It was the best of games, it was the worst of games, a time of hope and a time of despair. Building a 15 point lead at 7:40 in the first half again shows that this year's Cats can play excellent basketball. Not scoring for almost the next four minutes while the other team erases the lead, shows that the team still has not quite solved all problems.
Overall the team didn't play horrendous but the team did not play their best game either. I'm not sure if the game is a positive or a negative since I saw both good and bad. Texas was able to out hustle the Cats for easy points in transition which is not a positive, but the Cats were able to cause quite a few turnovers. Could not shoot free throws but shot 46% for three pointers and 47% for field goals.
I'm starting to reach the conclusion that games for the rest of the year are going to be like this one and not like the Missouri (best game of the year by the Cats) or Alabama (2nd best game) games.
Starters (Pts/Rebs/Asts/Fouls): Rodney McGruder (33/8/2/2), Jamar Samuels (14/4/2/4), Will Spradling (11/1/3/3), Thomas Gipson (11/6/1/3), Angel Rodriquez (4/1/2/4)
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Thanks, Anon.
A very up and down game in all respects. We saw one guy play sensationally (Rod). We saw one guy play, well, not so sensationally (JO). And we saw some guys who had bad half/good half (Will), bad game/great play (Tay), and good Jamar/bad Jamar.
With that kind of inconsistency, no surprise we had moments of brilliance followed by sad, years removing fallow periods.
To look at the bright side of things, I thought there were five major positives:
1) Rod continuing his run to stardom. I don’t know if he’ll put up 30+ game in and game out, but his midrange game is pretty much unstoppable. As he further develops that killer instinct (he’s well on his way) we’re going to have a Pullen-type take over player a lot sooner than most of us expected.
2) The re-emergence of Big Gip. He had a truly solid game. Given UT doesn’t have the best bigs we’ll face, but they still have some guys with size. Gip was able to use his size to his advantage and clear space. And played solid d. Really liked what he did and hopefully this catapults him the rest of the way.
3) Angel out of the doghouse. Didn’t play great, but we need him to be playing and invested to reach the most success. The start was a great touch by Frank.
4) Will broke out of his slump in the second half. Played very good defense, was aggressive on offense, and really helped the team. I hope this means he’ll continue to play that way instead of how he looked in the first half and previous couple games.
5) A win is a win. We’ll take it. Not pretty, but much better than the alternative.
yeahboozin - January 19, 2012
I think what I take from it is...
we all know on paper going into this year we should anticipate some type of issues/troubles/growing pains. But we also all know the “on paper” thing only holds up for so long, and so as reality is beginning to set in through this sample size of 5 conference games, I think we can take both the fact that this team obviously has a ways to go, yet we still can almost expect a 4th place conference finish. If the ebbs and flows of different classes in college basketball tell us anything, I think any of the struggles we have to go through this year as the Fr and 1st year starters continue to learn and adapt to big time D1 basketball, is actually a good thing. They will learn from their own mistakes. And while there’s still plenty to play for this year we seem to be setting up for some big time stuff next year. All in all, I think this is about all you can ask out of a winning basketball program. So again, if beating a team like UT leaves you with an indifferent feeling I think that in itself gives you a good gauge of exactly where we have come as a program.
GTcat - January 19, 2012
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