Just some thoughts..
First off, when we played Purdue and they lost to that Bucknell team they were a BAD Big Ten team. However, that team has started to figure a lot of things out and are playing much better basketball at the end of the season. They looked really solid against Michigan and beat up on an extremely talented but underachieving Minnesota team. Bucknell is a win over Lafayette at home away from being an NCAA Tournament. I think Purdue is an example of what good coaching can do for a team as I think Painter is an extremely solid coach for them. I'd say that Purdue is a pretty average team in the best conference in the country.
Second off, I think a lot of the problem we as a group have when it comes to the performance of this year's team is that we overvalued the talent of the recruits that transferred in. I'm not going to say that I wasn't also duped into thinking the same thing as well. When we read about the pedigrees of the players we got and more importantly the SIZE of the players that we got, all of us started to get big eyed and started to think about the great possibilities of what could happen. So now when they're not performing, we're all pissed off because they aren't meeting our expectations. We need to put it into perspective. If these guys transferred from schools such as Wyoming, such as Arkansas, such as Syracuse there was a REASON they transferred and weren't playing much at those programs. In addition, we also need to put it into perspective that this is the first year that these guys played together for a full season. So, you'd like to think that you'll see some more cohesiveness from the team next year.
Third off, these last two years were easily the most frustrating that I've watched EMU Basketball. In the past, there were genuinely a large number of games that EMU would just get destroyed in and you'd just have to laugh at how pathetic it was. Now Eastern is frustratingly close in a lot of these games and are playing a completely mind numbing brand of offense. I know I'm beating this drum to death too, but I still remember hearing Murphy say at the beginning of the year that he lets his players essentially freelance on offense and he focused his efforts on defense. It still blows my mind at how cohesive this team can be defensively and then completely change their attitude on offense and try to do everything on their own. You'd like to think that will all of this bravado that he brings out with his "principles" that he would emphasize TEAM play on the offensive end of the floor.
Defensively this year the 2-3 zone has really done its job, just like it did last year. In general, the 2-3 zone's idea is to bog down the opponents offense and force them to take outside shots. Guess what? It has done that. The problem? We've run into a ton of teams who when we've forced them to take these outside shots, they're nailing them in the games we've lost. In the games we've won, they've missed them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%E2%80%933_zone_defense
Fourth off, ever hear of the "sophomore slump" theory? Last year, Murphy was running a 2-3 zone that the other MAC coaches weren't used to being run as consistently as it was. We win the MAC West thanks to it. This year, the coaches have adjusted to it a bit more but we're still in a large chunk of these games and finished a mediocre 7-9. If we continue to be this mediocre next year I'll start buying into our negativity a bit more. I think Murphy needs to be more creative offensively and be willing to change things a bit more defensively if a team is hitting 3's.
Fifth off, this team can beat NIU and Bowling Green if they WANT to. The other knock I can make against Murphy is that I don't see much passion out of his team at all outside of Bryant. I'd like to see a little more fight and desire out of these guys, instead of this listless attitude. I'm not meaning this as another knock on Riley, but every time they show him after a play he has this almost emotionless, dumbfounded look on his face. That's not exactly showing me much fight or fire. Then again, it's also tough to show that when you're only playing in front of a few hundred fans each home game too.
Just some random ideas. Fire away.
