Dash will be a senior next year. He will get a lot of minutes. Jamal Branch will be awesome, but he will be a freshman. Don't expect him to set the world on fire from day one. Turner will be interesting. Will he live up to his recruiting hype when he was signed by Washington? How good will he be? I also do not know how many years of eligibility he has left. The SG spot seems like it will be well manned by Elston, Naji and freshman Jordan Green. Add those with Roberson, Middleton, Loubeau and Davis...the future looks pretty bright.
I don't really see regression. I've watched a handful of ugly A&M games this year and the MO is the same. Don't look at the score, but look at how they are playing, how they are getting into sets and how they are getting shots, not if they score. Bad guard play will doom this team.
Still think they have not regressed? Texas is playing as well as they played in the last game and A&M is playing much worse than that last game. The last 3 games since that last Texas game, we have played with no confidence and have been tentative on offense and defense. We were lucky to pull that game against K State out. Khris Middleton has disappeared since the last Texas game and looks scared out there to try and make a play. He is our only real threat on offense (which is why we have gone from winning ugly to playing even uglier on offense in the last few games) Certainly didn't think we were gonna win tonight, but I was hoping they'd at least get something going to keep it relatively close.
Turgeon has been exposed for the fraud that he is. What a joke of an effort. Totally unprepared, uninspired, disgusting team. Middleton is a pu$$y obviously who caves in when pressured. David is just trash. Dash sucks. Billy Clyde, where art thou?
Billy Clyde would have been in the locker room drinking a fifth right now .. He did lose by 35 once to Texas in one of our good seasons and we have never faced a Texas team this good. Turgeon has done a fine job with this team, but this current group of guys definitely is lacking some toughness in the last 3 games.
I could totally see BCG drinking in the locker room. I can see it now... 2min left in the first, BCG walks off the court in disgust. The team walks into the locker room at halftime, the lights are off, someone flips the switch, BCG has his back turned to everyone, his jacket is on the floor, collar is undone, tie loose. He finishes up his last scotch (neat), throws the glass against a locker, picks up the broken half and uses it to stab Holmes through the chest... nobody says anything. The team returns to the court and win. Texas is held scoreless. BCG wins before being taken off to jail. Black Swan-esque. A perfect game.
I honestly don't think they've regressed. My point is that they've been bad all season long and have just been lucky. They're finally being exposed. I've been an A&M fan for a long time and make annual trips to Vegas for March Madness. Let me find an old text I sent to my buddy back in December when the Aggies only had 0 or 1 losses. Found it. After going 9-1 and getting a 1 pt win over a nationally ranked Washington team, I texted my buddy: I'm not very hopeful about this year's team for tourney success. Guards who can't shoot, penetrate, nor create shots for others is too huge a problem to overcome with hustle and defense. So that was my assessment then and to be honest I was a little surprised that the Aggies kept winning. They reeled off another 7 straight after that day before the loss at Texas. I didn't watch all 7, but the few games I did see were very similar in MO. The guard play has not improved. And so the idea that they have not regressed. Some of you guys grasp way too much and get way too emotional. I'm actually back in CS nowadays and everyone here is spoiled. I remember days when the basketball team had a tiny student cheering section and never won any games. The Aggies have played similar all year long in terms of hustle, but they cannot overcome their deficiencies against good teams. This was very evident from the first game I watched this year when I yelled out "why the hell is the starting backcourt Dash and Holmes! Is that the best they've got?"
Don't get me wrong, I've never said we were great and if you read through my posts earlier, I even talked about how this team has a lot of issues. But fact of the matter is that they are playing much worse than they did early in the season. If you watched the K State game, you could see that they are lost. They played ugly early in the season, but at least they had a game plan of what they were trying to do. Right now, they don't even know what to do because they are so lost. If for nothing, they have regressed for the simple fact that Khris Middleton has seriously regressed. He has no confidence at all and he is back to the way he played last year making turnovers and not shooting the ball well at all. I certainly don't blame any of this on lack of hustle from the team, but there is no way you can say they are playing just as well now as they did earlier in the season. Playing like this we would have lost to Washington, Temple, Mizzou, and Arkansas. If Khris is not contributing a lot, this offense is completely lost. Believe me ... I know what you mean as I went to school and went to plenty of games during the Melvin Watkins years.
I see what you're saying, but they really didn't look good against those teams either. The only game where they've put it together against a supposedly good team is Okie St, and even then, Okie St might be a paper tiger. Those wins earlier in the year and even up to K-State was full of foul-shooting ugly ass lost basketball. Middleton did catch fire here and there. It's not hard to adjust to A&M though. Double-team Middleton on the iso, sag off the guards on the catch n shoots and play over the screens. We Aggies need to stop thinking of those early wins as accomplishments. They were ugly ass games that the team was lucky to win. They haven't improved so you're right, but they haven't regressed either. Other teams have started to gel and the Aggies are stuck because their guards suck plain and simple. It's going to take a miracle for this team to make a deep run this year.
So, logically, the coach is terrible because his players suck? Yeah, really logically sound there, dude. Turgeon is doing a fine job; the guard play is just horrid right now though.
No, logically, Turgeon brought in those "horrid" guards. But that's not even my beef with his recruiting, sometimes you just don't luck out. But the pattern that is easily seen from our games is that our players lack that swagger, that tough mentality that BCG recruited. There are no Sloans on this squad, no BDs, no DRos, hell, no Josh Carters. No Elonus. When we get kicked down, we bend over and take it in the rear. That's not what Sloan and BD would do, they would fight like hell until we get back into the game, they won't just lay there and take it, BCG won't just lay there and take it. Turgeon might be doing a fine job in x's and o's, but he isn't instilling toughness and fight into the players, who aren't all there mentally to start with. For the past 5 years we've seen A&M teams who play with a chip on their shoulder, who don't get caught in the hype, and who fight and get down and dirty and grind out wins. We were all about the suffocating D, and even though you have more talent than us, we'd still beat you by sheer effort on defense. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore, and it's sad really because it took a damn miracle (called BCG) to get us to where we were and now it seems like Mr. Turgeon is pissing on that. I mean, giving up 43 points in a half? AT HOME? I don't care if we're playing the freaking Lakers, we don't give up 43 points in a half AT FREAKING REED.
Of course we catch Baylor on the night when Lace Dunn decides he can shoot again ... Dash needs to sit right now. That hole on offense is getting to be too large. This team just doesn't have any idea what its doing on offense right now at all.
I figured that Baylor would find a way to lose. Dunn jacking up 2 three's early in the shot clock was the difference. What a donkey.
3-6 on FTs in overtime from the best FT shooters on the team and continuously giving up offensive rebounds after 33 seconds of good defense=recipe for a loss
