Sorry for the couple hour delay. I needed sometime to collect my thoughts after watching that abortion of a game.

1. Ryan Evans played as bad of a game as I’ve seen in my years watching this team. He was a black hole on offense, loose with the ball, made some laughable mistakes, missed some easy shots and was garbage at the line. If Evans misses the team bus and stays in Madison, we win this game. I honestly think we might be to the point where Bo needs to pull out some tapes of Dennis Rodman and say to Evans “This is your role. You will rebound, defend and shoot uncontested layups. If someone passes the ball you will move it away quickly. You are offensive option #5.”

2. Tre should obviously be writing out a Valentine’s Day card thanking Evans for overshadowing his horrendous play. He just dominated the ball far too much, had his typical week turnovers and really  quarterbacked the team into some horrible possessions down the stretch. I like that he feels like he can make the play, but at some point you need to give up the rock. The last possession of regulation was obviously terrible. It was almost like he had a little bubble over his head saying “I am taking the shot”. I realize we don’t have a ton of great options for creating, but he just needs to have a better feel for the offense.

3. Certainly Dekker was great in the second half and probably would have had 3 more points had his buddy Tre not had blinders on in transition at a time where Dekker was on fire. He did commit a cardinal sin with maybe 2-3 minutes left of picking up his dribble late in the shot clock like 30-feet from the hoop, leading to Tre taking a bad shot. As we’ve talked about before, he’s also much better than his senior teammates with regards to control of the ball and his body around the hoop.

4. Again, our senior leaders were not shot makers. Early in the game Bruiser had multiple chances to put an early dagger in the Gophers and came up empty. Berggren also had a wide open look on a key possession late that would have likely sealed the game (would have put us up 5 with like 1:00 to play) and came up short. Berggren missed another key one in overtime. Again, I don’t know what to say here. You’re seniors coming back to your home state. Get the job done.

5. The Bruiser turnover was inexcusable and he knew it. It was a Basketball 101 mistake at the key point in the game. No need for any more discussion.

6. The Hollins who kicks his foot out on threes deserves to end up with a broken ankle. It’s a bush league play. Any decent coach is going to tell you to just focus on making the shot and not go for the cheap foul. In all honesty, it probably leads to more misses than it does foul calls anyway; so maybe he should keep it up.

7. At one point in the first half, Minnesota had played 15 minutes of basketball, made 5 total shots and had given us either “the woof” or “the staredown” after three of them. And Gopher fan wonders why this team never wins anything of consequence. I’m pretty sure part of the answer can be found with the way they spurt in their pants after 2 made baskets.

8. Certainly our defense was amazing tonight and gave us every chance to win this game. It’s hard to state how good we were on that end. Great effort by everyone.

9. If you throw out everything I listed above, we still have a great chance to win the game, if we just make 1 shot in our least 8-9 possessions. Several of the possessions were not great, but there were a couple where we just needed a reasonable shot to fall and we would have had the game 100% in our control. It was almost like the basketball gods said “You’ve done so many dumb  things that we’re not going to reward you, even when you do something decent.”

10. This team is already on pace to accomplish more than I figured and maybe have certainly had a ton of breaks at the end of games. This one stings because it was there for the taking, but maybe they were just due for this.

stlbadger wrote: ETR would you switch Marshall / Jackson's minutes? #1 should have happened many, many games ago.

EricTheeRed wrote:

10. This team is already on pace to accomplish more than I figured and maybe have certainly had a ton of breaks at the end of games. This one stings because it was there for the taking, but maybe they were just due for this.

BelmontBucky45 wrote: It really is hard not to think about what this team could have been with Gasser.  We just have way to inconsistent, and many times, horrible PG play.  The MSU game and this one should have been W's.

EricTheeRed wrote:

stlbadger wrote: ETR would you switch Marshall / Jackson's minutes? #1 should have happened many, many games ago.

I would certainly give Marshall more minutes, if Tre continues to over-handle the ball.

The problem is that Marshall sometimes has a little "dribble and go nowhere" in him too.

1. Ryan Evans played as bad of a game as I’ve seen in my years watching this team. He was a black hole on offense, loose with the ball, made some laughable mistakes, missed some easy shots and was garbage at the line. If Evans misses the team bus and stays in Madison, we win this game. I honestly think we might be to the point where Bo needs to pull out some tapes of Dennis Rodman and say to Evans “This is your role. You will rebound, defend and shoot uncontested layups. If someone passes the ball you will move it away quickly. You are offensive option #5.”

EricTheeRed wrote:

stlbadger wrote: ETR would you switch Marshall / Jackson's minutes? #1 should have happened many, many games ago.

I would certainly give Marshall more minutes, if Tre continues to over-handle the ball.

The problem is that Marshall sometimes has a little "dribble and go nowhere" in him too.

bkybgr wrote: I thought Bruiser's charge was a block because his upper body was still sliding toward the defender. That makes the sideline mistake somewhat of a wash.

How about Frank giving the pump fake and driving the lane. Good body control for the big guy even though he didn't finish (I thought he was bumped).

What Evans should realize is that when he gets the ball in the post low, or drives the lane, the defense collapsing makes other players open. If he passes up an okay shot it would often give someone else a high percentage shot. Probe, see if you can get the defender out of position, pump fake, but if it isn't any easy look, pass it up.

Take away the poor free throw shooting this year, the terrible turnovers going the other way for easy buckets, and some questionable shot selection, and this team is pretty stinking good. Yeah, I know, that's a lot of stuff. Put another way, if you could throw in and experienced guard such as Gasser and play Dekker more now that he's gained some experience, that'd be a heck of a squad.

badgerwatcher wrote: Missed the game but is Jackson being taught in game time how to become a point guard?  I think he has the most potential of the canidates.  Weird playing for 1st place in the conference.

LANI01 wrote: 3.  Eric, you've been strangely quiet on the subject of how Dekker is being used.  That's unlike you.

panama74 wrote: While we're talking about Jackson's turnovers, how about all of the times in recent games that he's handed the ball to the other team only to have them miss a lay up on the other end? It's getting ridiculous.

EricTheeRed wrote:

LANI01 wrote: 3.  Eric, you've been strangely quiet on the subject of how Dekker is being used.  That's unlike you.

I sorta stopped because it's been gone over enough.

If I were coach, Dekker would play 30+ minutes per game and be told that he has a 100% green light.

My opinion on his defense is that he's good enough and we need more scorers.

I do think his teammates recognize his talents and like him pretty well... but everyone is not 100% all in on him taking over the offense.

I can honestly say that if you took every Ryan Evans possession tonight and gave them to Sam and said "shoot the ball when you get 5 feet inside half court"... we would have scored more total points