Same. We finally get a few days rest and our reward is playing on the road against the #3 team in the country…
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I made that observation a few days ago. But tonight is nothing to be down about. . . unless it’s really true that Matthews had six turnovers.
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4 for Moe, 3 for Matthews, and 3 for Simmons…in 3 minutes. Guard rotation needs to Z, MAAR, Poole. Maybe keep throwing Simmons darts at 18pt 2nd-half leads, but he is too much of a liability in competitive games. Especially with Poole’s shooting being both a direct and indirect asset for an average shooting team
edit: only other player with a TO was Z, with one TO and 5 assists.
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Overall I’m encouraged. If we can get some consistency on offense we could win every game from here.
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Missed the game but sounds like we had it right there again. I really like this group. I hope we get some props for these losses. I also hope we play this well against other teams so we don’t lose many more from here on out.
There’s a certain frustration that we hired both Illinois State assistants in August and McIntosh chose the Ducks in June. He might have chosen them anyway, but boy, a game like tonight, I think it would have helped to have a McIntosh in the rotation.
People have been encouraged by Simmons’ play recently, but, honestly, I’ve been pessimistic. I just don’t have confidence in his decision making or his knowledge of where the ball needs to go. He seems like a guy trying to play fast just to play fast as opposed to a guy in command of the offense.
Wonder how different it would be if we had McIntosh instead of Simmons. On the other hand, I have to guess that Simmons has been crucial in Z’s development, as I imagine he really pushes him in practice.
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MAAR is by far our best option to backup Z and it would give Poole more playing time to limit the guard rotation to those 3 players…Has to be obvious at this point, right?
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Where is McIntosh’s name coming from? He would have been a great fit, but that was basically an Oregon-Canada pipeline done deal. There was never anything very serious as far as I remember from any sort of mutual interest with Michigan.
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They did it for stretches tonight and have been doing it more and more.
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I definitely heard talk that we were in the mix. Might have been a GBW thing. We certainly weren’t in his final list, in the end, but I definitely thought we were under initial consideration. It’s been a long time since then, though. Have to wonder if we might have been seriously considered if he had two of his assistant coaches here, though, right?
Will have video soon, but here’s the presser transcript:
His name was thrown around because he was a positional fit. But he never visited or anything like that. Not sure how much the assistant coaches would have helped because one of them never coached him and he was leaving the program while the other was still there.
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Fair enough. He sure could have had a great stage to play on here.
Just checked and he also hasn’t been all that great at Oregon either. But basically any kid who ever played for one of the big AAU teams in Canada, probably has a good chance to end up at Oregon if they want them.
MAAR looked like his high school tape tonight.
I hold no ill will towards Jaaron Simmons but he is unfathomably bad. It honestly hurts to watch him play, he just has no sense of direction, some of the worst BBIQ I’ve ever seen.
It’s hard to believe that gaining an All-MAC grad transfer could hamper this team, but I think it has. Eli has lost his confidence, and having him sit on the bench is probably not the best way for him to regain it.
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I think one thing that’s frustrating yet encouraging is almost all of our losses were a few plays away from being wins. Almost had Purdue twice, lsu was pretty much a blown chance, and it took a huge meltdown for us to lose on the road to Ohio st ( I think we will get revenge there) this is a good team. Much better than an 8 seed imo.
I’ve watched a few of their games recently, he totally would help here. He’s a nice looking athlete, very sturdy. Oregon is a bit of a mess this year which probably isn’t helping him.
It looks like Beilein agreed on being okay if Haas went off ha:
“And Haas – (if) he scored 40 points (but) he had 20 twos, it was okay with us, but we weren’t going to give them the 3. We couldn’t do that.”
Guess that was a viable strategy to stick with.