Bradley Preview and Game Thread -- 2-9-2022

[Rambler303]

Net this morning has us at 30 (down from 29), kenpom has us at 33. Analytically, we are very much still in at large territory.

[ahunte1]

I wonder if Reink Mast wants to play in the A10 next year...

[Rambler88]

Disappointing loss. It seemed like we missed a lot of lay-ups and had too many unforced turnovers. I thought we got back on track after the first ten minutes and the wheels fell off the last five. We need to handle the ball better. We missed Kennedy. Other than Tate, we didn't have any of the other players step up.

It makes Sunday's game that much more important.

[Dansen]

I wonder if Reink Mast wants to play in the A10 next year...

I’ve also thought this!

He would fit great in what we do, he’s essentially what we were hoping for from Hutty with a little less length

[Mudville21]

I have posted in a while and I have to say the past few games have caused frustration. We struggled for 4 or 5 games, looked good against ISU and great against Missouri. It looked like we were getting back into a rhythm. Then yesterday we throw up a dog of a game. This team is very frustrating. We have a ton of senior leadership and experience, yet we do some incredibly stupid things during the course of a ballgame to make it hard on ourselves. The turnovers are particularly frustrating as many are not forced. Quite honestly, I am very disappointed in how our supposed leaders are playing. People thought Porter was hard on the players, but he was meticulous and demanding that the players did things the right way. This group has not married itself to the idea that those small details are the key to winning. There are no short cuts!

Some of the detail issues yesterday lead to the breakdowns on defense that were glaring and frequent. We consistently went underneath screens and our defenders guarding the screener did not step up to wall off the ballhandler and force him to change direction. This allowed for open looks which they buried. Please don't give me the nonsense about who would have known they were going to shoot it and make it. If you play the defense hard and pay attention to what your defensive principals require you to do, you guard them and take those looks away. We also got caught watching the plays and lost Bradley players who cut to the basket for bunnies. Norris did so several times. We also bailed them out late in the shot clock with silly fouls.

At this point I do not know what the rest of the year will look like. I think we need to at a minimum to win the regular season conference championship with no more than 4 losses to be an at large bid team. I m not confident we can string 3 good games together to win Arch Madness.

[AMDG]

Adding to the disappointment, they dropped out of first place in the MVC with that loss. The conference is entirely in their hands with two games against UNI but those are now essential.

[natetheskate]

Bradley bench outscored us 37-20 3 pt% Bradley 47 LU 35 3s made BU 10 LU 8 Fouls LU 19 BU 14.......again the bench was to be a strength but with the Clemons injury , Hutson still developing and Schweiger being shown as a defensive liability....we are a lot thinner on the bence than we anticipated.....and although the freshman we brought in still seem like really good gets they just were not ready.
I think UNI is gettable....so we hope that Bradly beats Drake....and the combo would put us up 2 on Drake and Bradley and one up on MSU and UNI....
Anyone going to the Valpo game?
and yes we need people to show up for the UNI game....
Man how big is that last game at UNI going to be.

[Cruyff]

I have posted in a while and I have to say the past few games have caused frustration. We struggled for 4 or 5 games, looked good against ISU and great against Missouri. It looked like we were getting back into a rhythm. Then yesterday we throw up a dog of a game. This team is very frustrating. We have a ton of senior leadership and experience, yet we do some incredibly stupid things during the course of a ballgame to make it hard on ourselves. The turnovers are particularly frustrating as many are not forced. Quite honestly, I am very disappointed in how our supposed leaders are playing. People thought Porter was hard on the players, but he was meticulous and demanding that the players did things the right way. This group has not married itself to the idea that those small details are the key to winning. There are no short cuts!

Some of the detail issues yesterday lead to the breakdowns on defense that were glaring and frequent. We consistently went underneath screens and our defenders guarding the screener did not step up to wall off the ballhandler and force him to change direction. This allowed for open looks which they buried. Please don't give me the nonsense about who would have known they were going to shoot it and make it. If you play the defense hard and pay attention to what your defensive principals require you to do, you guard them and take those looks away. We also got caught watching the plays and lost Bradley players who cut to the basket for bunnies. Norris did so several times. We also bailed them out late in the shot clock with silly fouls.

At this point I do not know what the rest of the year will look like. I think we need to at a minimum to win the regular season conference championship with no more than 4 losses to be an at large bid team. I m not confident we can string 3 good games together to win Arch Madness.

There is no shame in losing to a good Bradley team on the road. I agree that we had a problem with turnovers including offensive fouls, which I believe accounted for about 33% of our turnovers. Yes, attention to detail is something that has paid off for LU the last several years and I'd love to see us back to that level. One thing we're not doing is giving Bradley credit for something they did very well. They understood our defensive rotation and did a great job several times, especially in the second half, making our guys have to make difficult choices on the third rotation. Perhaps having a game vs SIU right before playing us helped them better prepare since it's a similar defense. That being said, the biggest issue in my opinion were the second-chance possessions Bradley got in the second half. Multiple times we took Bradley deep into the shot clock and they missed a high-degree-of-difficulty shot only to get a rebound, new possession, and a score. Heck, we even gave them one of those off a missed free-throw that was fumbled out of bounds and ended up costing us two points-- OK that was self-inflicted. The other thing Bradley did that was smart was realize that when we were on our third or fourth rotation Mast was inevitably in a great offensive rebounding position. They weren't shy about shooting knowing they had a good chance to rebound because we would have four guys out. At least three times, Mast snagged the rebound easily and they got a new possession that led to a bucket, one time it happened twice so we were playing defense for three shot clocks. If you have ever played defense moving in a stance for almost a minute you'll know what it does to your legs and your ability to attack the basket when you do get the ball back. As we saw, Mast wasn't always scoring off those as putbacks. These renewed possessions were taking a lot of energy out of us and it was demoralizing because several times they scored or drew additional fouls on us after those renewed shot clocks. Valentine is a smart guy. I'm sure he and his staff will see the same things and be prepared next time we see Bradley. They certainly were ready for Missouri State the second go around and let's hope if we see Bradley again, the same will happen. Now, back to paying more attention to detail, less turnovers, and keeping the other teams bigs off the glass when we're on defense. Go Ramblers! Love that we're at a point with the program that we are fretting about now having 5 losses. So many years we were already there by Dec. 1.

[brot4britu]

Against Swm we played our best of the year--Against bradley a team I despise we played our worst Never should have happened This LUC team is a good one BUT not good enough SORRY

[JArsy_22]

An ESPN+ article regarding “Bubble Watch” specifically addressed last night’s game. Essentially it said that it’s good that we racked up such a good record early on to give a cushion because we’ve been a little shakier lately, but that we are theoretically still on the right side of the bubble (in the “Should Be In” category). Also noted that Bradley is a Quad 2 loss so not something that is a complete resume killer.