Missouri State Preview and Game Thread -- 1-22-2022

[bmh_twosix]

This has been a disaster. Mosley is incredible. Hope someone else knocks them out at Arch. Losing at home in this conference is an at bid killer. Tough day all around, the big man situation for next year remains an issue.

MSU is currently 69th in the net, and will go up if the finish off the win. This is a Q2 loss. This isn’t good, but bid killer is definitely hyperbole. This isn’t losing at home to Evansville. Would like to tighten the score a bit for the metrics.

[440Rambler]

I commend folks who don't see this as the end of at large bid chances, faith is a commendable quality. With that said this loss probably means we have to run the table the rest of the way out in league play and does anyone truly believe that's happening?

[JCT]

Now we have to figure out how to avoid a sweep in Springfield. A win there might be a Q1 now.

[JArsy_22]

I hate to bring up the officiating, and it likely is a moot point because we didn’t deserve to win anyways, but there were some very very questionable calls throughout the game. Lucas had at least 2 tough calls and we know how that hurt us with Mosley. Gentile, and especially the student section, was fired up at the game, and when they gave MSU a TO on what seemed to be a jump ball late while down 8, Drew absolutely went ballistic for a minute. Tough tough tough loss, especially seeing the MSU players talking trash to fans on the way out.

[440Rambler]

None of the officiating was more questionable than Hutsons shot selection. It's not in the top 10 reasons we lost that game we need to look in the mirror not at others.

[jdubs]

Feels like we just don't have a guy we can lean on when we need a bucket to stop a run. Earlier in the season it was Schwieger, but lately shots just haven't been falling for him like before

[JCT]

Down to 29 in KenPom, MSU up to 48.

[01grad]

We lost the game because we couldn’t make shots….we missed a LOT of open shots…and we couldn’t stop Mosley. No excuse for the former, and Lucas picking up his 4th foul early in the second half had a lot to do with the latter. I think we actually did an ok job defending Prim inside. He’s not why we lost.

As JCT said, this didn’t hurt our metrics much. It did help Missouri State’s, though. What will hurt us is if we drop one of our next 3. That includes 3 games in a week, and back-to-back games against SIU. That’s not going to be easy.

[ahunte1]

Mosley is such a dynamic scorer. I'm not sure how we stop him, esp if they keep calling ticky tack fouls.

On the radio show, Drew sId that Lucas came into the locker room before the game and said the refs told him they were going to call a tight game. They certainly did.

Containing Mosely is hard, but the refs made it next to impossible. I don't know why we didn't press earlier, or throw a zone at them. One time I remember Saint denying a pass to Mosely and forcing MSU to do something other then give him the ball and let him get into the paint. And a couple times Hutson helped and made him pick up the dribble.

Feels like we just don't have a guy we can lean on when we need a bucket to stop a run. Earlier in the season it was Schwieger, but lately shots just haven't been falling for him like before

Lucas is that guy, but you're right that nobody stepped up to pick up the slack today.

[Rambler303]

Tough loss. While not a season killer, this one stings as we had a slim margin for error for an at large and this hurts that case. It just does, the election process is not built to give mid major teams the benefit of the doubt.

Once Lucas got into foul trouble, that was likely the end of our chances of stopping Mosley. He was impressive and dominated anyone that tried to guard him. Bit surprised as I figured we should have slowed him down and prim would have gone off. That being said, team has to look in the mirror for this game, they were thoroughly outplayed and did not respond well. For whatever reason the offense seems broken, is it lack of a go to guy? Shooting slump? Whatever it is, we need to shake it off because we haven’t played well in awhile now.

Question is going to be how do we respond? Clearly this is a good and talented team. How do we respond? We have played poorly since the covid break, they need to dig deep. That goes for Coach V as well, we haven’t come out ready to play or counter punched well at all conference season. Might be rookie coach learning but we have a senior laden team that should go down by double digits in 4 straight games.

Hopefully this game puts a chip on the guys shoulders, they need to start playing with urgency and not assume teams will roll over for them. The next 4 games will be telling what kind of team we have.