Clutch Situations

[HoustonCuse]

The true strength of this team all year has been that when the clutch moments of the game hit, they made a play. Every time. That's why we could get out-rebounded or not shoot well, or whatever and still win. Look at tonight's game, it had disaster written all over it:

> Cinci comes out and is hitting 80% of their 3's in the first half
> Kris Joseph, Scoop Jardine, CJ Fair are all no shows, plus Fab has a largely subpar performance (may sound like an excuse but I think CJ and Kris were sick for both games this week, and Dion sounds congested also but whatever he has should be injected into the whole team)

Just those two items alone would absolutely kill 99.9% of all teams in America. We still had a chance to win. But in the clutch moments tonight, which started at about 8 minutes in - we had these things happen:

1. Triche two FT misses
2. Fab 2 FT misses
3. KJo steps out of bounds on an uncontested o-reb
4. Scoop falls dead asleep on the break and gets his pocket picked
5. Dion turns it over in traffic
6. Triche passes directly to the other team (twice)

If any one of those things doesn't happen we very possibly win the game. If any two don't happen, we certainly win the game. None of those plays are characteristic after 33 games. ALL of them happening in an 8 minute span with the game on the line is an absolute fluke.

I am not excusing the general malaise of the team tonight, but if you step back and look at things - even in a this doomsday scenario with three of our starters (including both seniors) not showing up and the other team being on fire - we still had every reason to expect a win. It took 6 individual unexpected plays to cost us the game.

Anyway, that's my thought. Nice job by UC for capitalizing and none of our guys got hurt. Everything is ok.

 

[HoustonCuse]

Oh ps - the final margin was a banked in 3-pointer. All our disaster games include a banked in 3. All of em.

 

[PoppyHart]

Oh ps - the final margin was a banked in 3-pointer. All our disaster games include a banked in 3. All of em.

Harper Williams, Melvin Booker, Sean Kilpatrick, ...

 

[BuffOrange]

If any one of those things doesn't happen we very possibly win the game. If any two don't happen, we certainly win the game.

C'mon, this just isn't true. All of those things (except the missed FT's) not happening would've merely set up a halfcourt possession - not exactly something we excelled at throughout the game. It's very possible we wouldn't have scored on one of those anyway and even if we did, Cincy defends differently in the last 30 seconds with a 3pt lead than up 7.

 

[cuseincincy]

The problem to me was SU never got their usual run. The D was fine in the 2nd half. The O never got untracked other than Dion. Some really stupid passes.