The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(12-30-2017 08:42 PM)TheGORILLA Wrote:  

(12-30-2017 08:22 PM)UABfan1 Wrote:  

(12-30-2017 08:12 PM)TheGORILLA Wrote:  

(12-30-2017 07:29 PM)UABfan1 Wrote:  We only went 7 deep except for 2 minutes for Gueye. And 2 fouls and an out of control 3.
He is not ready yet.

We kept our turnovers down. If we rebounded a little better and make one more 3, we win.

Middle Tennessee went ten deep. Ehsan is "wearing six guys out", subbing Sullivan in for 12 minutes and Gueye for 2 minutes(none in the second half). Sure, Gueye is still green and restricting his shots to three pointers(not so smart) and picked up two quick fouls(not so smart). You are right. He is not ready, yet. He will never be ready if he only plays two minutes per game. We also are not going to win many games in conference play by going only six deep. Somehow Ehsan is going to have to give Sullivan and Gueye more minutes for this team to become a better team as conference play goes on. Otherwise we will be lucky to win twenty games by the time the conference tournament comes around and still be only six or seven deep, which won't carry us very far in the conference tournament.

Gene never went very deep for this reason. Possessions matter. To MTSUs credit, their bench doesn't hurt them. You cant play Gueye or Smallwood in a close game where 1 possession is the difference between winning and losing. Lavender, if he just had an outside shot, might have helped. Would not expect Nate & Jalen to go just 2 of 8 on reasonably good looks.

We have already established the fact that conference win/loss record is "meaningless". We are simply playing eighteen conference games to prepare for the conference tournament. How, on earth, is this team going to get any better by wearing out six players in the process? Sullivan is a beast. Gueye has a lot of potential. Those two have to get in there every game and improve by the time conference tournament comes around. Just like the past few seasons, it's either win the conference tournament or...end of season. I'm just looking at the big picture.

Today was the one time for a signature home win. Not the time to be giving unearned playing time. We have 17 conference games left, at least 12-13 in which he can probably get minutes without hurting us.

(12-30-2017 09:07 PM)jthrashr Wrote:  Two guys scored 78% of MTSU's points. I'm no genius, but seems like we probably should have done more to stop them.

Looks like team ball lost out again.

(12-30-2017 09:04 PM)FNblazer Wrote:  Just read King scored 19 of MT’s last 21 points. Wow!

He never looked to pass once he got the ball. I'm not that great on basketball strategy but I was thinking we might want to collapse two or three guys on him when he had the ball and ignore the others, seeing how he was ignoring them too.

(12-30-2017 08:39 PM)UABfan1 Wrote:  

(12-30-2017 08:36 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  

(12-30-2017 07:56 PM)UABfan1 Wrote:  Biggest & best game of the year. Just 4143 fans. Ticket Prices are too high for the level of team we are.

With 1500-2000 more fans, UAB wins.

No. Basketball fans in Birmingham are almost non existent. The few that were there today are UAB fans. Its got nothing to do with the price of the ticket. You can't blame the schedule for todays turnout.

I think everything combines to keep people away. Poor schedule, ticket prices, weather.

We drew more in the early years of the BJCC. I guess many of them died off.

No we are still around. Less hair, bigger waistlines but still kicking. Perhaps if we really think hard we can draw some sort of correlation between the early years of UAB basketball and the crowds that came out. Now what could that be? And by the way, the non-existent Birmingham basketball fans seem to show up recently at a game featuring the evil empire. More than 16,000 I read. Our own fans say we are a one bid league, that games don't matter til the conference tournament and even refer to us as irrelevant. These same people then blame the city for not showing up. Once more, a consistently good product will draw more fans. It doesn't work the other way: if more fans would just show up, UAB would magically become a powerhouse.

(12-30-2017 07:16 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  Perry's missed dunk that resulted in a dunk at the other end was the difference in the game I think.

My thoughts as I was leaving the game as well.

I’m still furious about letting 8 seconds elapsed after Scootie’s Missed free throw. And we didn’t even have the situational awareness that we had to foul twice to get them into the bonus.

