spartan2785

I only was able to watch the last 4 minutes or so due to high school basketball commitments, but I saw twice late in the game where a simple pick and roll led led to wide open layups, because Angel couldn't keep up with his defender, the guard did nothing to disrupt the action, and Bittle got sealed off with ease. This is basketball 101, like the most simple play possible, and we looked helpless to defend it. It's such bad basketball, Angel and Bittle are probably the two worst inside defenders of the Altman era. Bittle is okay when he is just matched up on the inside, and he can block some shots, but he is awful at defending anything on the perimeter, same with Angel, but Angel can't rebound or block shots.

While I'm sure our record will improve, I am a bit worried about how ready the team will be once they get to the postseason, B1G success in baseball is pretty non-existent in the last 30 years. Only team I can think of off the top of my head that has made it in the last ten years is Michigan, and that team was pretty unexpected. We're kind of the big team in a small pond.

I think personally one of the things that would help most would be to not have polls until about week 8 or so, and to do away with the stupid committee rankings show. Football is the only sport where you get these committee rankings through the season, you don't see it in basketball or baseball. I think it would be better to simply have something towards the end of the season after we've seen things already play out.

Yes, in softball the former Pac teams should dominate. Baseball we could really use UCLA becoming a power again, USC hasn't been relevant in a while amazingly with their history.

I'm going to write something similar in the baseball thread, but while we may have a better record in softball, the league isn't going to prepare us very well against playing the best teams. If there is one sport where the B1G really does lag behind the rest of the nation it's softball and baseball.

He needs to adjust, we can't keep having a roster entirely made of transfers every season, there has to be a little more continuity. Out of the guys you listed the only ones I think I like are Cousinard (which really was only during his second season his first was bad), Williams, and finally Figueroa was pretty decent, everyone else has been mediocre to straight up bad. If we bring in a guard they have to be a 38% shooter from 3 or better, it just has to be like that. We can't keep bringing in "scorers" who are volume shooters who play for bad teams. I'm talking Oquendo, Moss, Zaruzuela, Estrada, and others. They aren't good, they are simply the best of a bad bunch. Take some freshman and let them develop a bit!

Got completely outplayed by a freshman, nobody wanting to take responsibility on offense, no leaders in the second half, toughness just goes back to being charmin soft. So sad to see.

Partially seeing what a great crowd can do, meanwhile Oregon's fanbase has no interest in anything other than football, kind of sad to be honest.

Doesn't help when MSU has basically their best shooting performance ever, always seems to happen to us. Literally don't think they've missed a single open three, not a single one.

Ugh, Worst....Start.......Possible!

Yeah, it's a game you can't let off the gas for sure, we won't shoot as well, so we'll need our defense to stay tough.

Wow, it's amazing what energy will do for your shooting percentages, probably helps that Bamba doesn't have a 3 attempt. We've had great looks overall, we haven't been stationary, we've moved the ball, haven't settled for early 3s, gone to the rim with aggression, just a great half of basketball. Once again it starts with toughness and energy on the defensive end. MSU didn't have a bad offensive first half, but we made them work for it, which hasn't happened in many of our losses.

Toughness, that's the difference, toughness, I love when Cook gave a forearm shiver to the big earlier in the game, loved Bamba going hard to the rim, love Evans fighting for everything down low, energy and toughness, be tougher than the other team, that's what wins in the B1G. Very few easy buckets for MSU, a few shots from the outside where we should not have gone under the screen, but I can't really think of any easy buckets at the rim.

Well....it felt like the first game of the season

Porter's first game was historic, he went off for like 36 or something like that. Probably one of the most outrageous shooters we've ever had, could single handedly shoot you into game or shoot you out of games. Once he didn't have Brooks, Hairston, Taylor, and Leunen his effectiveness dropped off big time. Only saw about the last 3 minutes, but I'll take it as progress since we were competitive.

I feel embarrassed honestly that I was so high on this team after the tournament back in November. When I think back to that, we got incredibly lucky against Bama that Sears had his worst game of the year against us, Key was on such a heater back then that he was instant offense off the bench. I actually said at the time that I was ready for him to cool off. What makes this so incredibly frustrating is that Bamba was a 35-38% 3 point shooter during a 4 year stretch, I mean he's proven he can shoot, Angel was a 40+ percent shooter at Stanford, what has happened for them to just become so bad from out there!

