Purp
Active Member
Yeah, our offensive rebounding kept us in the game bc they weren't missing on their attempts so we had to get multiple attempts on many possessions just to keep pace.I didn't read the game thread, so I'm assuming this has been covered, but our best shooters missed wide open looks. Bottom line, we just didn't make enough open shots to win the game and they were hotter than ship all night. This conference is brutal, and we just had our worst shooting night of the year.
We'll bounce back, and it was good to see that our FTs actually kept us in it.
I wanted to murder the refs, btw.
I'm stunned by how consistently terrible the officiating was for both sides all night. We had 4 guys with 2 fouls with over 5 minutes to go in the 1st half and they were all critical guys. That was a huge story in the game.
Adubuike also stayed in foul trouble, but realistically could/should have fouled out in the first half. His production along with Fish given their foul trouble were impressive.
I still think the loss comes down to our 3 point defense. We are consistently slow rotating on open jump shooters and when you play a team like Kansas who can fill it up from the perimeter (that's really how they have to win big games) you have to run them off the 3 point line and contest those looks. They were physical (beyond the rules IMO) and affected our FG%, but we didn't do enough to affect their FG%. Perhaps our foul trouble had something to do with that, though.
And you're right, the irony of them missing foul shots and us making them to stay close was rich. I haven't looked at the final stats, but I think we only missed 1 all night and it may have been the first one in the game taken by Hamdy. Great night from the line.