We shot 6-21 for 28.6% from three. Lee was 1-5 and Darling hit 1 of 4. We shot 14-20 for 70% from the free throw line. I suppose you can throw in Perry's missed dunk and three or four of Scooty's shots that went 3/4 of the way in and came out as well, if you're thinking that way.

My personal opinion is that we lost this game at the 3pt and foul line, take your pick.

Everyone in the Bart knew that King and Potts were doing the scoring for Middle. More defense on them would have been nice.

(12-31-2017 12:46 AM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  We shot 6-21 for 28.6% from three. Lee was 1-5 and Darling hit 1 of 4. We shot 14-20 for 70% from the free throw line. I suppose you can throw in Perry's missed dunk and three or four of Scooty's shots that went 3/4 of the way in and came out as well, if you're thinking that way.

My personal opinion is that we lost this game at the 3pt and foul line, take your pick.

Everyone in the Bart knew that King and Potts were doing the scoring for Middle. More defense on them would have been nice.

I thought we did a good job getting Walters in foul trouble. That was my game plan going in. He only had 2 points, 3 rebounds in just 18 minutes. Its their other guys that did a good job keeping Coke from getting another 8-10 points.

I'm not hugely disappointed because I thought we did fairly well given how few real games we have played compared to MTSU. (Real competition, not bottom feeders)

The good thing about Cokley was even though he was taken out of his game with double teams, he contributed by being the lead assist man with 5 assists.

Obviously attendance is bad because we've been inconsistent/bad for years. Get a win streak going and attendance picks up. Lose a bunch of games and attendance goes down. Lose games to bad teams and attendance goes way down. That's just how it works with your normal sports fans. UAB has about 3-4k actual UAB basketball fans at games.

The rest of the fans that show up when we are winning are just bandwagon want-to-feel-good fans. But that's athletics in general

To turn bandwagoners into life long fans you've gotta win consistently and not crap the bed on the big stages. We had a chance to do so after the Iowa State win, but we haven't done much else in years

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

(12-30-2017 09:07 PM)jthrashr Wrote:  Two guys scored 78% of MTSU's points. I'm no genius, but seems like we probably should have done more to stop them.

Yep! And what really burns me up is that King is from Memphis and Potts is from Athens, Alabama. Bartow would probably have chuckled over that one!

If we'd of hit all of our layups, dunks and free throws, this game was ours. Sometimes I think this team needs a psychologist more than a defensive coach. But we still really need a defensive coach. The zone especially left Potts magically open to shoot at will.

(12-31-2017 10:46 AM)grendelson138 Wrote:  If we'd of hit all of our layups, dunks and free throws, this game was ours. Sometimes I think this team needs a psychologist more than a defensive coach. But we still really need a defensive coach. The zone especially left Potts magically open to shoot at will.

Hell if we had scored more points than they had, we would have won.

Difference in the game is Perry's missed dunk that led to a run-out dunk by MTSU. There's four points. It seemed like Perry was too jacked up to be playing his former team.

I've noticed Perry is wildly inconsistent. He will have a fantastic game followed by a horrible game. He scored 15 last game. Five last night. Prior to 15, he had one. Due a good game Thursday.

We never offered Potts. I know his coach was trying to get Haase to look at him. I don’t blame him for going off on us again.

MTSU is about to pick up Parker from Madison Academy too. Who doesn't want a 6'8" small forward that shot 40% from 3 and averaged 18 ppg his senior year while playing second fiddle to the #1 player in the state for 2 years ?

Us apparently.

(12-31-2017 04:21 PM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  We never offered Potts. I know his coach was trying to get Haase to look at him. I don’t blame him for going off on us again.

Well that was a huge mistake by Haase for sure.

(12-31-2017 04:21 PM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  We never offered Potts. I know his coach was trying to get Haase to look at him. I don’t blame him for going off on us again.

Potts’ fade away jumper is hard to stop.

Potts does not look the part. But after watching him punish us for 4 years now, he certainly plays the part.

I think the signing of Calhoun was in part to help with signing other in state players, most of which we missed on. We did get Lee & Sullivan.

One of the recruiting services that year said Calhoun was the best shooter in the state. They must not have seen Potts.

And, if I recall, he was not Giddy in high school.