courtesy of Jack Alden

Related pages Thoughts and observations Inside the numbers Box score Season stats Possession analysis

"It was really an unusual game. I thought in the first half we were really efficient on defense, but really made some bad decisions on the offensive end with the turnovers that we had. I think we had nine turnovers at the half, and I thought that so many of them were just silly mistakes. We had two illegal screens, we had guys trying to dribble the ball in a crowd... So we talked about that more at the half. "In the second half, we came out and continued the good defensive play, and I think we were even a little bit better at the offensive end of the court. Needless to say, Kirk Hinrich shooting the ball like that was something else. Kenny Gregory, everybody's going to look at his 18 points, but I thought his whole story was what he did at the defensive end. I thought it could have been Kenny's best defensive game. "Our whole goal was we had to get the ball inside and try to get to the free throw line. We did, but we didn't finish the play by making the shot at the free throw line (18-35). We had such a size advantage, we wanted to go inside, but Eric and Drew and Nick, as long as he was in there (fouled out with 14+ minutes to go), were not as attentive to taking the ball to the basket. My favorite play of the whole first half was Nick Collison's charge because it was one of the few times a big guy got it and took it right to the basket. But Kirk's shooting, Eric's rebounding, Kenny's defense... You can go down the line, and there were some pretty good plays. "I wanted to get (Luke Axtell) anywhere from eight to 15 minutes. He got 17. He tweaked his ankle a little bit the last trip down the floor, so that's something you don't want to have happen. Hopefully, getting some ice on it tonight, it won't be a problem tomorrow. "We're gonna be better offensively than we were tonight. I hope the dickens we're gonna shoot the free throws better. This is a good shooting team. It's amazing, because we came in Thursday and all we did was shoot. Then yesterday we had some practice, and came in this morning and shot. But you can't go 18 for 35. You like to shoot 35 free throws, because that means you're getting the basketball inside. But you've got to make those, too."

Email Jack