The horror...the whistles....my god the whistles.....

Absolutely agree, it was a ridiculous call, and it stopped us cold. The refs ruined the game – why are Big East referees so schizophrenic?? They can never decide whether to call it loose or tight, so they go back and forth and the players can never adjust.

I liked the game, though. These guys showed us, for one nice stretch in the first half, what they can do, and that’s pretty impressive. As Bilas noted, they were making a very good team look just awful.

And kudos to Samardo! Maybe now people will get off his back. (Well, fans might get off his back; the opposing team will probably continue to live there.)

Shooting. As usual. I’m so sick of seeing UL throw up bricks over and over. Are we ever going to have a team that can shoot??? Forget the refs, if we could convert on turnovers we would have been up 30 in the first half.

And now samardo’s stepping his game up and noone will get him the ball.

Our perimeter guys shoot well when they are patient, especially when the 3s come from inside-out passing. Not so much when we are impatiently jacking them up without trying to get the ball inside.

Of course, giving up 92 points is also a big problem, but (a) if we had executed early in the second half, I don’t think Nova could have gotten near that total, and (b) the constant whistles made it awfully difficult to play defense. Take away aggressive D and make it a shooting match, and Nova is always likely to beat us.

This game really pissed me off, which I suppose explains why I’m posting about it 2 hours later.

ie, the pass from the guards to the 3 or the 4 to break the press.

but i disagree – we made that pass several times. problem is, once we make it, we don’t have anyone that can do anything it with it from those spots. last year that pass was going to TWill or E5, with samuels often posting up in iso. now that pass is going to delk, kuric, swop, or buckles, and while those guys give a lot in the way of intangibles and nitty-gritties, none of the 4 is exactly a playmaker.

Another Top 25 opponent, and this one doesn’t have Scottie Reynolds. Of course, they do have an enormous home-court advantage, but we’ve won in our last two trips there. If we win at Pitt, we can right the ship. But we do have to start beating some Top 25 opponents soon — those W. Carolina and Charlotte losses have to be neutralized somehow.

And to me the key to understanding it lies not in the officiating — which was awful — but in a particular series when Nova couldn’t inbound the ball. It took them five tries. They couldn’t complete a pass; our guys were everywhere and getting their hands on each attempted pass.

But we couldn’t catch the ball. We couldn’t take advantage of all that tremendous, tremendous effort. A couple of times Jerry in particular kind of nonchalanted his efforts to handle the ball, attempting to catch it with one hand on one occasion and simply fumbling it out of bounds on another. The result? For all that effort we didn’t score a point. They finally got the thing in bounds, went quickly to the right corner and drained a three to close the lead to 10. It was mostly downhill after that.

Someone needs to convince our guys that we will score a lot more if we push the ball INSIDE. We are at best a mediocre three point shooting team. And when we hit several at the beginning it is a given we will shoot 30 or more for the game and hit less than 28%. The worst thing we can do offensively is hit three’s early. We fall in love with a very fickle shot.

I don’t know how anyone can take anything away from a game where numerous starters on both sides had to ride the pine becasue their shadow touched an opposing player.
I can’t talk today and i’m in a foul mood. I don’t care about losing a game, what i do care about is paying what i shell out for tickets to watch a ft shooting competition and 3 dickheads act like their what i came to see. I can’t count how many times the ref with no angle what-so-ever made the call. And this will sound like excessive bitching (too late for the warning?) but it is a flipping joke when refs change the way they call a game because a coach has a tissy on the sideline.

Hat’s off to reynolds though. Played most of the game and somehow managed to get 1 foul in all that bullshittery. It was nova’s night, every loose ball bounced their way.

I’m also proud of Siva. I told my friend when sosa went out we’d be lucky to score again until he was back in, but Siva played very unfreshman like when called on in this game. Smardo is also starting to step it up.

Before the year started i predicted Jerry would be this teams obannon. Larry, I sincerely apologize and will never ever again take for granted or minimalize what you accomplished your senior year here.

Starting to feel a lot like ‘06-’07.

The game plan every game seems to be pound the ball inside to Sam Sam. Every game I see entry passes to the post deflected and/or intercepted. We are not a good passing team. The entry pass is much more difficult than most seem to think. I saw guys trying to feed SS the ball, but then pass off when they couldn’t get a good angle on the pass. A lot of credit goes to Nova for denying the passes to the post, but I think we were our biggest obstacle.

Nova, is no.4 in the nation…but I think that is a team we match up really well with. To have them down 17 at home in front of a wild crowd and lose is devastating. Maybe its just me, but Nova just seems so much more beatable than UConn, Cuse, and maybe even Gtown. They key from here on out is we have to win the games against the middle of the pack BE teams..( Notre Dame, Cincy, Seton Hall, Marquette…Pitt although they are better than middle of the pack)
Call me Debbie Downer but that could end up being a season changing game in terms of a negative outcome. We shall see how they bounce back on Sat, but I dont have a good feeling.