When the world was watching football, we talked basketball.
Brad: The refs are going to take headlines from that game, and they should. It was an incorrect application of Rule 15.2.a that led to that final call. It’s a complicated rule, but there were three people being handsomely rewarded to know it, and they evidently didn’t.
But my goodness was Xavier awful.
Braydan: Super awful. The most awful ever. One positive I would say is that they weren’t completely gutless. They didn’t throw in the towel after getting punked by a crap team in the first half.
That being said, they sucked super bad. I know we like to work the ball in, but when the defense is just gonna collapse and slap the crap out of the bigs, we need to try a different look. I thought that led to a lot of dumb turnovers since we looked more flustered inside than we did sharp.
That final call was stupid, but there’s no way that guy should have a free run at the rim. There was no pressure on the ball, and we ended up giving a shot at the rim for the game. It was just awful.
Joel: Are we that one-dimensional on offense? They tripled the post and dared that miserable officiating crew to call every foul and we didn’t seem to have an answer. Going 7-21 from deep would have been a boon last year; this year it seemed like we couldn’t buy one. Then we wet down our leg from the line and turned it over like a million times. It was like watching five strangers try to play together at an open gym.
Deep breaths though. We knew missing Freemantle would hurt (though maybe not to this extent). Butler sucks, but this wasn’t home to La Salle or something. It’s a Q2 loss that feels like Q4 because they’ve been garbage and they play in a stupid barn.
Braydan: Another encouraging note to me was that we got our annual pants crapping against Butler out of our system. Better to do it now than at MSG again.
I also thought Kunk had another solid game. It wouldn’t have broken my heart to see a few more plays run to him in crunch time when Souley clearly didn’t have it and the paint was a straight up melee.
Brad: I wonder if Boum is wearing down. He’s 6-24 in the last four games behind the arc and seems just a little beaten down. He’s been playing huge minutes and at some point that’s going to tell.
Braydan: That’s definitely a possibility. I think there’s also the possibility that teams have keyed in on him more to try and limit his effectiveness. It’s seemed to me like some of his looks aren’t quite as clean as they were earlier in conference play. Teams not having to worry about Freemantle on the interior has probably led to some of that too.