For levity's sake

Since I heart Grady so much, I figured I'd find what he wrote about this team last year after we lost to the Beavs (at home) towards the end of last season

http://www.cougcenter.com/2009/2/15/760133/smpg-in-a-meltdown-everyon

So OSU did unto us what we did to them. This was more shocking, though. For weeks now Tony has been talking on his radio show about how the team has worked to beat traps and the fullcourt press. They will play 5-on-6 in the halfcourt. 3-on-4 in the fullcourt. And for the first half of yesterday's game, the Cougs executed well against OSU's 1-3-1 zone trap. They even got aggressive and earned some easy buckets, because, after all, if two people are guarding one, someone's open.

But that faded away - along with our offense - in the second half. The Cougs' turnover rate shot up, and the shots from the perimeter never went down.

The blame for this loss ultimately falls on Tony Bennett. It is a coach's job to stop runs like this and draw up plays that stop the bleeding. And Tony attempted to do those things - but perhaps overestimated his team's ability to execute them. Like the alley-oop lob that ultimately went over Klay Thompson's head, the plays may have been well-designed, but they didn't fit the team running them. And Tony has to settle his team down. When things are falling apart, you cannot let your team get frustrated. They did - including a group of seniors who should know that they have the ability to stop a run. And using the last timeout after the Rochestie lay-in was beyond damaging. Even though we got the missed free-throw from the Beavers, Baynes couldn't find anyone to throw to. No time out, game over.

 

So maybe we need to take a step back and breathe and realize the team that beat us may actually create some matchup problems against us and may have actually had something to do with us losing on Thursday.

We still have an entertaining team to watch, people.  Nick Graham isn't on this team.  We're going to take a step next year.  A big one.  Do you want to be remembered as being off the bandwagon when it happened?