Shouldn't have been this difficult

But thankful for the win. Best News: Newman finally had a big scoring night and showed flashes of the player we were hoping for. Still not there but his aggressiveness was good to see and he finally found his shot. We need the big freshmen to qualify and hopefully at least one of them will be able to give us more inside presence and some important minutes.

It is hard to win when you loose the rebounding battle every game. This one was not too bad 28-32 but we need some size.

There was a lot of good, but also some not-so-good that still leaves questions about how competitive we can actually be. I'll start with not-so-good so things end on an upbeat note.

The Not-So-Good:
-For about 35 minutes, ISU was definitely in the game. This was a game that (Asteroid can correct me if I'm wrong) had us favored in the mid-teens, was at home, and was against the worst team in our league. Granted, the "worst team in our league" is better than the worst team in most other leagues, but that just means that 8 other teams have the ability (currently) to do even better.

-Rebounding. We just don't really do it.

-Defense: Still not up to the standards that HCBS typically demands.

-Devonte: not his best offensive night, but is getting knocked around pretty hard out there. I hope he can channel some Frank Mason bulletproof toughness because if this continues he's going to get hurt, and without him, we're in trouble.

The good:
-Malik Newman finally showed up. Liked that he was getting to the rim, which kept his defender honest which opens up the 3 for him. Funny how that works, isn't it? He also grabbed 8 boards. I'm hoping that this this is the beginning of a trend and that the switch has been flipped to the "on" position with him.

-Vick: Not a huge fan of him shooting 3's, but I'll take his 8 boards (3 offensive) because we need 'em.

-Dok: when you realize how little time he's been playing in his life, he's really good. Obviously size helps. With his 6 boards, he Newman and Vick combined for 22 of our rebounds.

-Svi's first half: he couldn't miss.

-Devonte: if he doesn't die in the process, his aggressiveness seems to have hit another level.

-Thanks OU for knocking out Tech and Baylor showed that WVU are beatable in Morgantown (even though they didn't win it).


To wrap up, this was a good win, but it shouldn't have been that close. Sadly, I think that last night was about "as good as it gets" with this group. With that in mind, I'm not sure that it's "good enough" to get us past the 3 games after KSU (@WVU, Baylor, @OU). The addition of DeSousa and/or Preston are tremendously important at this point. No, they won't slide into the offence like Cinderella's foot into a glass slipper, but I do think it allows us to play some high/low, and most importantly it should immediately correct the rebounding issue and improve our defense. If Self simply tells them, "just go out there and crash the boards and keep your guy from scoring," I think our team gets better instantly.

Happy that we have KSU who I think we can beat coming to AFH this weekend as it will hopefully buy us enough time to get resolution on the Preston and/or Desousa before we hit a really tough stretch on the schedule.