re: 2015-16 Men's & Women's BB I WBB vs. Syracuse - L 72-80

It's amazing to me still how good we are and how bad we still get beat down by UConn.

Amazing few years for the women's team. I knew we would be good, but that's just unbelievable

We are good for the SEC right now. The SEC isn't what it used to be, and the few really good teams (UT, LSU, Texas A&M, UK perhaps) are not at their best they've been in the recent past.

USC just doesn't have the talent depth right now to compete with a UConn or Notre Dame. I know we had the winning shot to beat ND and play UConn for the NC last season in the FF, but that USC team is actually a better team than this one unfortunately.

Players like Cuevas, White, and Imovbioh were supposed to have much better seasons offensively to at least fill the losses of Welch and Ibiam, if not surpass them, but they have not met expectations thus far. So we've actually digressed to where we basically depend on 3 players - Wilson, Mitchell, and Coates - to provide the lion's share of offense for the team. That's back to the 29-5 days of 2013-14 when all we had was Mitchell, Welch, and either Coates or Ibiam rotating and scoring for us.

In that season, the 5 losses we had were to the top 4 opponents on our schedule that season, because those opponents had depth and talent and coaching to isolate our few scorers, and make our non-scorers who play all game long to win the games for us. And because they couldn't, we went 2-5 against our toughest opponents that season, with the 2 wins coming against UK in the regular season (we would lose to UK in the SECT).

UConn can put 5 scorers on the floor against anyone at any time typically, and they typically have 2-3 on the bench that can come in and score 10+ pts if it's needed. Because of this great depth they can spread the floor and just blast you offensively all game long, and it's very hard for opponents to defensively game-plan against them and isolate and contain anyone, because others can make them pay for trying it.

Opponents can isolate our team and cause us to go into scoring droughts for long stretches every game. We have to buckle down in every game and fiercely battle to pull games out with comfortable leads. UConn sits their starters down after 3 qtrs up by 40 or 50 pts.

Until we can recruit talent like UConn does every cycle and not just luck out with one class, we'll be like the other teams battling for 2nd place....

Beating the everloving shite out of UTK makes living here a helluva lot easier.

Then again, Big Orange Nation has their attention solidly elsewhere.

Now that was an arse beating. We shot 52% FG's and 40% from 3pt's.

Anyone else notice that backboard slam Cobb threw down last night? It's like he was ricocheting the thing downwards off the backboard from up high.

Silva had a nice no-counter put back last night as well.

I like the fact that Martin is letting Carrera take his shots even when he's cold. I hope he worked his way out of the slump last night.

MSU is going to be a touch match-up on the road for us.

I thought he played pretty well last night, except for the fact that he sucks at shooting. I can't remember the last time he hit a three this year.

quote:

---

I can't remember the last time he hit a three this year.

---

tater game in Greenville was his last made 3P shot (1 for 1). PJ started the season 6 for 12 from 3-pt range thru the Lipscomb game Nov 27. he's only taken 18 total in SEC play with 9 games of 1 or no attempts. he's done a nice job driving to the basket and getting looks in the lane even with opposing defenses leaving him wide open from deep. he's shooting 46.9% inside the arc.

his 6 assists, 2 t/o against UTK was his best showing in SEC play so far. he's also made 5 of his last 6 FT, including a couple of "and 1's".

I hate our team on the road.

Can't believe I stayed at home to watch both instead of going out to the ballpark today.