RE: Toledo Rockets
Several observations, having watched UAB basketball since the first game, Nov. 25, 1978.
*Character matters. Sometimes players are in the portal for a reason. You get your share of head cases. We have had a few every year, just as we had plenty back in Coach Bartow's days of getting a lot of transfers. You also get some good players with good attitudes who were just in the wrong settings and needed a fresh start. I think we have a mixture of both in this year's transfer class--and I hope that AK can keep the chemistry positive and mold these guys into a team. This is always the biggest challenge when you bring in starters from other schools--we only have 200 minutes to give, and one ball to play with.
*On that note, with our roster, we have a lot of age, with all these super seniors, but I don't know how much maturity. I hope we have some leaders step up--like Quan and Ertel did last year. I would love that to be Lovan, but I am not sure he is the vocal one to do that. Perhaps Trey, or Davis, or the Brewer brothers. Davis was one guy who seemed to play hard the whole game yesterday, even if he missed several bunnies.
*I have been skeptical about all the hype for Gaines, after watching the two home games, and knew he wasn't looking like a first round pick any time soon. He has plenty of natural ability, and will provide some incredible highlights, but he can't take plays off, and he has to take better care of the basketball. Andy hinted in his post game comments last night that he hoped this loss would get the attention of a few of the new players, to turn it up a notch. I am guessing he was talking about Gaines in particular.
I know we need the positive attention. But I do think all the Barstool hype was a distraction. I was concerned that Jelly, and AK, and the rest of the team, might get caught up in it all, and I think they did. Meanwhile, Toledo was the under-the-radar underdogs, didn't have the hype, but just outworked us and outplayed us. We have to learn to just shut up and come to play every game. We didn't do that last year, and we definitely didn't do that last night.
*My biggest concern from the Toledo game (and now in retrospect, Alabama State?) was our poor defense. We didn't play team defense, we got outhustled, outsmarted, outplayed. There are always cold spells in shooting, but defense is about effort. And we will only win as much as our defense allows us to. We have the talent, but we certainly need to turn it around on that end of the floor if we are going to be a tournament team. (And we definitely miss Quan.)
*Finally, we will be okay. As much as we are prone to overreact in these parts, it is still very early, and I am confident we will be fine. I still fully expect us to compete for and win CUSA. Unfortunately, with our schedule if we don't win those kind of games when we get them, it puts us in the position of having to win our conference tournament to get a bid. But I suspect Andy will pull the team together like he did last year, though I would love for us to get over the hump of some of the questionable losses we've had the past two years. Toledo is a very good team, likely the best team we will play out of conference (and perhaps even in conference) all year. I would put that loss in the category of the USF or West Virginia losses last year, instead of the Rice or Marshall losses. I would rather avoid all of them, but that's not how college basketball works.
Let's not give up on this team just yet. I think our football frustrations bled over into basketball, since we were so looking forward to the light at the end of the football tunnel after a disappointing football season, and it ended up being the Toledo train. But we need to show up at Bartow and help this team pull together and turn this into a special season.
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