Mitch loves his stretch 5s. Byriel can occasionally hit 3s.
Lee is just missing a lot of shots these past few games - teams are grabbing and bumping him every possession and refs are mostly letting it go.
Season’s pattern of the Tiger D looking much better as the game wears on is holding up. Loyola looking a bit frustrated now, but a nice post spin move gets them a bucket.
PU struggling with Loyola shot-blocking prowess near the rim.
Peters ties it with his first 3! Oh boy.
I can’t take so many heart-stopper games.
Our guys have adjusted to the reffing on defense. I’d like to see them foul Deloach - not a good FT shooter and they’re only in the single bonus.
The 1-3-1 works again! Big steal at the point by Pierce and then the Blake Peters trey to tie it up!
Two steals in a row out of the 1-3-1 for Pierce, but poor transition D after his dunk.
Lee needs to knock down these upcoming FTs to take the lead.
Refs are taking over - Loyola Chicago getting 2 egregious calls.
Potential 5pt swing thanks to a phantom foul on Abdullahi (1/2 FTs), a missed foul on a Abdullahi dunk, which then led to a Loyola dunk.
Rubin is a very good shot blocker. He’s been all over the Tigers all night at the rim.
Refs and rebounding costs us the game.
Sure looked like a loose ball foul or three on that last sequence. Loyola gets it on the held ball. Rubin to the line up three with 11.4 left and he misses the first and the second but Edwards gets the OR for Loyola–unforgivable lapse by the Tigers.
Quite honestly this is a loss we needed. Xaivian needs to start playing basketball. He is a mess with the ball.
Horrible loss. Loyola is good but we beat ourselves with help from the refs.
We can’t keep escaping after sloppy starts and poor execution.
Worried about Merrimack - short turnaround and the guys will be rightly bummed out.
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Rubin was definitely the difference.
Offense looked lost. Mostly drive to the hoop off a ball screen.
Rubin was good, but man, he got 3 straight friendly calls from refs. So much for “home cooking.”
I’m shocked at how disorganized the offense looks, even when they win. Xaivian needs to figure something out. He’s constantly drawing two defenders - he’s gotta find Abdullahi/Huggins for dunks more.
On the bright side, as I wrote in my initial post, Loyola-Chicago is probably the toughest defensive challenge we’ll face all season. So a 5pt loss isn’t too bad on paper.
I just don’t like the sloppy way it happened - lots of poor effort and bad decision-making from our guys, including Lee and Pierce.
I’m an old guy and out of touch (I don’t watch pro ball) but he looks a little too playgroundy to me. Lots of flash when we need more fundamentals.
In the first half they went backdoor a number of times, with very mixed results. By the second half there was a lot iso play and ball screen actions (not even handoffs). Maybe they could run some Princeton offense as a change of pace.
When Xaivian goes to the hoop, he finishes there. Davis can finish at the hoop, shoot the short jumper, or go with the floater.
Settling on a primary lineup will help a lot. MH needs to cool it with his erratic starting fives and slot-machine subbing. Pick your five main guys and let them develop some chemistry. Deep benches are overrated.
To me, it’s clear that the best lineup is: Davis / Peters / Lee / Pierce / Abdullahi.
Very undersized, yes. But all five guys can score 10+ points on a given night (three can score 20+) and they’re going to be the most mistake-free. They can also score a lot of easy buckets in transition.
Byriel and Scott just aren’t good enough to play big minutes. Hicke had some nice moments tonight, but he’s not ready for primetime. Huggins is solid and should get plenty of minutes behind Abdullahi.
Really tough loss against a really tough team. I hate to be one of those guys but from my vantage point in Section 115, that was one of the worst refereed games I’ve seen in a long while. Xaivian was bumped all over the floor. Malik was hammered going up for a key dunk late in the second half. Caden was flat run into on two separate loose balls with no calls made.
Mitch made a key mistake with Loyola’s big at the line at the end. Why replace Malik with Hicke when youre down 3 and Loyala is shooting FTs? The guy missed both and then their big just plucked the rebound of the second miss right over Jackson. Malik gets that rebound and we have the ball down 3 with 14 (?) seconds to play and 2 timeouts. Get the rebound then take Malik out. Aaarggh! That one will be difficult to get over but ultimately will probably make the Tigers stronger.
Really tough to spot the opponent a big lead and come back to win four straight times. Now they have a long bus ride and a Sunday afternoon game against a tough, under-appreciated team. I fear this could be a classic trap game.
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That’s a really good point. Maybe MH wanted to avoid calling a timeout and attack right away before the Loyola defense gets set up. Or maybe he thought they would foul Malik if he got the ball. But I agree with your take. Get the rebound, call timeout, and let Lee or Davis shoot a 3.
I expect biased officiating on the road, but getting hosed so badly at home was tough to take. I guess that’s the risk you run when you constantly play close games.
The only silver lining is how close and winnable this game was despite all the mistakes, the many missed calls and in-and-out shots. Between Sunday and the Myrtle Beach Invitational, we’ll see what this teams is truly made of.
Xaivian is a combined 13/46 from the field the last three games (28%). He shot a reasonable 5/14 (36%) from three-point range but a woeful 8/32 (25%) from 2-point range. Just too many wild drives and loopy shots. He has to realize that he’s not going to get the whistles that he thinks he deserves and dump it off more. Otherwise, opposing bigs will just wait for him and swat his shots away, which seems to be happening more and more. I’m sure he feels a lot of pressure to both help his team and meet the unworldly expectations that have been set for him. He’s a great player but needs to play within himself more.