Need to start driving to the hoop. As good as the offense was at Arkansas it is as stagnant tonight so far. Get out of here with a win and move on to conference play.
MTSU outshot us, got more rebounds than us, more assists, more blocked shots. We forced 19 turnovers and hit 15-17% ft's. We kind of had an off night but still won by 9. On to conferen I never thought we would win 19 of 20 in conference play last year and have a similar feeling this year. Hope that is a good omen. We have a lot of issues to work on.
I like where we are. We are not in the top five nationally. ISU is. We are young and growing. The young players will be much better come March. Our vets will be rolling.
My main concern is we do not really have an inside game. As we roll into conference play I hope Tugler can stay out of foul trouble against better competition and start making a higher percentage of his shots. I noticed he is making 52% of his shots but it seems he misses quite a few shots in the inside 5 foot range. He is our inside game. He has so much energy and talent but you can usually take it to the bank against good teams he is off the floor with two fouls 5 to 10 minutes into the game. With him off the court we are not the same team. This year Tugler is averaging about 22 minutes a game. Almost identical to last year. But we do not have a Javier or a Jwan to help control the paint, score, and grab rebounds. We have Cenac but he does not appear to like banging under the boards. We have Sahko and Lath but they are not near the players Javier and Jwan were.. We have McCarty and Ramon Walker who to me are more guards than they are inside guys. CKS is trying to give them some play and that may be our best option at this time. And we have McFarland. Doesn't appear we are going to see much of him until next year. What we lack in front court players we have in back court players. Sharp, Uzan, Flemings, Harwell, and Mercy Miller can all shoot and handle the ball. The few minutes Mercy Miller played last night he made some key shots and looked good on defense as well. His effort probably will buy him more playing time going forward. Harwell is still getting the rust out and trying to fully come back from major injury. If he plays to his potential we are gong to be loaded in the back court. Going forward it is what it is. Unlike Baylor I don't think we are going to be able to get a former #1 draft pick 7 footer to show up mid season and give us a helping hand. We have 18 conference games coming up. Not counting the games I fully expect us to win we have home and road games against both TTech and Baylor, road games only against BYU, Iowa State, and Kansas, and a home game only against Kansas. Going to be a tough schedule especially in February. If we can get through healthy with only 3 or 4 losses that would give us either a 14-4 or a 15-3 conference record. Probably no lower than a 2 seed on the
UH should have...letting Baylor outbid you for a big body work in progress, when that's the one thing you need, is shameful.
First I have heard there was a bidding war for his services. Only time will tell if this pickup by Baylor will be impactful. The articles I have read focus mainly on criticism for Baylor being allowed to bring back a former NBA first round draft pick to the NCAA. Many of the critics are friends and colleagues of CKS. I have yet to hear Sampson's reaction to this but I guess if he hasn't already done so we will hear from him at some point. What is your source or are you speculating about this?
