Eastern Michigan beat the Rockets by double digits for the fourth time in the past 13 months with a 58-46 victory Wednesday night at Savage Arena in a game that was never close.

Major recruiting fail when UT recruited the PG from St Ursula(?), who was kicked off the team, instead of Cha Sweeney. We have another season to face Sweeney. Actually EMU has a worse record than UT, but we can't figure them out.

Of course the recruiting miss with Sweeney pales in comparison to the refusal to offer NW Ohio player Dawn Zerman in the 90's who desperately wanted to play for UT. She finished in the top 10 in 13 career categories for Kent, became only the second player in MAC history to reach 1,600 career points, 400 career assists and 300 career steals and led her team to multiple NCAA appearances.

We make Eastern look like the best team in the conference. Other teams are able to figure out EMU's defense. Why can't we? Is it our players' skill sets? Poor coaching?

The freshmen shot 10-17 and had 26 of our 46 points. The rest of the team was 8-31.

(02-25-2016 06:43 AM)Dwight Wrote:  We make Eastern look like the best team in the conference. Other teams are able to figure out EMU's defense. Why can't we? Is it our players' skill sets? Poor coaching?

We struggle against teams with speed. Even our win last year started poorly, IIRC. Then Reecher and Zonoguera took over. When we got the ball up court and in the paint we did well. Our perimeter players seemed afraid to shoot. But we have got to figure out that press.

I've only watched bits and pieces of our games against eastern the past few years, and saw none of the game last night, but what I always noticed were tons of turnovers as a result of lazy passes and not being strong with the ball.

With a team that has speed and active hands, you've gotta be crisp and smart with your passes.

(02-25-2016 05:27 AM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  Eastern Michigan beat the Rockets by double digits for the fourth time in the past 13 months with a 58-46 victory Wednesday night at Savage Arena in a game that was never close.

Major recruiting fail when UT recruited the PG from St Ursula(?), who was kicked off the team, instead of Cha Sweeney. We have another season to face Sweeney. Actually EMU has a worse record than UT, but we can't figure them out.

Of course the recruiting miss with Sweeney pales in comparison to the refusal to offer NW Ohio player Dawn Zerman in the 90's who desperately wanted to play for UT. She finished in the top 10 in 13 career categories for Kent, became only the second player in MAC history to reach 1,600 career points, 400 career assists and 300 career steals and led her team to multiple NCAA appearances.

The player we got was Cat Wells from ND. She will be playing for Ball State next season. She had a discipline problem with the coaches and ended up leaving. Not an anticipated thing... Sweeny is very good tho.

(02-25-2016 08:23 AM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  

(02-25-2016 05:27 AM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  Eastern Michigan beat the Rockets by double digits for the fourth time in the past 13 months with a 58-46 victory Wednesday night at Savage Arena in a game that was never close.

Major recruiting fail when UT recruited the PG from St Ursula(?), who was kicked off the team, instead of Cha Sweeney. We have another season to face Sweeney. Actually EMU has a worse record than UT, but we can't figure them out.

Of course the recruiting miss with Sweeney pales in comparison to the refusal to offer NW Ohio player Dawn Zerman in the 90's who desperately wanted to play for UT. She finished in the top 10 in 13 career categories for Kent, became only the second player in MAC history to reach 1,600 career points, 400 career assists and 300 career steals and led her team to multiple NCAA appearances.

The player we got was Cat Wells from ND. She will be playing for Ball State next season. She had a discipline problem with the coaches and ended up leaving. Not an anticipated thing... Sweeny is very good tho.

and I'm pretty sure those were a couple years apart. Failure to recruit Sweeney wouldn't seem to be because of recruiting Wells.

Sweeney was one of the better Toledo area players EVER as a Freshmen the day she walked in the door IMO. Something I've said since she was a Freshmen (in high school) so it's not a johnny come lately comment. It was obvious. She was a blur. Could play an entire game on a long court. Knew where to be on the court. Even as a Fr, got her team involved and knew how to get a shot off against taller players. There are few I can think of that could match her ball-handling skills. I don't know what she's like personally or academically but on the court, she always seemed a team player.

