Final score UNI 59 BU 46

[houstontxbrave]

I was in college at SIUE in 90 when as I sat in a bar with others who knew of my obsession with BU saw the score come across the ticker where we were able to put up 8 at Utah in Mo's first season. That was embarassing, but not completely unexpected... tonight was unexpected yet more embarassing.

[Lakeview Brave]

Nobody denies it, not even the coach or the players....we played bad.
We missed shots and couldn't execute on offense.
Defense was pretty good and held us in the game so we actually had a shot for most of the 2nd half.
I guess we can either rip the kids and criticize or we can cheer them on as we have done.......I know which I will choose.

Im glad the coaches and players dont deny they played horriblly, if they did then we would have a host of new problems.

How long should one of the most loyal fan bases in the country continue to cheer before the team finishes in the top 3 in the conference? How many years in a row should the fans accept not winning in either the regular season or in St. Louis? Im not suggesting that we take drastic measures but fans have high expectations and frankly in large part they are do to this board and emails from you.

All summer long we read how good our recruits were doing, how this was the most talented team ever, how Collins was going to be the next POB, how Sam was such a good shooter that we couldnt play him at pg, how Egolf shot as well as JC in practice. You as the moderator of this board and a respected Bradley insider set the expectaions for this year more than anyone else. Do you not expect a backlash when the team doesnt live up?

[BradleyBrave]

Hopefully none of us will ever stop being BU fans even if we don't win as many conference titles or go to as many NCAA's as we should. At the same time, part of our rights as loyal fans is being repaid with success for our loyalty. We also have the right to be upset when we aren't getting the results we expected. Sometimes perhaps our expectations are unrealistic. I don't think they are this year from what we were told by a lot of people inside and outside of the program.

I am not giving up, and will never stop being a BU fan, but I am also not happy at 7-6 after 13 games, especially in the fashion these last 3 losses have come. Injuries are not an excuse. Jim's not using it as one, and I won't either.

[ph]

I was blind. Before today, I never realized our inside game was 100% a 5-10 guy penetrating and throwing up a floater.

[ER3]

The weave offense as we run it is complete and utter garbage. If two of the 3 guards running the weave are as slow and as afraid of drawing contact as JC and AW are, it is a useless offense. It does nothing more than run 25 seconds off of the shot clock and still leaves you 30 feet away from the basket...just as you started the whole weaving nonsense. For the weave to work at all, you have to have guards that are a threat to break the rhythm of the weave and cut hard to the hoop and generate easy scores or at least draw some fouls by taking the ball strong to the rim...TCS did that once today, but that was about the only positive play that came directly from the weave.
UNI had no problems defending the weave today...they were overplaying every hand-off and basically beating BU to every spot...and they can play D that way against our weave because AW and JC are completely passive with the ball and they absolutely do not look to do anything out of that weave other than push the ball farther and farther away from the rim and just hand the ball off to the next guy in line. And then after 24 seconds of this passive, useless weave, the shot clock hits '11' and they back out of the weave and do the "Ruffin back it out to half court isolation" garbage play...only now we don't have Ruffin. Great offense.
The weave could be a useful set...if you had personnel running the offense that was capable of being a threat to penetrate off of those cuts...or if you had effective post players that you could dump the ball into in the midst of the weaving...but we don't have either, unfortunately...so the weave, as BU runs it, is nothing more than a passive, useless waste of shot clock time.
Unless AW and JC are not in the game, I refuse to see any reason that we should even try to run the weave...they are not the tough, quick, slashing type of players that would give us options out of those cuts. Slow, plodding, soft guys do not give us any options in the weave offense.

[Da Coach]

I want to pose this question to you or tornado in particular since we tend to be the voices of reason on this board. Just wondering if either of you feel that Les is doing enough to utilize what talent he has, and is he implementing enough offensive play sets to give us the best chance to win. I'm seeing a lot of knee-jerk posts lately, and I just want to see what you have to say about the current situation.

I am not really a coach (despite my screen name ).
So I don't know if I can give you a satifying answer. But obviously if we get beat at home by an opponent that should not beat us, then we didn't do enough right.
But from where I sat, we had tons of open shots that we just missed. The offensive sets looked like they usually do, but we just couldn't make shots in the first half. We did score 37 points and outscore UNI in the second half, and I didn't see that the offense was doing anything different.
So if just a couple more of those first half shots go in, the game is much different. I heard Jim Les take responsibility for the loss, but I am not sure he could have done anything to change it.

[tornado]

We cant be so mad with Matt Salley, remember he was the third choice. We lost our first choice to Deleware St in Roy Bright and our second choice to Cincy in Sikes. Salley was choice three hence the results.

well, actually Roy Bright wasn't the first choice, nor even the 2nd, because I am sure Jim Les really wanted Greg Oden and Kevin Durant more.

[BU ICEMAN]

I'm just thinking out loud here....but how many times have we heard already this year and are going to hear in the future the "we just didn't make shots" argument?

