I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[Wayne23]

It does seem to suddenly shift. They're calling nothing and then suddenly the whistles don't stop, or they're calling everything and then suddenly no more calls. Not so unlike the real world. I do think there are more calls here than in Div. I men's games but I'm probably not going to compile data to prove it.

[PointGuard]

Jumped into the forums with not much time to spare...started reading your game report and got involved in the game...damn why is the clock going so fast?...thought about skipping to the end to find out who won...look up at the clock and it's not so late as i thought...has time stopped?...continued my read...will this game never end?...5 point lead in OT...done deal...noooooo...how many times can this game swing back and forth?...is there no clock?...can just imagine the coach almost EATING his blanket...is this going to be "the miracle on the court"?...noooooooo...can't they put more time back on the clock?

I'm EXHAUSTED!!!!!!!!!!

Nice double double by Brown (you're welcome for my loan to you of him).

Your A/TO ratio was great...wish my team could do that.

[CoachC]

Jumped into the forums with not much time to spare...started reading your game report and got involved in the game...damn why is the clock going so fast?...thought about skipping to the end to find out who won...look up at the clock and it's not so late as i thought...has time stopped?...continued my read...will this game never end?...5 point lead in OT...done deal...noooooo...how many times can this game swing back and forth?...is there no clock?...can just imagine the coach almost EATING his blanket...is this going to be "the miracle on the court"?...noooooooo...can't they put more time back on the clock?

I'm EXHAUSTED!!!!!!!!!!

Nice double double by Brown (you're welcome for my loan to you of him).

Your A/TO ratio was great...wish my team could do that.

Brown played 31 minutes in that game, so don't expect to get much out of him in practice this week.

I refuse to let the guys have fried chicken for their pre-game dinner now.

[CoachC]

The Spartans are a perimeter oriented team with a deep bench. Their marquis win was a road victory over then #23 Marshall which has vaulted them into the national rankings, a rarity for teams from the MEAC. Needless to say if we could pull our first win tonight it would give us a HUGE boost of confidence. Having a ranked team come into our place gave a boost to ticket sales. As of game time I'm told over 1400 tickets had been sold, which still leaves Paul Porter Arena mostly empty, but even though they are coming to see the Spartans, I hope they leave here talking about us.

Practice has been spirited this week after the game with IUPUI, and I hope the energy is there for the game as well.

Sheals ROM is still pretty limited because of the shoulder, and although dressed, it is doubtful he'll play tonight. Donald Moore may get some minutes tonight and I hope he makes good use of them. Bonney will start tonight in place of Williams so that Larry is fresh coming off the bench to spell Brown.

We forge an 8-0 lead at the first media timeout, and I see people in the stands looking at each other and scratching their heads.

Brown picks up his 2nd personal at 13:19.. something we can't afford to have happen tonight without Sheals. Insert Brown back in at the 4:19 to give Williams a much needed breather and hope he can avoid his 3rd personal.
We put Sheals in for the last 14 seconds of the half to avoid further foul trouble.

Losing Brown for much of the half hurt us on the defensive boards allowing them 7 offensive rebounds and a 6-2 advantage on 2nd chance points. The turnover problem returned as well, as we turned the ball over 9 times in the half. We held them to 33% shooting from the field though to keep it close and at the half we trail 32-33. Bonney and Evans each have 2 personals as well as did Moore in only 4 minutes. We are missing having Sheals off the bench tonight and may have to play some 1-3-1 in the 2nd half to protect our front line.

Evans picks up his 3rd 24 seconds into the half. This is the first game really where we've had to deal with any real foul trouble. Brown picks up his 3rd at 18:13 and this is getting serious. Bonney gets his 3rd at 16:56 and I start looking down the bench. At 13:11 Williams picks up number 2 and I get T'd. Hated to do it with a 4 point lead, but this is ridiculous and I have to protect my players. Even sagging in a 1-3-1 zone they are calling our guys for sweating too much. Bonney picks up his 4th at 7:41

With 1:33 to go we get a 3 from Lemeke out of a TO to tie the game at 63. After a stop Woods hits a pair of free-throws for a two point lead with 38 to go. Can we get one more stop? Their point drives the baseline and Lemeke trying to draw the charge gets called for a block and their point scores his first two points of the game on a shot that did everything but come out. We knew they were trying to go to their 3, Tenys and West did a good job keeping it out of his hands. What do you do? They miss the freethrow but we fail to block out from the 1 spot and they get a back door 4 to take a 67-65 lead with :16. We throw the ball away before I can call a time out in the frontcourt, they cover up and we lose another heart breaker. I give one of the officials an earful after the game, and I'll probably get fined, but I don't care. We made some mistakes but I felt we got robbed in this one.

