(04-01-2013 07:10 PM)northcoastRocket Wrote:  This has been an interesting discussion. If I hadn't watched the game, some of the comments might give me the indication that Illinois blew us out in the game, but that was far from true. We were actually leading with 6:20 left in the game. So, up until that point, we were still making a good showing, although it might not have been as pretty as we would have liked.

I'd also like to correct something, UT actually lead the rebounding battle 47-40. Not sure where that 44-34 number came from. But, as much as I like statistics, this one is a little misleading, as I was watching live stats during the game, and Illinois actually lead the rebounding stats for most of the game. In my opinion, that was the big difference in the game. UT had been a dominant rebounding team all season, and Illinois a pretty mediocre one. EIU absolutely destroyed IU on the boards, and I thought we would too, but that didn't happen. Credit IU with playing hard and having the right game plan, and for whatever reason we didn't get things done in that aspect of the game.


Did we shoot poorly, yep we did. I give IU some credit for that, but I also think we just had a bad night. Naama missed 2 out and out layups which was very uncharacteristic. And we missed a number of other open shots. IU's zone defense bothered us at times, but on several occasions when they went to their "buzz" defense (the trapping zone) that they only played periodically, we burned them for open layups by Yo.

So I think the bottom line is, IU rose to the occasion on this particular night, and UT didn't. I don't see any reason to conclude though that this indicated that UT was not as good a team as we thought, or that they were "only a WNIT sweet-16" caliber team. Again, we lead with 6 minutes left. We were not blown out. We lost to a better team on that particular night, but a different night, and it easily could have been a different story.

But, as Coach C tweeted today: Next season starts now! #GoRockets!!!

Rebounding stats can sometimes be misleading. For example, one way to out rebound a team is to make a lot of turnovers. More turnovers = fewer shots for the other team to rebound. So you may out rebound them but you'll probably lose.