After hearing complaints about our 3pt %, I noticed that the guys overlooked several open looks at long jumpers in the second half (obviously you don't want to chuck the ball up when nursing a ~5pt lead). The downside is that the lane was crowded and most of the drives ended in sloppy kick outs or prayers for a made shot or foul. Very sloppy execution and slow speed basketball overall. Defensive rebounding looked really sloppy in 2nd half.

(12-14-2017 02:27 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Only Bishop and Connor were consistent.

And for the second or third time this season Connor hit a wall half way through the second half, and stopped shooting. Unlike Evans, who wanted to take over a close game in the waning minutes, Connor appears to take a step back. We just don't have alternative offensive weapons for him to do so, especially with AJ still out. Connor had 27 points and 12 rebounds, but only 2 points and 1 rebound the final 10 minutes of the game when he should have been driving and going to the foul line.

The difference in the game was that Rice often drove to the basket since they had athletic superiority over the Hilltoppers and got the free throw line and executed (at least in the first half). During the 2nd half, they missed several free throws that kept St. Edwards in the game. Connor was the best player on the court and played like it during the first half. The game would have been no contest if he would have continued at that energy level for all 40 minutes. The way St. E. collapsed their zone when Connor tried to advance the ball in the 2nd half was very effective and took him out of his game for the most part.

The defensive rotation was often not very good and Rice rarely took advantage of some telegraphed passing that the Hilltoppers executed on the perimeter. The rare exception was Robert Martin's steal near the end of the game, he played the passing lane perfectly during that possession. That play really sealed the deal for Rice, although it still was iffy at the end.

St. Eds missing the front end of some 1 and 1s in the 2H helped as well.

Just saw a tweet and photo of team boarding bus to Lubbock, and AJ was boarding with the team. I hope that means he's finally cleared to see action. I'm still holding out judgement on this team until we see Connor and AJ playing significant minutes together.

Rice not the only men's team with FT issues.

ND had a chance to beat Indiana today with the score tied and 0.8 seconds remaining. ND missed both FTs to send it to overtime where they lost when Indiana missed a FT down by 1, but got the offensive board on the miss and made the layup to go up and win by 1.