Final score: 65-67

We were killed on the boards in this one with most of our bigs in foul trouble and Sheals not available (24-38, 9-17) for a 32-18 disadvantage on second chance points, but we played our best defense of the season holding them to 35.7 percent shooting for the game. The unfortunate TO by Lemeke was only our 2nd of the half. We shot 44% for the game, but were much better than that for most of of the contest. We only turned them over 9 times in the game, largely because of having to avoid man in the 2nd half and having to be too soft in the Amoeba when we went to it. The effort was there though as the final score indicates, and dammit we should have won.

The lockerroom not as cheerful this time. The losing is getting old, and they felt they were going to get this one. I told them with the improvements they've shown the last 2 games, the wins are going to come, and they need to keep their heads up.

Woods led us again with 24 points, and although we got good effort from everyone else, especially at the defense end, with Brown limited to 6 pts in 14 minutes because of foul trouble no one else was able to get hot enough for us to have a 2nd go to guy at our end of the court and it hurt. They were able to make Woods earn all of his points on just 8 for 23 shooting. Having Evans available for more than 23 minutes might have helped, because he's usually a very good 2nd or 3rd option. His foul trouble hurt us almost as much as Brown's.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still very faint.

[CoachC]

12/5: Instead of building up that we lost by just 2 points on Saturday night to a nationally ranked team, the pimply kid with the bad haircut puts out a headline in the student newspaper that reads "Hapless Dogs Fall to 0-6".

[Wayne23]

You're coming SO CLOSE. Sometimes the kids need to win one to prove to themselves that they can. When they do things start to get better. Hope it's soon!

[PointGuard]

Two excruciatingly close losses! Your towel must be in shreds.

Foul troubles were a killer in this one. Reminds me of the song:

"Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born"

But, the team is right on the cusp so the wins will come.

[CoachC]

My hiring came so late we were unable to get unable to secure a game with a DI opponent for this date. I'll be making a point to never schedule a DII opponent in-season in the future, but it is what it is. To make matters worse this is a DII team we lost to in our first exhibition. Score didn't matter then, but a loss to them tonight would be a big blow to our guys. On the upside, playing these guys again will give us a chance to evaluate how far we've come in the last couple of months.

We didn't know anything about these guys when we played them in exhibition, but now we know they are very perimeter oriented and play almost exclusively 3-2 zone.

Sheals looked fine in practice the last couple days and appears to have his ROM back so will be available tonight and close to 100%.

Our smallest crowd yet. If they weren't so spread out, I could probably count them.

We began the game struggling for the first 6 minutes against the zone and turning the ball over regularly. I called timeout and asked them when they were planning to start playing? Offensively we were much better than that, although are defense continued to be porous. Gregg Porter scored 8 points for us in his first significant playing time of the season. Gilchrist did not play at all and will have to earn his way back into the rotation. Bonney did an excellent job finding the seams of the zone. After a pitifully slow start, we did wind up shooting 47% for the half. The defense has to be much better in the 2nd half although we did turn them over 12 times

At the half we trail 35-37.

We shot 50% for the game against their zone, and turned them over 19 times on 10 steals. Unfortunately we turned the ball over 18 times ourselves, and other than the steals out of the Amoeba we had almost no stops out of either the man-to-man or zone. In the second half, the few times we might have gotten a stop, we let them rebound and shoot until they scored.

In the end, an embarrassing 73-87 loss to a Div II team for the lowest low thus far in a season full of low points. I don't even know what to say to our guys. We don't have any high school teams on the schedule for them to try and beat.

The one positive was the play of Gary Potter who will be part of the rotation moving forward. Feeley was horrible off the bench and will probably be soon joining Gilchrist as a spectator.

I've made the decision to forget about the Amoeba Zone for now, and see if we can get these guys to understand even the most rudimentary basics of man to man defense. We will also be shortening the bench further. The 7 or 8 guys we have that give us consistent efforts are going to have to play even more minutes than they already do. Rob Woods may not come off the floor again until he graduates. I let them know they are in for some grueling conditioning drills for the next couple of weeks.

[CoachC]

12/8 The pimply kid with the bad haircut and the halitosis wrote an editorial today, the gist of which was that the Bulldogs should consider pulling out of Div. I.

[Wayne23]

Don't know about you but chewing the blanket wouldn't do it for me. I'd be biting my own forehead.