we shot 39.3%
They shot 68.8%
They out rebounded us by 18
End of story.
You could not beat a good high school team playing that poorly while the other team plays so well.
I'm hoping for a miracle tonight.

Those are 2 very good and telling points. They shot a higher % because we played crappy defense; they outrebounded us because we didn't want the ball more than them. Both defense and rebounding are effort. Hammonds doesn't show a ton of effort on his best nights. We lacked the effort on the road necessary to compete in this game. These kids clearly don't understand the amount of effort needed to win conference games. Crean has to get that across.

Yes, that's all true.
Why did we shoot so poorly? Easy - we took bad shots. Why did we take bad shots? Easy - we didn't work for good ones. No ball movement, no movement without the ball, no attempt to create off the dribble. Just lackadaisical.
Why did they shoot so well? Easy - like Monk said no effort on defense.
Why did they emasculate us on the boards? Easy - no effort to establish position.
We showed no hustle getting to loose balls, no energy to make anything happen. Just a bunch of lolligagging and sleepwalking.
We played like a team who wanted to get beat by 30 points by a below average team.

IMHO, we lost to MS for the same reason we lost to KY. Their kids are better than we are and we can't produce consistently.

Rebounding has been an issue all season, as I have watched. I attended the SMU game and that game went to 3 OT's, only reason is because of rebounding. IF we could have rebounded the ball, we win that game in regulation in comfortable fashion.

Another issue to me is Edwards. The kid is great, I love his passion and ability, but he is shooting about 30% on the 3's this year, and only that good thanks to getting hot in Maui in the second half against MSU. He continues to shoot them instead of driving to the basket. The last three games on the road, I think he has scored 4 points combined in the first half. He ends up scoring close to 20 in all those games but a lot of it is in garbage time to pad the stats. He simply has to drive to the basket as that creates so much for out other players. You can tell teams are saying, we are NOT going to let that kid beat us and that plan is working because he is settling for some bad shots. But it is not just on Ant, he needs help and also we have to play better defense and as mentioned rebound-that is going to have be a total TEAM effort.

All is not lost though, there is NO DOUBT we have played the toughest schedule to start league play of anyone. We still have a lot of home games left (the UK loss at home really hurts) and we have road games that will allow us to steal a few down the stretch. What needs to happen now is hold serve at home-no more home losses-we do have Auburn coming to town but the rest of the games are certainly winnable. Then we have to steal two games on the road, minimum of one, and we finish 500 in conference which I think gets us a bid because of Ant alone, and that will require us to win at least 6 of our final 10, which is something the committee looks at as well-we have 6 of our last 11 at home. In fact, of our last 11, we have 6 at home, and road games at A&M, Vandy and South Carolina, all of which are certainly winnable games. We also have a road game at Missouri next week who is 1-5 in SEC play.

The SEC is generally considered the worst of the Power 5 conferences this year, so I doubt more than 4 or 5 teams get bids. Therefore, we're going to have to finish better than .500 in the league. When usually a single game can mean the difference in a couple places in the final league standings (say, 5th vs 7th), losses like MSU are very likely to come back to bite you. Kinda like that pathetic loss to USC in football.

You might be right Red, but I still think the NCAA LOVES to have players like Ant in the tourney so if we can just get close, we have a shot. If we hold serve at home and we have lost only to UK at home this year, that gives us 8 wins, then get two road wins and we have 10-8 record which I really think gets us in. Bottom line though, we have to play against everyone else like we have against UK/Tenn, and we can win some games. Play lazy and sloppy like against AU and MSU, we have no shot to make the tourney.

Haney said:

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Bottom line though, we have to play against everyone else like we have against UK/Tenn, and we can win some games. Play lazy and sloppy like against AU and MSU, we have no shot to make the tourney.

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I agree there completely.