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The lack of shooting, toughness and defense has caught up to our Blazers...you are tough or not but defense is constant, you can always play defense.

Good athlete playing good defense can keep you in almost any game. I hate to say it because some naysayer will misread and input something I never said, but here I go, we need a coach who can coach defense, there I said it, man what I would not give for a coach like Marsh with this bunch.

The transition from playing a little defense almost turned the big mo in our favor last night, it was the only real threat we made, and it was defense that was doing it.

The North Texas coach stopped that mo in a hurry calling a time out, our Coaching staff never was able to get it back.

Now here is the problem, I dont know if Coach Hasse can snarl, cuss, stare with meanacing intent or yank a player out of the game and refuse to acknowlege that player existences, but that's what this team needs. tough love.

Swing take a seat, Rod sit next to him, welcome Purifoy and Watts.

Now I am not saying that Coach Hasse and staff are taking it easy on the players, but when you have a senior and JC dominated team, your instinct is that they will motivate themselves to play hard and win.

If the team played as Hard as Rob Williams we would always have a chance to win, Rob may get more out of less then most of the players on this team, he rebounds, transition, scores a reliable number, hits free throws and play Defense...

Before someone say it, NO NO NO, I AM NOT GIVING UP ON THE SEASON!!!!

I just want our Blazers to put up a fight....over the years, that is the one constant for our Blazers, we fought, fought, fought and played Defense.

Preach it, brother!!! I can see the light! its the Big D

+1

It is very hard psychologically to keep up your defensive intensity for long stretches of the game when your shots are not going in. You work your ass off on D to stop them and get the ball for your team, only to have nothing to show for it trip after trip after trip. Not shooting well over a long stretch just sucks the life out of a defense. It happened to Mike Anderson teams on occasion even though their entire identity was defense.

You have to remember, Swing, Purifoy and Williams had one system ingrained in them, and then were forced to switch a very, very different system. Those changes don't happen over night, and obviously, they don't happen over the course of a season. Some guys who may have helped decided to leave and Haase has worked with the pieces he's had. I don't know what some of you guys expected this year, but getting to 20 wins was a pretty realistic goal to me. 25+ wins. NCAA at larges. NCAA wins. Some of those were unreasonable.

Haase is his own coach. He isn't Marsh. He isn't Davis. He is running his system, and he's learning every day. I think some of us need to look at the bigger picture and not just one bad loss. I don't know how many of you actually watched the game last night, but I saw several threes that we contested that just dropped. It happens that way sometimes.

(01-24-2014 01:12 PM)BlazerMatt Wrote:  It is very hard psychologically to keep up your defensive intensity for long stretches of the game when your shots are not going in. You work your ass off on D to stop them and get the ball for your team, only to have nothing to show for it trip after trip after trip. Not shooting well over a long stretch just sucks the life out of a defense. It happened to Mike Anderson teams on occasion even though their entire identity was defense.

True. It's also hard when the the other team can't seem to miss from 3-point range. Some of that might have to do with the defense, but I've seen a lot of heavily contested 3-pointers go in the past few games. That has to be demoralizing.

Right now we are getting everyone's best game. UAB has a target on its back as being the top team from the old C-USA... even though we know we haven't been the best team the last couple seasons.

I also think that UNC win was this team's championship game; now that the biggest game on their schedule is over, the intensity isn't there anymore.

I'm no where near ready to give up on Haase.

One thing I've noticed...we don't foul a lot. At this point, I'd take us being in the double bonus 10 minutes in each half to stop these easy buckets at the rim we allow.

If you lose intensity because you contest a shot and it falls in, then you butt needs to be sitting on the bench.
Basketball is a game of runs, but when you go long periods without scoring and the other team is making shots..no excuses...play ball.

As so far as the shout out to Marsh, most here would agreed he know how to get the team to play defense.

And if we are getting everyones best then the least we could do is give them our best....
No excuses, Coach Hasse isnt making them, so far I have not heard the team make any, and I as a fan who enjoy watching these guys play will not accept basketball play excuses.

The shots were falling, the shots were contested, we gets every teams best, okay I get that, but lets play our part, lets get up into them guard them give them our best and play defense.