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Final score- Washington State 91 Bradley 74

Where the heck is Meta? See him on the bench ... It's not like their post guys are lightning quick that would expose him defensively.
 
Considering we got nothing out of Atlason, Duke was fairly quiet and turned the ball over too much, you can't be too upset about that half on the road.

Thank goodness for Dillon.
 
As sloppy as we played on both ends, not a bad halftime result. Need to tighten everything up an and we have a great shot to win. Davis and Dillion's three shooting covered some of the sloppiness that half up. Need our three big veteran's to step it up, especially Zek. I know his three point numbers were down last year, and that shot doesn't look great this year so far. When he was here before he was better in the mid range and hitting threes at a lower, more selective volume. I don't think he is a high volume three shooter from what I have seen so far and based on his past Bradley years. Duke can fire up transition threes, I'm not sure I want Zek doing that.
 
Do not like Atlason at the 5....cannot set a pick, struggles to meet ball on passes, cannot rebound well....move him out to score!
 
BUBraves2006 said:
Where the heck is Meta? See him on the bench ... It's not like their post guys are lightning quick that would expose him defensively.
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We just saw why he wasn't playing. Any even slightly above average bigs are going to be a problem for Meta. I imagine his footspeed, especially defensively, has got to be in a pretty low percentile in D1.

This was always the problem with essentially punting 2 scholarships with Biliew, Linke/Hartdke, and also having Meta. We had one injury and already are struggling to find any kind of depth, especially amongst the bigs. It won't probably, outside of a rash of injuries, affect us too much most of the year, but if we want to compete against the big boys and make the tournament and maybe even win some games there, we don't have much room for error.

Still early in the year of course, but I am disappointed with the sloppiness on both ends in this game for a senior led team in a big game.
 
BUfan14 said:
We just saw why he wasn't playing. Any even slightly above average bigs are going to be a problem for Meta. I imagine his footspeed, especially defensively, has got to be in a pretty low percentile in D1.

This was always the problem with essentially punting 2 scholarships with Biliew, Linke/Hartdke, and also having Meta. We had one injury and already are struggling to find any kind of depth, especially amongst the bigs. It won't probably, outside of a rash of injuries, affect us too much most of the year, but if we want to compete against the big boys and make the tournament and maybe even win some games there, we don't have much room for error.

Still early in the year of course, but I am disappointed with the sloppiness on both ends in this game for a senior led team in a big game.
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I get it. You don't like Meta. You've made this abundantly clear for two years now. You don't need to dog the guy absolutely every game, even when he isn't in there.

This was an even game except for a horrendous 5 minutes where they took a 3 point lead up to 20. Can we not overreact so heavily when Duke has a game where he can't hit anything?

I'll use a point I use constantly about Coach Wardle's teams. When referees constantly call fouls and there is no game flow, we always struggle. Against good or bad teams, we always play better when games are more up and down and they don't turn into free throw contests. I'm not excusing a bad game, but it's just a reality of watching every game for years.
 
BUBraves2006 said:
I get it. You don't like Meta. You've made this abundantly clear for two years now. You don't need to dog the guy absolutely every game, even when he isn't in there.

This was an even game except for a horrendous 5 minutes where they took a 3 point lead up to 20. Can we not overreact so heavily when Duke has a game where he can't hit anything?

I'll use a point I use constantly about Coach Wardle's teams. When referees constantly call fouls and there is no game flow, we always struggle. Against good or bad teams, we always play better when games are more up and down and they don't turn into free throw contests. I'm not excusing a bad game, but it's just a reality of watching every game for years.
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I don't feel like I'm dogging him....you asked why he wasn't in there....I answered. I also don't dislike Meta as a person or anything, seems like a nice kid. I'm just honestly analyzing what I see as a basketball player. His foot speed doesn't work in games like this. He is fine as a backup against SEMO.

Also, I would say even in the first half, despite being almost even, we didn't play well. In a year when "at-large" is thrown about this is a huge game for us if we want that to be a reality. I said it is early, but this was a disappointing effort from our leaders in terms of sloppiness and effort at times.

Also, if we shut down when the refs are bad, then I don't think that is a good thing. As a senior led team, we should be tough even through adversity.

This is still a good team, but I think we got humbled a little tonight and proved we have to keep working. We can't have too many missteps and get where we want to go this year. I don't think any of that is an unfair overreaction.

Brian seemed to echo most of this just now on the postgame. Effort was an issue tonight, other than Davis and Dillion.
 
Final score- Washington State 91 Bradley 74 - https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=551036

Not much to say... The first half was marred by 10 turnovers, and the 2nd half with poor shooting and a porous defense.
The bright spots- Connor Dillon kept this game from looking even worse with 12 points on 4-4 from three
Christian Davis (14 points), Darius Hannah (14 points), and Zek Montgomery (13 points) played well and also helped carry the team offensively.
Corey Thomas looked good off the bench- 4 points, 6 rebonds and some good defense in 16 minutes.
Duke and Almar had one of their worst games in a long time, and they fouled out along with Darius.
And yes, the officiating seemed inconsistent, which any BU fan who watched the game knows what I mean.

The 19-1 run by Washington State over the first 7 minutes of the 2nd half is what lost the game for the Braves.
Washington State is a better team than maybe we expected, and they were very well coached.
But, somehow the team needs to correct this tendency we've seen in recent years of either really poor starts at the beginning of road games, or really poor starts at the beginning of the 2nd half of road games. It just kills the chances of a road win.
 
I agree on Christian and Dillion. Zek and Darius not good and Duke awful. Defense was embarrassing. Our best, most dependable player at this point is Christian.
 
houstonbrave said:
I agree on Christian and Dillion. Zek and Darius not good and Duke awful. Defense was embarrassing. Our best, most dependable player at this point is Christian.
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Ya, I thought Zek was incredibly sloppy and looked disinterested at times. He didn't block out on several occasions, had a couple very lazy turnovers, and did not rotate a couple of times on defense, on top of the rushed transitions threes that were way off. He picked up some points in garbage time at the end, but I thought his effort tonight was highly disappointing from a senior leader.

Darius also had a couple of sloppy turnovers and seemed to let the emotions of the game get to him a couple times. He was prone to that early in his career, but I thought by the second half last year he really played under control at all times, even when it wasn't going his way.

Duke just had a bad night shooting. That will happen.

Again, as I mentioned, Connor and Christian seemed to play hard, and I love that Christian's three shot looks even more confident this year. Those two shooting well bodes well for us if our leaders step up and do what they are capable of. Corey Thomas is a mixed bag right now, and that's probably understandable as a first year D1 guy. I see the potential, but he's still somewhat raw. I'd like to see him focus a little more inside than all the threes right now. I liked that he went up hard for the dunk at the end, as sometimes he has played softer than he should these first couple games for a decently strong and athletic looking big man. I think he will improve as the year goes.
 
I knew we would struggle to guard this team. Their bigs are very mobile and drive the ball well.
1st off we don’t defend well against mobile bigs, and leave our feet way too much on the perimeter…
Also we need to have more of an inside presence offensively.. too many times our bigs are handling the ball out top.. not their strong suit.

last thing I thought our attention to detail was awful tonight.. let the same things continually happen all night… not very good situational awareness.. we missed miss matches in our favor , instead taking bad shots .. oh well

p.s. … severa head scratching calls AND non calls by the refs.. they were not good
 
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