Non-recruiting of Sweeney, if that's what occurred, wasn't just a UT oversight IMO.

(02-25-2016 08:56 AM)eastisbest Wrote:  

(02-25-2016 08:23 AM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  

(02-25-2016 05:27 AM)DetroitRocket Wrote:  Eastern Michigan beat the Rockets by double digits for the fourth time in the past 13 months with a 58-46 victory Wednesday night at Savage Arena in a game that was never close.

Major recruiting fail when UT recruited the PG from St Ursula(?), who was kicked off the team, instead of Cha Sweeney. We have another season to face Sweeney. Actually EMU has a worse record than UT, but we can't figure them out.

Of course the recruiting miss with Sweeney pales in comparison to the refusal to offer NW Ohio player Dawn Zerman in the 90's who desperately wanted to play for UT. She finished in the top 10 in 13 career categories for Kent, became only the second player in MAC history to reach 1,600 career points, 400 career assists and 300 career steals and led her team to multiple NCAA appearances.

The player we got was Cat Wells from ND. She will be playing for Ball State next season. She had a discipline problem with the coaches and ended up leaving. Not an anticipated thing... Sweeny is very good tho.

and I'm pretty sure those were a couple years apart. Failure to recruit Sweeney wouldn't seem to be because of recruiting Wells.

Sweeney was one of the better Toledo area players EVER as a Freshmen the day she walked in the door IMO. Something I've said since she was a Freshmen (in high school) so it's not a johnny come lately comment. It was obvious. She was a blur. Could play an entire game on a long court. Knew where to be on the court. Even as a Fr, got her team involved and knew how to get a shot off against taller players. There are few I can think of that could match her ball-handling skills. I don't know what she's like personally or academically but on the court, she always seemed a team player.

Non-recruiting of Sweeney, if that's what occurred, wasn't just a UT oversight IMO.

As I understand it from an article I read a year or so ago, UT was recruiting Sweeney during her junior year at Rogers but when UT signed both Cat Well and Michele Hayes (in the class just ahead of Sweeney) they decided they did not need to recruit any more point guards and backed off Sweeney.

We all know what happened to Wells (kicked off the team) and Hayes (transferred out of program, having never done much) while Sweeney came on at EMU as MAC Freshman of the Year and now an All-MAC type player. Sweeney never misses an opportunity (on the court) to try to convince Coach Cullop she made a mistake in backing off recruiting her.

Oh well, just one more year of Sweeney and maybe UT will be free of the EMU problem...... or maybe not! I said the same thing about Tevelyn James when she was at EMU causing all sorts of problems for the Rockets and yet the Rockets still have problems with EMU.

I knew that the Rockets were in trouble within the first couple of minutes of the game even before EMU started pulling away because of the way Janice started the game. She is like the "little girl with the curl" from the nursery rhymes-----her offensive game is either very, very good or it is horrid and there is no in between.

The Rockets have three "heavy hitters" (Janice, Brenae and Jay-Ann) although there are several others who are capable of occasionally stepping up and having a big game. UT has enough talent to win games when one of the three "heavy hitters" has no scoring punch if some of the others step up, but when all three have a bad game, there is no way UT is going to win that game and that is what happened last night. The four freshman that saw significant floor time (McIntyre, Boyd, Prinz and St. Fort) all made mistakes to be sure, but as a group I would rate their overall play superior to that of the upperclassmen last night.

Up until the last few minutes of the game the Rockets were scoring less than 1 point per minute and were only able to get the final score to 58-46 with a 13-1 run in the last couple of minutes when EMU backed off-----that game was nowhere near being as close as the final 12 point margin suggests.

Both the women's and men's team are very good when they play up to their potential, however, both are very inconsistent with respect to the level of play and when they play poorly, the play very poorly. IMO either the women or the men have to potential to beat any conference team on their schedule (Ohio's women may be an exception) but their inconsistency and inability to play at a uniformly high level means I do not expect too much from either team come MAC Tournament time.

Consistently inconsistent...

(02-25-2016 10:48 AM)T-Town Wrote:  I knew that the Rockets were in trouble within the first couple of minutes of the game even before EMU started pulling away because of the way Janice started the game. She is like the "little girl with the curl" from the nursery rhymes-----her offensive game is either very, very good or it is horrid and there is no in between.

