Owls hit some FTs and close it to 53-41 with 7:46 to play.

Marshall is scoring at will inside. Not much defense by the Owls. Down 10 with 5:20 to play.

Make that 60-47

D is pretty much a forgotten word with this team over the last 10 games. Anyone can get low on us.

60-50 at 3:46

This is not a good Marshall team. Winless in conference and missing their leading scorer.

Well, at least Obi has an impressive stat line

Marcus hits 3 to make it 67-58 with 36 to play. I think we're 4 of 22?

73-63 final

Thought experiment: Suppose Ben Braun returns as coach next year. How does he convince his players not to transfer?

(01-23-2014 09:52 PM)Orange County Owl Wrote:  This is not a good Marshall team. Winless in conference and missing their leading scorer.

Ahhh. Maybe that's why the two top-ranked Marshall fans in the Blazernation Pick'Em contest chose Rice to win by 15 and 17 points, respectively, and also that we'd have the largest victory margin of all 10 C-USA games in this week's contest.

Little did they know ...

Sigh.

The game was certainly one of our better chances to get a conference win. Based on Sagarin we've already lost to 4 of the bottom 5 teams (not including us) in the conference. Big game next week at UTSA I guess! Hopefully Rice can at least match Braun's two other 1-15 C-USA records.

(01-23-2014 10:06 PM)I45owl Wrote:  Thought experiment: Suppose Ben Braun returns as coach next year. How does he convince his players not to transfer?

He tells them not to worry....he will be gone in one more season.

I hope so. It makes our AD and President look incompetent.

Who was the AD who hired Braun?

Yikes. Even Bailiff has had a couple of winning seasons.

Happy to see Obi got the double-double with 22 pts and 17 rebs.
Saw that Marcus Jackson was back in the linescore.

Season has more conference games to play but it's not looking very promising for Braun right now. If things continue this way, Dr. K will have a tough problem due to the contract extension Braun previously received from Greenspan. If you're Braun, can you come up with anything other than that to justify your staying the way things are now? Are next year's recruits able to provide any immediate impact?

(01-24-2014 01:42 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Who was the AD who hired Braun?

The wonderkid Chris Del Conte. I see TCU is winless in conference play so his track record for hiring basketball coaches isn't so hot.

I don't think we can play the youth card from last night either since Marshall was as young (if not younger) than us. We were missing Keith Washington (I think he had a collision in practice and lost a tooth or teeth and might be back Saturday?).

Actually I thought Marshall had some skills but just disappeared at times or made silly plays. I am starting to wonder if my over under for wins the rest of the season needs to move from 1.5 to 0.5 so the betting will balance. I am starting to lean to the under on the 0.5

Yeah I agree. We have some young guys with some skills but they don't play very smart unfortunately. At times they jack up 3's way too quickly, and our defense will just break down at the complete wrong time. We had a fine percentage of 2-point FG's last night (thanks mostly to Obi's monster game) but kept jacking up the 3's when we didn't need to. And I can't remember how many backdoor lay-ups (or dunks) we ended up giving up.

Marshall would have been pretty good if they had kept their players. Kane is having a great year for Iowa State.

Marshall's youngsters, at least last night, played with a lot more athleticism and energy than did the Rice youngsters. Rice came out very flat with lots of mistakes early, dug themselves a hole and could never recover

I think that's at least a partial indication they have given up on Braun.

(01-24-2014 08:37 AM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  Marshall's youngsters, at least last night, played with a lot more athleticism and energy than did the Rice youngsters. Rice came out very flat with lots of mistakes early, dug themselves a hole and could never recover

I think that's at least a partial indication they have given up on Braun.

agree on the give up-can't imagine they haven't figgered out he is (or should be) a lame duck. My first memory of Rice Bskb was 69-70 and probably seen 300+ games at Autry and I have never seen worse attendance than this year.