Williams: Tech loss bad but not a season ender | News | Men's Basketball | Cyclone Fanatic
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I really don't understand why anybody is overly surprised by the loss last night. Fundamentally, ISU relies heavily on the outside shot and seems to have no "Plan B" for offense when the outside shot fails. That in itself makes ISU very vulnerable every night, whether the team is KU or TTU. Not to mention the fact that ISU struggled against two of the worst teams in the Big 12 prior to the TTU game...
I think this is part of why there's so much meltdown. There were signs of this the last couple games but everyone tried to believe that it was just a fluke. Last night just put a huge exclamation point on it (an entire game of poor performance) and a loss. One loss alone probably wouldntve gotten as much reaction as the fact that the loss is coupled with a fear that the performance the last 3 games (and, honestly, the nonconference's multitude of awful stretches), is who this team really is.
Still feel that was the worst loss in many years. The other team did not play well. They had no crowd. They did not look organized. Their team had no future stars that I saw. Yet they won.
This is worse than the Iona game, the Hampton game, etc. How far back in years do we need to look to find a more troubling loss? We are still trying to find to find a GoTo guy for end of games. We had Brackins, DG, Royce, Scotty before.
We still outscored Michigan St. and Wisconsin last night, that's a plus.
12 wins in conference and tourney gets us in.
It didn't end the season, but it put the season on life support.
We can still get there, but it's a much tougher road after last night. I truly hope that isn't the team that we really are.
"Iowa State’s turnovers were careless. The Cyclones seemed disinterested in the game at times. If you watched the game, you know exactly where I am going with this"
This is what concerns me the most. This wasn't the first time it has happened.
I don't know why some people are surprised at a Big 12 road loss when we shot under 25% from the 3 point line. Do some fans think we weren't trying to make those 3's? That's the problem when you don't have much of an inside presence, and we were hoping that Gibson (and Booker to a lesser extent) would have progressed into guys that we could depend on down low. That hasn't happened, and we can only hope that Gibson gets his touch back so we can get some production from the 5 spot, or we're going to still be very vulnerable on nights when we're not knocking in 3's. Tech also did a better job of making us take tough 3's.
Respectfully i disagree. We have ZERO good wins on our schedule. We have 13 games left and will probably need to get at least 8 wins out of those to get to 21.
Given our last 3 outtings (and subpar play in parts of games--Yale) where we eeked by WVU at home, won but wouldnt say dominated TCU and got beat by a team that RPI wise you have to go pre Johnny Orr to find one that bad...its about to get tough.
We played the 4 worst teams in the conference, now get the big boys...and we havent won a conference tourney game since the what? Stinson days?
Im not bashing the team or down on anyone...im just being realistic at this point in the season.
Where do you see 8 wins on this schedule?
The problem with the loss last night is they had every chance to win that game late. All they had to do is crash the boards, get a few reboung and put back and game won. Instead they chose to throw up 3s, all stand behind the 3 point line and watch Tech get the rebound.
The REAL fear is this...that KSU comes in on Saturday and beats us in Hilton. If that happens the fat lady indeed starts to warm up. And with KSU coming in a top 15 team the chances of that happening are pretty decent. That said I've watching ISU basketball for years now and if I know anything it's that it truly is darkest before the dawn most times. I'm guessing we beat KSU saturday for other reason that ISU basketball can NEVER, EVER make it easy on us.
Not having a single decent non-conference win may also be the death nail.