Heck, is it even an argument? That is our only threat on offense, the outside shot. No penetration, no inside game, no rebound/putbacks, no inside/outside. One-dimensional. If that's the way you want to (have to?) play the game, you **************** well better be able to hit those shots especially when they're wide open, and even under pressure. When your whole offense relies on making the outside shot, and making a lot of them, and especially when we don't have any secondary/backup offensive plans, you have to do it well, or else you get the abortion that was the first half.

[Bravesfan]

I am not really a coach (despite my screen name ).
So I don't know if I can give you a satifying answer. But obviously if we get beat at home by an opponent that should not beat us, then we didn't do enough right.
But from where I sat, we had tons of open shots that we just missed. The offensive sets looked like they usually do, but we just couldn't make shots in the first half. We did score 37 points and outscore UNI in the second half, and I didn't see that the offense was doing anything different.
So if just a couple more of those first half shots go in, the game is much different. I heard Jim Les take responsibility for the loss, but I am not sure he could have done anything to change it.

Fair answer. As long as you feel he's doing the best job implementing the offense that he can, then I feel good that Les can get the team through this difficult time and hopefully build a team that can make a run toward the NCAA tournament, if not this year then next. I'm just reading a lot of comments from predominantly newer posters on this board that act like the sky is falling, and that we have no business playing this bad (sounds like fans of some BCS teams!).

As much as we thought that they should be an NCAA caliber type of team this year, it's not the end of the world if we don't make it, as long as this team becomes better because of all this adversity. You obviously watch a lot more games than I do, so you probably see that the effort is there from the coaching staff and the players, it's just a matter of gaining more confidence. If they don't have the experience to allow for more inside type of offensive looks, then I believe they don't have the players that can do it (at least for the moment). Hopefully more game experience will help them get over the hump and they will win lots of games toward the end of the season, if not sooner.

[ph]

While the coach may not be 100 % responsible for shots not falling on any given night, not having any inside plays to get some 95% shot attempts is inexcusable. There has to be some way a coach can teach a basic inside play for these guys, or a single/double screen to get someone right under the basket with enough time to put it up/dunk..
If the 3's are not falling, we have nothing to go to. any coach knows that the 3's will not always falling and we have no plan B





I still blame the horrid MVC officials during the Butler game. We were agressive with the O and they took that away. We need to go back to being the agressor..

[numbr_9]

There were so many disappointing things about the UNI game that were only compounded by the tough loss to VCU last week. Not having Ruff hurt us; shots didnt fall because they were not always good shots. Without a good pg to create those good shots, you are forced to take lower-percentage shots.

I think the most unsettling for me is that this team seems to be regressing, not progressing. The offense looks sloppy, defense is mediocre, and rebounding is atrocious. I thought all this size was going to shore up our interior D and rebounding. Getting sorely out-rebounded in particular bothers me, because so much of that is just tenacity. And our guys look seriously soft ... nobody wants to take a charge, nobody wants to box out (How do you give up so many rebounds on opponents' missed free throws when you are given inside position???) and nobody wants to go inside and create contact.

There is still hope for this year. Let's not forget that many people were writing off 05-06 and look how that ended up. This team is capable of playing great basketball, and that's why the fans are so upset. But BU needs to progress and improve each game.

[Dallas Brave]

Had a long drive to Colorado today to do some skiing and was able to check out of the board (something that is hard to do if I am around a computer).

The more I thought about yesterday's game, the more I started thinking about a lot of the good signs we saw in the second half. Yes, I'm a fan and yes I drink kool-aid, but the players did not wilt after the first half. I really do beleive we will see a competitive team without DR.

[MacabreMob]

I really do believe we will see a competitive team without DR.

Me too.

They won't win 'em all, but I think they will become more and will be more competitive. Heck - we might even be surprised.

[SpfldBUAlum]

Wow, that was just a pathetic game. About the most positive thing I saw was RA finally getting some minutes. Big Mike made a good point during the game, not having Chuck B on the staff anymore has really hurt us. Coach Les doesnt seem to adapt well during a game....when nothing was going right maybe its time to try something different? Why in the second half when the game was getting closer were we not showing more intensity?

As for specific players: I would like to see Collins play some real minutes instead of just a couple in the first half and then the bench for the rest of the game if he does anything wrong. No wonder he plays timid.

JC needs to start shooting a couple feet inside the arc, when he starts hitting those then go back to the 3. Between bad shots and bad passes I cringe when he touches the ball these days.

Where was SS during this fiasco? He may not be showy but he is a solid player and should have matched up well.

Why not try a bigger lineup at times? Playing 4 guards was a necessity last year but not this year. These guys are not going to develop without getting some minutes!

[ph]

Since no one else seemed to mention it...

The highlight of watching the BU game on WTVP was, instead of a halftime show, they played the (Snell narrated) virtual video tour of the future men's basketball facilities.

It must be the same video we've heard recruits mention, as the narration was geared more towards players than fans/alumni.