The Rockets have three "heavy hitters" (Janice, Brenae and Jay-Ann) although there are several others who are capable of occasionally stepping up and having a big game. UT has enough talent to win games when one of the three "heavy hitters" has no scoring punch if some of the others step up, but when all three have a bad game, there is no way UT is going to win that game and that is what happened last night. The four freshman that saw significant floor time (McIntyre, Boyd, Prinz and St. Fort) all made mistakes to be sure, but as a group I would rate their overall play superior to that of the upperclassmen last night.

Up until the last few minutes of the game the Rockets were scoring less than 1 point per minute and were only able to get the final score to 58-46 with a 13-1 run in the last couple of minutes when EMU backed off-----that game was nowhere near being as close as the final 12 point margin suggests.

Both the women's and men's team are very good when they play up to their potential, however, both are very inconsistent with respect to the level of play and when they play poorly, the play very poorly. IMO either the women or the men have to potential to beat any conference team on their schedule (Ohio's women may be an exception) but their inconsistency and inability to play at a uniformly high level means I do not expect too much from either team come MAC Tournament time.

While this may be true, I don't think that anyone in the MAC on the men's side has been very consistent. Akron and OU, the teams at the top of the standings, just lost to the teams at the bottom on the standings in Miami and BG. NIU started out hot, then lost 5 in a row. The fact that everyone has at least 5 conference losses with three games to play and many teams are tied with 6 or 7 losses tells me that the MAC Tournament will be extremely unpredictable and a lot of teams, including UT, will have a good chance to win it.

(02-25-2016 01:46 PM)RocketBBallFan Wrote:  

(02-25-2016 10:48 AM)T-Town Wrote:  I knew that the Rockets were in trouble within the first couple of minutes of the game even before EMU started pulling away because of the way Janice started the game. She is like the "little girl with the curl" from the nursery rhymes-----her offensive game is either very, very good or it is horrid and there is no in between.

The Rockets have three "heavy hitters" (Janice, Brenae and Jay-Ann) although there are several others who are capable of occasionally stepping up and having a big game. UT has enough talent to win games when one of the three "heavy hitters" has no scoring punch if some of the others step up, but when all three have a bad game, there is no way UT is going to win that game and that is what happened last night. The four freshman that saw significant floor time (McIntyre, Boyd, Prinz and St. Fort) all made mistakes to be sure, but as a group I would rate their overall play superior to that of the upperclassmen last night.

Up until the last few minutes of the game the Rockets were scoring less than 1 point per minute and were only able to get the final score to 58-46 with a 13-1 run in the last couple of minutes when EMU backed off-----that game was nowhere near being as close as the final 12 point margin suggests.

Both the women's and men's team are very good when they play up to their potential, however, both are very inconsistent with respect to the level of play and when they play poorly, the play very poorly. IMO either the women or the men have to potential to beat any conference team on their schedule (Ohio's women may be an exception) but their inconsistency and inability to play at a uniformly high level means I do not expect too much from either team come MAC Tournament time.

While this may be true, I don't think that anyone in the MAC on the men's side has been very consistent. Akron and OU, the teams at the top of the standings, just lost to the teams at the bottom on the standings in Miami and BG. NIU started out hot, then lost 5 in a row. The fact that everyone has at least 5 conference losses with three games to play and many teams are tied with 6 or 7 losses tells me that the MAC Tournament will be extremely unpredictable and a lot of teams, including UT, will have a good chance to win it.

I agree that there is a lot of parity this year, especially on the mens' side and there are a lot of teams including Toledo that are capable of winning it all; however if all 12 (or even 8 or 9) teams have a "good chance to win it" what that really means is that it is totally up for grabs and NOBODY has a "good chance" to win it, only a 1 out of 12 (8%) or 1 out of 8 (12%) chance to win it. As in the lottery, an "equal chance" is not necessarily a "good chance".

I wouldn't be surprised to see UT win a game or maybe even two in the tourney, but I would be surprised to see them win the tournament championship.