[November 14, 2013] Indiana State (1-0) at Belmont (1-1)

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No, that is the obvious solution. who do you put the blame on for not switching defenses? We should have been rotating defenses to keep Belmont a little off balance. Yes, the players should have played better defensively, but it was painfully obvious that it we were not effective in man-to-man by the under 16:00 TO in the second half. Lansing is either one of two things; 1) He doesnt know how to facilitate change during the coarse of a basketball game, or 2) He is too stubborn to change his "motion offense and man-to-man defense only" mantra. Neither one of those two options are good...so I say the coach needs to increase his coaching level as do our players to get better defensively.
 

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In the long run, this game can benefit us, but only if we allow it to. It is a long season and there are going to be games like this, maybe as the season goes on, it is not a horrible thing to lose a game such as this in the second week of the season. Burn it into our memory and use it as fuel to make sure it doesn't happen again. Hopefully we just learned last night that no lead is safe, especially on the road. Now, if it becomes a pattern, well, that is a little different.

This game hurts now, hurts a lot. As the season goes on, the sting will go away and we could be better off for it.

The game on Dec. 28th (I think that is when we play Belmont again) will tell us a lot about our team. IF we come out and play well, fix our mistakes, etc and win by a decent amount, then it shows that we are developing and the players were determined to right a wrong. If we role over and die in that game, I will begin to question our teams passion/heart and determination and the season could get ugly.

Also, I did not have time to read everyones posts from last night and this morning, so if others have already posted similar thoughts, I apologize.
 
No, that is the obvious solution. who do you put the blame on for not switching defenses? We should have been rotating defenses to keep Belmont a little off balance. Yes, the players should have played better defensively, but it was painfully obvious that it we were not effective in man-to-man by the under 16:00 TO in the second half. Lansing is either one of two things; 1) He doesnt know how to facilitate change during the coarse of a basketball game, or 2) He is too stubborn to change his "motion offense and man-to-man defense only" mantra. Neither one of those two options are good...so I say the coach needs to increase his coaching level as do our players to get better defensively.

I don't remember anyone critizing the coach last year when we played zone against Wichita State and it helped us get a "W". He wasn't too stuburn then, and I don't think he looked at it and said "now that we are losing, I should switch but I just hate zone so much I will just take the loss".

Officiating played the biggest role in this game and this season so far. We gave up 74 points to Ball State and 96 to Belmont. Everyone who played last night except Moore was on the roster last year, so which is more likely,......1) our team has forgotten how to play defense and our coach doesn't remember how to teach it or 2) the emphasis on touch fouls, reach ins, hand-checks, etc has made our team gun shy about contact and the fact that they were calling EVERYTHING (except in the last five seconds) a foul last night didn't help. I think it got into our guys very early that we cannot make contact or we will foul out and it greatly changed the way we play defense.

Lansing has been here 3+ years now, does anyone really think he doesn't know how to coach defense? We all talked about how the rule change was going to impact teams early in the season, well last night you saw a really good example of it.
 
I liked Odum his Freshman year and his intensity level. However, he didn't have a good shot then and he still doesn't have a good shot in his 4th year!
His defense was average for a Division I player and it is still average at best. If you challenge him on a dribble drive, he gives way. Do you honestly believe Jake Odum is a much better player now compared to his Freshman year? I don't! And, he should be! Same thing with Manny Arop, not much improvement in his overall game. My expectation is that Gant should be a better player next year than this year.

Aaron Carter, Mike Menser, and Matt Renn are prime examples of players who made improvements each year, offensively and defensively.
I'm not swinging at air. We've had players in the past that prove my point.
 
I haven't big as big of a fan of some of our players as some others. JO is pretty good at making difficult passes but doesn't make enough easy ones. last night he drove, had the ball 2 feet from the rim and passed it. He needs to start scoring. And I don't see great D from him. Arop can make tough J's but doesn't get enough easy points and doesn't rebound nearly enough. Gant doesn't have enough fire.

I think last night we were just extremely lazy on D. And changing to a zone doesn't fix that problem.

The rule change could be part of it, but I've seen other games this year and teams aren't all scoring 90+ points.
 
I haven't big as big of a fan of some of our players as some others. JO is pretty good at making difficult passes but doesn't make enough easy ones. last night he drove, had the ball 2 feet from the rim and passed it. He needs to start scoring. And I don't see great D from him. Arop can make tough J's but doesn't get enough easy points and doesn't rebound nearly enough. Gant doesn't have enough fire.

I think last night we were just extremely lazy on D. And changing to a zone doesn't fix that problem.

The rule change could be part of it, but I've seen other games this year and teams aren't all scoring 90+ points.

I'm with you. Odum and Arop were detrimental to the team last night.

We also need to ride the hot hand more. Khristian was on fire in the first half and was yanked. You don't substitute there.
 

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I'm with you. Odum and Arop were detrimental to the team last night.

We also need to ride the hot hand more. Khristian was on fire in the first half and was yanked. You don't substitute there.

