eCougarzone.com is unfortunately now in just men's basketball mode. That sounds like a pretty good thing, but it means there is no more soccer. The Cougars were a long shot at an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament in the first place after Sunday's depressing MVC finale to begin with, but yeah, it still sucks.
Just a little disclaimer here, coverage on road games is going to be a little hit or miss here. I don't like to write about games I can't see, because all I can really do is feed the stats. Nobody likes that.
I was planning on going to the game Sunday, but soccer of course, took precedent. Choosing between a team one win away from the NCAA tournament and a hapless independent basketball team, as much as I love college basketball (much more than I love college soccer) is a no-brainer. So, where will we be this season? Of course, all the home games and Iowa next Friday, Indiana, Northwestern and Murray State on the road. Hopefully we can come up with some streams of other games during the year.
We can read into the ISU stats a little bit, and I will try to do my best.
Let's start with the obvious, and a positive note.
Corey Wickware had 25 points, including a stretch where he scored 10 consecutive points for the Cougars. That is pretty impressive, right?
This is where it becomes uhh, not so positive.
Wickware is a spark plug, and a bonafide scorer. That's good. The problem lies in him running the point guard position. Wickware is really SIUE's only option to start there, and although he can score, he really isn't that great distributing the basketball. He had three assists against ISU and only turned the ball over twice. Okay, three assists isn't terrible. He was 5-12 from three point range. Not the worst, but you do not want him taking that many shots. The Cougars need to be more patient. We saw it against IPFW, and I am sure if you were in BloNo you saw it again. Shot selection needs to improve if SIUE is going to be successful win a game.
And...that's where the positivity ends.
SIUE took 29 three point shots. 29.
They made eight. Wickware's 5-12 and Cornelius Chatt's 2-11, plus David Boarden's 1-2, Cody Rincker's 0-2 and 0-1 for LeShaun Murphy and Michael Messer.
These guys can all shoot it. The problem is they look to the three way too much, and don't look for better chances. It starts with the offense, setting good screens and moving the basketball. It's a little tougher with the inside presence the Cougars have on their roster to work inside out, but they need to figure something out. (apologies to the Dob Mavrak fan club out there.)
The fact is, you cannot make them all. It's something they do out of desperation. Those two point shots add up if you make enough of them. The missed threes add up a lot too...on the other end of the floor.
SIUE fell behind again early. 11-2 against IPFW. 14-2 against Illinois State.
Those holes are way too big to climb out of. Playing good basketball needs to start from the opening tip. New pump up song in the locker room maybe?
FOULS FOULS FOULS.
You want your ball game? Illinois State: 33-36 on free throws. SIUE: 10-16 on free throws. Anthony Mitchell had a technical foul, Nik Bundalo and Mitchell fouled out of the ball game. 36 free throws? are you serious? It's not that SIUE missed six of their own, that wouldn't have saved them. It's a matter of maturity and knowing when to foul. That's sloppy basketball. If you are going to send them to the line 36 times, at least foul somebody who can't shoot.
That's it. Shot selection, free throws, keeping their hands to themselves and coming to play. These are all correctable problems, and problems this team is developing as a theme to its play through two games. Maybe things will be better against Eastern Kentucky Wednesday. If you were here last year in the alestle sports blog days, you know I'll end up writing the same thing 20 times over the course of the season. I don't want that to happen.
Back to Siena/Minnesota and a full night of college hoops. Tweet @allanjlewis and have a great night SIUE.
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3 comments:
It was bad. There was only one positive and it was Wickware. I think we will go 2-28 this year. I was more optimistic, but now I am not. You cant win games with the scoring breakdown that we had. We have Wickware and Chatt with over 10 a night and all others with 2-3 pts. If you look at the box score for each game we only have like 6 out of the 11 or more guys scoring and 2 of those are substantial. That is the problem. We would have been a better team if all of the previous members of the team played like last year, but we are currently riding on our recruits. No one else is contributing. Check the stats. Mitchell, Dob, Rincker, Murphy, Stineman, Newlin, and sadly Mark are offering nothing. We looked deep as a team, but forrester has made us very shallow. We only play a select 6-7 guys a game. On one side not, I want to retract what I said about Zeke. He does look to be much improved. Right know this is our team:
Chatt/Messer
Wickware
This is what our team should look like:
Chatt
Wickware
Bundalow
Mark
Murphy or someone
Plus like 3-4 other guys that can play ball
We are screwed this year. Forrester should be playing Tillman and Jones. We lost our depth. We have lost it all. Mark is out and Zeke is out. We cant get wins with undistributed scoring. Its just not possible in college. Maybe NBA. I just feel bad that our obvious depth/talent has not been utilized. Some of this can be contributed to injuries and a good portion to our terrible coaching.
We have the talent. This just frustrates me soo much. Forrester cannot get these guys into his roles. They just can't play the style he wants.
We are having problems shooting the ball. We are struggling with freethrows badly.
The team is not exploiting the fact that we can gain many points by drawing fouls. That is something that Mark does so greatly. We can get 20 plus points a game from foul shots. Not only that it puts the other team in a different strategy.
All in all, we need to do these things to win:
1 Get Tillman and Jones off the bench to add depth
2 Get Mark back to health
3 Make freethrows
4 Take more unforced shots
5 Play man defense and get rid of zone as much as possible
6 Stop playing Dob and Stineman
7 Get rid of Forrester-He takes out guys who are doing good and being productive. There is no reason why to do this. He kills our momentum and just doesnt know how to sub guys in. His coaching is questionable in every aspect.
If we truly want to transition to D1 sports we need to get rid of our D2 ties. When people say that the transition road is tough and that the team will lose badly, I do agree. The thing that I dont agree with is losing badly to low conference teams. This is unacceptable. We shouldnt have lost the IPFW game. We should have lost the ISU game, but not by almost 30 points. I would say a 10-14 point loss would be what we could realistically be at.
I agree Alex...Also, I think the Mark injury is more serious and is probably related to overrelying on him....Jones and Tillman probably will need to play if this team is to be succesful...Rincker is a DIII talent at best however I will note his effort is outstanding....Dob is a waste just a body...Nik is slow.....Stineman just tries too much if he would just dribble the ball and pass it everything would be ok.....Chatt and Wickware are good however I would like them to note that this is not JUCO anymore where shooting like animals and missing wont get you anywhere.....A little birdie told me that there is LeShaun would play more but he is having a hard time shooting the ball well that is why Lennox wont play him because he cant shoot....Zeke might be injured as well so really this team is thin right now unless Forrester allows Tillman and Jones to play....Also, I agree Forrester sucks as a coach.....he is a great assistant dynamite recruiter but awful awful awful technician of the game....Also I dont want to dig on people I dont know but is it me or does it seem that Allaria should be doing a better job as the Assistant Coach coaching these guys???? He was aroundin the Simmons era and I think he should know better....Anyways I have given up hpope on winning many games maybe a squeeker here and there but unfortunately we will get blown out again every game including the South Dakota crap which pisses me off
AX FORRESTER NOW!!!!
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