to offset our lack of balanced team scoring.

Good point. I thought at the start of the season that our defense was back, but it has yet to be proven. Better than last year, but nothing approaching Fowlerball. If Courtney can somehow sustain his offensive effort like he did against NT, that is one step in the right direction.

Courtney played very well. But he's just got to start making free throws. He was 0-4 last night. It didn't make a lot of difference in this game, but you can't have an inside player shooting nothing from the line and expect to win close games. I'll guarantee you that there are some old men on this board who could shoot free throws better than that. Of course they couldn't rebound and do the other things he does, but we're just talking about free throws. I say fire Wayne Burton as the free throw coach.