55-51 ODU at the U5. It's a small thing (it's not actually a small thing) but there should be no reason why we have all of our TOs left. When you know 3 of your players are going to play 37+ minutes (likely 40), you need to call TOs to strategically give them rest. Even if you're not comfortable doing so in the 1st half because you don't know if you'll need them later, the math has to change once you get to the 3rd and 4th quarters.

For as good as we have been responding in this 4th quarter, the effort on contested balls has been atrocious. I don't know if it's that ODU wants this game more, or if we're just exhausted (which is entirely self-inflicted), but they are certainly playing with more fire. 59-53 ODU w/ the ball.

By my count that's already 5+ loose balls/deflections/offensive rebounds by ODU that have either saved them or won them possession. I'd say it's led to 8-10 points.

(01-20-2022 03:28 PM)elw4796 Wrote:  McCurry into the game for Bellamy and immediately gets a BLOB bucket.

What's a "BLOB" bucket?

Full blown disaster mode now. Turnover off a lazy inbounds pass, ODU offensive rebound, then Swayze travels after getting the inbounds pass. Again, I have no clue if it's fatigue at this point or just poor coaching. But this is another stretch of 5 minutes in which we've thrown away a game's worth of good effort.

Jackson with 2 FTs and Fisher with a steal and layup. 61-57 ODU with 2:27 left. Bellamy shooting two FTs after a silly ODU foul.

And she misses both.

A difficult ODU jumper and then a Swayze charge (a bad call but to be fair we don't deserve that call). 63-57 ODU w/ the ball and 1:45 left.

Rice TO. 65-57 ODU. They've made the plays that you need to make to win games, we have fallen flat on our face at almost every opportunity.

ODU wins 69-59. Lot you could write about this game. On the positive side of things, this was better than our other conference games. ODU is probably a top-100 team and I thought we played them evenly for most of the game. Bellamy had a really good game, Fisher came up huge on multiple occasions in the second half, etc. But on the flip side, we gave up 29 points in the 4th quarter and we were significantly out-efforted in the 4th quarter. And that's likely a function of some combination of fatigue, the composition of the team, and not being prepared. I mentioned it above, but at the 5 minute mark of the 4th quarter in a game where three of your players end up playing the entire game, you simply cannot have all of your TOs left. It was clear throughout the 4th quarter that we were beginning to tire. At that point, start calling strategic TOs to get some extra rest. It's a cart before the horse situation. You don't want to call TOs in case you're winning and you need them late in the game. But you're never going to get to that point if your team has no energy left. And that's exactly what happened. No different than auto-benching somebody with multiple fouls and losing the lead. I don't think this was as big of a gaff by Edmonds as benching Jackson against WKU, but I also just don't understand it.

Some positives, some negatives. But the biggest issue of all is Gooden's injury. If she's on crutches, she's going to be out for a while. That means we're down to 7 bodies, 6 if you assume McCurry won't ever play more than a couple minutes (again, another mistake by Edmonds...doesn't matter if she's not good enough to play, you need her on the court to give others rest). It's not out of the question that we might get to the end of the season with 5 healthy players. And like I mentioned before, I really don't think it's fair to ask Bokunewicz to player 40 minutes every night. Players want to play, I get that. But by not properly filling out the roster, you've essentially created a situation where you need her to play every minute, very much risking reinjury. That bothers me, probably more so than being upset that we're losing because of roster management I disagree with.

I didn't watch the game but we shot a better FG and 3PT FG percentage and virtually the same FT percentage than ODU.

Our problem is the outrageous number of turnovers.. In the game against WKU last week we had 19 turnovers (many of which led to really easy layups on the other end) and against Marshall we had 23 turnovers...today we improved to only 19 turnovers..as long as we give away 20 possessions a game, we won't be very successful.

The 4Q domination by the opposition has become a consistent pattern with this team. We've been leading or tied after 3Q in almost every game this year. Clearly, a major cause for this has been the extremely short bench and the need for our starters to play 35+ minutes per game.

Sorry, but as I've said before, this is on Edmonds, who refused to work the transfer portal (using the reasoning of not wanting to adversely effect team culture and chemistry) despite what we all knew was a dramatically depleted roster, not to mention still very much in the midst of COVID-related issues. I'm thrilled that we have a really, really good recruiting class coming in next year, but the situation this year is unfair to the current players. Yes, injuries have made it worse, but it was not a good situation roster-wise to begin the season, and injuries have to be taken into account when building a roster.

Carl Pierre is really hurting team chemistry on the men’s side!

Good game, the short bench did you in. Sorry to see Gooden go down. Looked like a rolled ankle from where I was sitting. Hope it isn't bad.

Maybe Edmonds needs a student tryout and try to find one or two players in the student body.

(01-20-2022 07:45 PM)Texasowl Wrote:  Maybe Edmonds needs a student tryout and try to find one or two players in the student body.

A couple of halfway decent walk ons could give the starters some valuable rest minutes.