Yes, but he was due to miss. We have a lot of scorers and I think you rotate to keep them fresh. But our problem was D.
 
I'm with you. Odum and Arop were detrimental to the team last night.

You hit it right on the head. Basketball only has 5 guys on the court. Almost all teams have 2-3 players that rise above the rest and take the team to a higher level. Last night Smith was great (at least on offense) and he wasn't even a starter. Nobody else rose up to lead or carry. And it falls right on the back of our seniors because they have shown what they can do.
 
.....he was "due" to miss ? ? ? ? Take him out because he is "due" to miss .................
Now that is the way to handle a player who is having a great shooting night !
Geeeeezzzzzzzz ? ? ?
 
I think it's turning out that Gant is a tweener. He doesn't utilize his jump inside. I don't know why he couldn't front them inside and prevent the entry pass. And he doesn't go up strong and finish.
Arop and Gant each had 2 rebounds. At this point, they are both overrated and need to put it together.

Are a lot of these points due to the rule changes and players not knowing how to play D with their feet?

Gant has not gained ANY bulk muscle since arriving from THN. How in the hell does he expect to excel @ "PF" with a Hostess Twinkie body? Simply won't work...and he's he's had 2 Summer's to do something about it. Someone must've filled his head w/ BS that by getting thinner, he'd increase his QUICKNESS, thus having a distinct advantage inside. :barf:

I can't wait to see what happens to this big kid from Alabama next year...after ISU gets hold of him, Pillsbury will be knocking on our door for endorsements, and not for "Chocolate Thunder."
 
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I'm not sure how anyone can point to issues with the offense and have much of a complaint. We scored 95 points on the road, shot 50% from the field, 41% from three, 83% from the free throw line. Scoring points was not and is not our issue.

Defense, rebounding, and overall decision making are our issues so far.

No need to rehash how much Belmont's offense dominated in the second half, but we also were outrebounded by nearly 30% (32 for Belmont and 25 for ISU). In a game where hardly either team missed, having a team bring down a third more rebounds is a huge factor.

We've been an awful rebounding team for years. I have no idea why that is the case nor how we can approach fixing it, but it needs to be emphasised just as much as our deficiencies on defense. A lot of rebounding has to do with will and tenacity, and we clearly lost our edge last night.
 

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I'll guarantee this, there's never been this much chatter on this board after the first loss of the season since SycamorePride/SycamoreHoops was created.
 
Last night when I signed on to the OVC webcast, there were 493 viewers hooked into the ISU game...looked @ some of the other OVC webcasts -28, 13, etc. Clearly, a # of Tree fans were "rooted" last night...and PISSED about the loss of a 16 pt half-time lead & outcome.
 
.....he was "due" to miss ? ? ? ? Take him out because he is "due" to miss .................
Now that is the way to handle a player who is having a great shooting night !
Geeeeezzzzzzzz ? ? ?

Interesting that BS thanked you for this post. He must of missed it also.
 
Missed what? You were talking about "substituting" because a player was inevitably gonna go on a cold streak...:wacko:

Here's verbatim:

"Yes, but he was due to miss. We have a lot of scorers and I think you rotate to keep them fresh

You familiar w/ the concept of "in the zone" or "hot hand?" Why would you wanna "freshen" a HOT HAND?:thumbsdown:
 
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I wonder if Sycamorebacker isn't one of the Lansing's coaches because that is exactly what happens----we have a player get hot and we take him out!!!
What kind of basketball school of knowledge is that----if a player gets hot we better take him out because he will get cold/miss in the future! lol Craziest thing Ive ever heard on here.
Can u image back in the dayz--calling Bird over to the sidelines when he is on burning the nets up and saying--Larry --gotta take u out now because u will be missing shots before too long and I want to keep u fresh! lol
 
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I know we are joking but seriously speaking, I don't think we lost because we didn't score enough points.
If you have to question substitutions because they hurt our offense and held Smith to 28, that's a stretch.
 
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We virtually all agree on this point...

One thing I noticed about the ISU's 2nd half offensive effort- we weren't nearly as aggressive in taking RISKS, falling into the traditional ISU death trap of "playing NOT to lose" v. "playing to win." How many games did we lose LAST YEAR because of this? During the 1st half, we PUSHED the action and had a NO FEAR attitude. Not sure why the change.
 
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We virtually all agree on this point...

One thing I noticed about the ISU's 2nd half offensive effort- we weren't nearly as aggressive in taking RISKS, falling into the traditional ISU death trap of "playing NOT to lose" v. "playing to win." How many games did we lose LAST YEAR because of this? During the 1st half, we PUSHED the action and had a NO FEAR attitude. Not sure why the change.

There might be a tendency to set on a lead, but we did score 46 in the 2nd half. Belmont got the momentum and they may have been playing better D too. Remember, Gant didn't play much the first half, so our lineup was different in the 2nd half.
You're right, though. It might help to come out with a press to jumpstart the 2nd half.
 
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