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Evan Dudley

WHEN our guys beat Charlotte on Saturday night, UAB will take back all the territory lost to UNT a few weeks ago. A positive for us is that Charlotte has a road trip to San Antonio Thursday night before coming home to face the Blazers on Saturday, while our guys have the whole week to heal up and concentrate on the niners.

I know it doesn’t matter now, but we are
Back inside the top 60 in both kenpom and the net rankings, just behind UNT. Maybe we can get close to 50 WHEN we get a nice win at Charlotte to close out the regular season.

It was a great win last night, and a well played game, shots just weren’t dropping. I love that we can still come close to a blow out on the road with Jelly being off. It makes us much more dangerous.

The one thing we need to work on is free throws though. A better team is going to punish us if we shoot 60%.

The games played out well for us from a seeding perspective, as well. Rice is in good position for the 6th seed. They are one game ahead of Western Kentucky and FIU, and have won both games against Western Kentucky this year. They play FIU at home on Saturday. Wku has two very tough games next week. FIU plays at la tech, which they have a solid chance to win, then as mentioned play at rice. Rice has beaten FIU once aleady and have a better overall record - I’m not sure what the tie breaker is if they end up tied and have a 1-1 H2H record. Charlotte plays at UTSA which should be a win for them and keep them ahead of rice.

Would much much prefer to play the winner of rice vs UTSA than wku, Charlotte or even FIU.

This will be a season of huge what ifs if we don’t win the conference tournament.

We’ve lost 5 games by a total of 11 points.

The only game where we got beaten badly in was the UNT game at home where jelly was held out at the last second and we just looked lost. An 11 pt margin of victory by UNT is equivalent to a 20+ margin of victory by a normal team.

We were beaten solidly by, but not completely blown out by toledo and WVU. We held leads in each of those games, and turned the ball over 22 times against toledo and 19 times against WVU. We short 61% from the ft line against WVU.

I am definitely a homer, but there hasn’t been one game we’ve lost this year where the opponent just completely outclassed us we got blown out of the water. In every loss, outside of UNT - which had its own special circumstance due to jelly being out - we have done something to ourselves to lose the game - turnovers, horrible decisions late in games, poor ft shooting, sloppy/poor decision making, techs, etc. There hasn’t been one game where I feel like if we played well we would’ve lost anyways, MAYBE at WVU is the only one.

All that to say… this team is a razor thin margin away from having FAU’s record, or better. I’ve been very hard on this team, and deservedly so at some points. We’ve played very low quality, poor IQ basketball in many games, but even with that - we are super close to being a monster of a team. This team is playing it’s best ball of the season by far, coalescing together as a cohesive unit, and I really hope that they finish the season out strong and win the conference tournament. We have the potential to win some games in March madness. If we don’t close out the season with the win in the cover tournament, we will always be wondering WHAT IF with the 2022-23 team.

I expected the team to gel sooner than they did, and be better out of the gate, but it is very good to see how they have turned the season around, and just how well we are playing right now.

Sample size of two seasons , but going forward I’m just going to assume that a team replacing half its roster with transfers/first year players isn’t going to be a true team until half way through the conference season… if then.

I think that is AK's next step in the evolution of his coaching tenure at UAB - building a team that doesn't require over half the reason to start playing good, team ball. We can't win the conference tournament every year to bail us out. If we don't this year, this season will be rightfully remembered as a failure.

I was really proud of Jemison and KJ last night. That was an incredibly physical game and they dominated the boards for long stretches. After the first 10 minutes where Sharp was killing us, they cleaned up the glass on both ends.

Also really proud of Tavin. You can tell he isn’t 100 percent but he was just a beast defensively last night.

(02-26-2023 02:59 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  I was really proud of Jemison and KJ last night. That was an incredibly physical game and they dominated the boards for long stretches. After the first 10 minutes where Sharp was killing us, they cleaned up the glass on both ends.

Also really proud of Tavin. You can tell he isn’t 100 percent but he was just a beast defensively last night.

In the first game against WKU, who primarily guarded McKnight? Was it Jelly and Gaines?

(02-26-2023 03:10 PM)KevMo4UAB Wrote:  

(02-26-2023 02:59 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  I was really proud of Jemison and KJ last night. That was an incredibly physical game and they dominated the boards for long stretches. After the first 10 minutes where Sharp was killing us, they cleaned up the glass on both ends.

Also really proud of Tavin. You can tell he isn’t 100 percent but he was just a beast defensively last night.

In the first game against WKU, who primarily guarded McKnight? Was it Jelly and Gaines?

Seemed like it. They were on an island over and over against him. We made very good adjustments in how we guarded him last night. The few times he got matched up on Jelly or Gaines one on one and started back them down, we went a double team as soon as he got near the paint.

Agree. Rice has a win vs North Texas. That win may help Rice in tie breaker situations. Rice has not had good games vs UAB this year. If we play Rice again I hope it is for the Championship. But will likely be in quarters.

It appears we are a horrendous matchup for Rice. If I could pick any team to play in the tournament, it would be them. Neither game was remotely competitive at any point. Sometimes teams are just bad matchups, and I feel like that’s the case here. I also feel like FIU is the worst low seed matchup for us. They gave us fits this season, and I just don’t want to see them again.

And looking back, if we just won 4 of those 5 close games in January, things could be so much different right now.

Rice or La Tech minus Cobe would be the most favorable matchup. FIU plays up to competition but I think we’d get past them. I reserve judgment on Charlotte until I see how we do Saturday.

I went and screwed around on Bart Torvik and flipped the MT, WKU, and FIU games to wins. We are still the 5th team out in that scenario. Ultimately, it’s not the WTF losses that hurt us this year—it’s lack of Q1/2 wins.

(02-26-2023 05:46 PM)FNblazer Wrote:  I went and screwed around on Bart Torvik and flipped the MT, WKU, and FIU games to wins. We are still the 5th team out in that scenario. Ultimately, it’s not the WTF losses that hurt us this year—it’s lack of Q1/2 wins.

That’s typically the case, and when teams in our situation get knocked out they cry about getting screwed, but the stats being used are not in our favor.