Laughable defense and not making our threes. Not a good combo so far.

18-6 La Tech at the under 12. 0-8 from 3.

26-11 leads to a Rice TO. The issue on defense right now is a bad combo of an inability to guard 1v1 and absolutely no interior presence...and live ball TOs.

30-14 La Tech at the under 8. 27/18/100 with 5 TOs for Rice. LT already with 18 points in the paint and 11 points off TOs.

Tech up 30-14 and still flopping.

So much for building on the good effort vs FIU.

Tech is better than us but they're also stupid. Three 3s for Murphy from the identical spot.

42-26 La Tech at the half. Murphy has 15 of our 26. Knowing how we've played this year we're by no means out of it but it hasn't been pretty. Tech shooting 17-24 on 2s.

It's 70-49 Tech.

It's a 72-56 final in favor of Tech and that flatters us. 46 points in the paint for Tech and they just looked bigger and better than us all night. Good to see Murphy find his shooting stroke but that's about where the positives end.

I don't know what the answer for any of this is, but if this type of play continues there has to be a real conversation about pressing the restart button (again). It would suck, we would lose guys to the transfer portal, and we would lose good recruits, but you have to see a light at the end of the tunnel after year 3 and as of now there's a whole lotta darkness.

We need Martin back. And we need to win at USM. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

(01-16-2020 09:10 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  It's a 72-56 final in favor of Tech and that flatters us. 46 points in the paint for Tech and they just looked bigger and better than us all night. Good to see Murphy find his shooting stroke but that's about where the positives end.

I don't know what the answer for any of this is but if this type of play continues there has to be a real conversation about pressing the restart button (again). It would suck, we would lose guys to the transfer portal, and we would lose good recruits, but you have to see a light at the end of the tunnel after year 3 and as of now there's a whole lotta darkness.

I agree that this isn’t acceptable. Losing close games is one thing but failing to be competitive all too often isn’t. I’m not sure a coaching change would bring a rush to the transfer portal but a rush without a change would be a real negative.

(01-16-2020 09:18 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  We need Martin back. And we need to win at USM. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

Louisiana Tech is good (63 in Pomeroy); Southern Miss is terrible (277).

We haven’t recruited at a high enough level to make up for Pera’s lack of schematic superiority.

It was pretty clear who had the better players on the floor tonight.

(01-16-2020 10:36 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  We haven’t recruited at a high enough level to make up for Pera’s lack of schematic superiority.

It was pretty clear who had the better players on the floor tonight.

We’ve recruited about as well as we can honestly without some institutional change. Our players can read. For basketball we probably lose 60%+ of recruits in terms of opportunity. Bringing in classes of 3* is a what we should expect. Marcus Evans was our best recruit in the last 15 years and if we can find someone like that again we will win 20+ games but that’s not going to happen every year.

(01-17-2020 12:12 AM)cr11owl Wrote:  Our players can read.

So can the players on other teams.

The point about academics is legitimate which is why our lack of interest recruiting international students is a bit confusing to me. We should be looking in Europe, Australia, and Africa as much as possible. I mean, Saint Mary's has built a perennial top 50 team by just taking 2-3 kids a year from Australia. A job like Rice is one that requires creativity..

(01-17-2020 12:44 AM)InterestedX Wrote:  

(01-17-2020 12:12 AM)cr11owl Wrote:  Our players can read.

So can the players on other teams.

Not all of them.

For basketball there is a large portion of recruits we can’t even look at because they wouldn’t get into Rice. The coaches have to cross their names off the list before they even start.

Let’s say we need to recruit top 300 kids every year from HS. I’d guess 60-70% we can’t even look at from the start. Now we’re down to 120 if we’re being generous. With our basketball history and facilities we probably aren’t getting anyone in the top half of that unless we hire their uncle or dad or cousin. So that means every year we’re going for less than 60 guys. For those 60 guys we have to compete against everyone.

(01-17-2020 01:22 AM)elw4796 Wrote:  The point about academics is legitimate which is why our lack of interest recruiting international students is a bit confusing to me. We should be looking in Europe, Australia, and Africa as much as possible. I mean, Saint Mary's has built a perennial top 50 team by just taking 2-3 kids a year from Australia. A job like Rice is one that requires creativity..

While I agree in theory, in practice that reminded me of Morcos.

(01-17-2020 08:42 AM)cr11owl Wrote:  

(01-17-2020 12:44 AM)InterestedX Wrote:  

(01-17-2020 12:12 AM)cr11owl Wrote:  Our players can read.

So can the players on other teams.

Not all of them.

For basketball there is a large portion of recruits we can’t even look at because they wouldn’t get into Rice. The coaches have to cross their names off the list before they even start.

Let’s say we need to recruit top 300 kids every year from HS. I’d guess 60-70% we can’t even look at from the start. Now we’re down to 120 if we’re being generous. With our basketball history and facilities we probably aren’t getting anyone in the top half of that unless we hire their uncle or dad or cousin. So that means every year we’re going for less than 60 guys. For those 60 guys we have to compete against everyone.

Do our athletes generally have higher academic abilities than their peers? Yes!

That said, in the past five years alone, we've had an athlete try to flee the country after providing drugs to another athlete which killed him, another who did prison time, and plenty of others who've gotten in trouble for various misdemeanors that would have been reported had they played at a school with a beat writer who liked to dig up dirt. So let's not act like we only have athletes with sterling records.