Might be, we have incredibly slow un-athletic bigs this year who cannot switch which is a bad idea when the whole point of Altman's defense is to switch on screens. Shelstad isn't a good defender neither is Key, they're small so they can't switch either. Tracey and Bamba aren't bad but they aren't ++ either. Evans just isn't very smart, and I think he's more of a 3 since he is skinny.

Never have I turned on a team like this one, so freakin soft, Bittle and Angel are such liabilities on defense, no ability to switch, yet we don't fight through screens, so we just end up with mismatches as Bittle and Angel who have NO athleticism on defense just get driven by. Soft mentality, nobody wants to step up, nobody rebounds, nobody has toughness, just an incredibly disappointing team who can NOT get off to a fast start to save their lives, just sleep walk through the first 10 minutes. No urgency, no communication. Our seniors play like freshman, no intelligence at all on defense or offense. Shelstad just does not understand that HE HAS TO START FAST!!!! Just sort of meanders about until the second half, then tries to turn it on. Wouldn't be surprised if we didn't win another game at this point, we look completely lost at this point without a shred of swagger.

I'll say it as well, Shelstad has to start realizing he needs to be involved in the scoring early and throughout the game, he can't just decide to be aggressive on some nights, this team needs him to take over when the offense is struggling. I would rather see him jack up 15 shots a game since he's the one that seems like he has the best chance to get hot. The worst thing he can do is go the Richardson route and only occasionally try to play aggressive. I get that he gets the opposing teams' best defender, I get that sometimes he gets a lot of attention from other defenders, but the team needs to lean on him right now! I also feel like our screens are super weak, I don't know if that's a strategy in order to roll more quickly or it has to do with movement, but when our guards go around screens they don't hug the hip of the screener, they just lazily go around. I'm obviously not a basketball savant, but my casual observation seems like we just don't go hard enough. We play too casual.

It doesn't help that Tracey and Moss aren't any better. When we put Key and Shelstad together on the perimeter we are just too small out there since we don't really have great help side rim protectors, Evans just isn't a 5 star talent it seems (our 5 stars never perform like 5 stars). It's beginning to become a disaster of a season that started out looking like a top 3 Altman season. We are soooooooo easy to play against. Our defense is blah, our shooting is atrocious. Just sag on everyone other than Shelstad and you're good, on defense just set a ton of screens and our guards aren't good enough to fight through, or you get a guy like Angel or Bittle on a guard and he just blows by because they aren't athletic enough.

It's inconceivable that Shelstad has two shots, he has to take control more often, he can't just step up when he feels like, Altman has done a horrible job this year with this team, they look unprepared, the team has no spark, the shooting is just disgusting. Need to get a shooting coach it seems like because we haven't shot well from deep as a team in a loooonnggggg time.

Regressed sooooooo hard, terrible half again, sleepwalking again, can't shoot for anything, meanwhile another team having their best night shooting of the year, seems to be a theme during conference play. .....I guess I just couldn't help myself, most frustrating basketball team in a long time.

Never mind, I'm getting ahead of myself, can't be automatically negative.

Cronin does have a right to complain, he's not the one that made the decision to move conferences, he probably was blindsided by it just as much as everyone else was. It's also not just the amount of travel, it's the way the schedule has no rhythm to it. In the Pac-12 you pretty much were Thursday-Saturday, occasionally Friday-Sunday. Now you could play on pretty much any day of the week. You don't have traditional road trips, it's a huge change to how you need to prepare, and I do think it's huge disadvantage to our teams since it seems that we have to do a lot more of this type of travel. Just look at the Oregon team right now, we had a game in Minnesota then have a road game to UCLA. So we have to go over to Minneapolis, probably then go home, then we are right back on the road down to UCLA, we come back for a game against NU, then right back on the road to the Michigan schools. I will say he's complaining more than he needs to, everybody gets that this is far from ideal, but you don't hear Altman, Sprinkle, and Mussellman doing this much complaining. I don't think he's helping himself, and I do think we'll probably see him leave since it looks like he's miserable right now.

I don't think Cronin was ignorant, I think he was focused on his team in the moment. Last year, he wasn't being asked these questions, he wasn't feeling the exhaustion that I'm sure he is now feeling. He probably also was told not to complain before the first year in conference. I'm sure all of these players and coaches are not exactly enjoying this level of travel. Football has it pretty easy, for the basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball, all these other sports where you play a 18 or so game schedule it's an absolute slog of a season.