Friday in the Valley 12.21

[braves16]

UCF pounding ISU 43-18 at half.

[tornado]

ISU looks like they are giving up...
with under 12 minutes to go they are losing by 27
Yarbrough has 2 pts, 2 asst and 6 turnovers
Hein is their leading scorer with 7

[tornado]

Milik Yarbrough benched now in the 2nd half and ISU playing a lot better!!

gotta think this doesn't help his draft stock...

[tornado]

ISU got to within 13 then stopped playing defense ... final score UCF 77 - ISU 56
ISU gives up 51% shooting and a lot of wide open shots...
The juco guards Jefferson & Copeland plus Yarbrough, don't play much defense.
Then you got Chastain, Hein & Gassman and they try but no way those guys can defend athletic DI players...
Muller has to be really frustrated - his bench is so short that he has nobody else to throw in there. Bruninga probably wouldn't help and I doubt any of the transfer guys play much defense either - since they all came from bottom dwelling teams like San Jose State that won only 4 games last year and gave up almost 80 points per game.
Yarbrough's poor numbers now mean Elijah Childs is the rebounding leader in the MVC

[Da Coach]

Box score- UCF 77 ISU 56
http://ucfknights.com//attachments1/...100/640040.pdf

Yarbrough played only 11 minutes in the game and missed the 2nd half completely. In his 11 minutes, he had more turnovers (6) than points and rebounds combined (2 points, 3 rebounds).
Copeland, Tinsley, Jefferson, and Yarbrough were a combined 3-18 from three.
As a result of the porous ISU defense, UCF shot 50% overall, and 40% from three, and had 38 points in the paint, most of them by their guards.
And another hint of the poor defense that ISU played- they had ZERO steals in 40 min. (compared with 9 steals by UCF).

Whatever reason Dan Muller had for punishing Yarbrough by yanking him from the game in the first half, and benching him the entire 2nd half, I will predict based on past experience, that No-Discipline Dan will start him and play him for 38 minutes in their next game (their MVC opener at Valparaiso).

[tornado]

Yarbrough was by no means the whole problem - Muller is just looking for a scapegoat....

Yeah- Yarbrough played bad, but so did just about everyone else and....

and if anyone needs to step up and take the blame it's Dan Muller - obviously it is his job to scout the opponent and be ready..
...He failed totally...his game plan was to instantly double-team Tacko Fall every time he touched the ball...
But Fall isn't even one of their top two scorers....every time they doubled on him, he dished off and one of their other playmakers or scorers got the ball - undefended...
Fall is averaging 10 pts, 7 rebs - not bad but not capable of killing you....
Instead - bingo - their top TWO scorers, Taylor & Dawkins killed them, going 12-23, scoring 33 pts, and dishing out 8 assists of their own.
...and they plain forgot about Collin Smith & DeJesus - who are both among their top 6 scorers but weren't guarded well....(combined for 21 pts)
Yarbrough was not the problem, and he was kind of unfairly thrown under the bus by Muller. I am sure Yarbrough now regrets not going the grad-transfer route last spring...

[Da Coach]

Dan Muller's comments about Yarbrough in post-game press conference-

https://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-state/redbirds-fall-behind-early-suffer-loss-at-central-florida/article_666e01fc-f1a8-5376-9875-10d05da78c19.html?mode=nowapp

“We tried to play the guys in the second half who we thought would compete with good body language, and we did a good job,” said Muller.
When asked specifically about Yarbrough sitting out the last 20 minutes, the ISU coach said: “We were going with guys we thought had great body language and were ready to fight and compete and execute the way we wanted to go.”

[Mikovio]

I am sure Yarbrough now regrets not going the grad-transfer route last spring...

I'm sure he would have grad-transferred out of ISU if he could but he didn't graduate.

[Da Coach]

I just watched the replay of the ISU-UCF game on ESPN, and I have to say that I did not see anything from Yarbrough that looked like he was displaying bad "body language". Apparently, none of the ISU fans did either, because his 2nd half benching was apparently a complete surprise to the fans posting on the Redbird message board, and to beat writer Jim Benson of the Bloomington Pantagraph. The only thing close was at the end of the 1st half, Muller took Yarbrough out after his 2nd foul, and he seemed a bit bummed by that. But then ISU was losing by 25 points by then, and everyone on the team looked dejected.
I'm not sure what Muller was referring to. Yarbrough played with good effort, though as noted, he was credited with 6 first half turnovers and was 0-3 shooting. But several of the turnovers were not bad passes, but his teammates just fumbled them away. And he was not the only one missing shots. ISU was 7-24 (29%) in the first half.
I suspect the problem must have arisen in the locker room between Yarbrough and Muller.

[tornado]

They are only now seeing how valuable Paris Lee was to that team...
they have no leader now - everyone wants to just get the ball and shoot - even the new guys like Copeland and Jefferson...
they put up decent numbers occasionally but they seem to be overly looking to get shots off - thus Copeland, Evans, Tinsley, Gassman etc...all have very low points per shots taken numbers...