Lackadaisical play in the last couple of minutes, NO FOULING, NO PRESSING, no emotion... Tired or not, they needed to at least make an attempt..
Well, for the first time this season LSU has been beaten pretty soundly. Hopefully we don't go up against teams with this kind of depth in the tourney. Lazare and Rolle played really really well today though. Too bad it was because they were forced to play because of foul troubles with Thomas. Crud, that bright orange Phat Phil clone of a basketball coach at Tennessee has his team atop the standings now.
I think it's becoming pretty evident that LSU has one player that can handle the ball and he's the only guy on the team that can shoot... Once they take him out the game LSU is toast. He's an overacheiver too... at like 5'9" he's gonna be pretty easy to stop come tournament time. Davis was out of control in the whole second half. As soon as he gets frustrated he just starts flailing his body out of control. It's unfortunate too because next year, when the team will be more mature, their only outside threat and ball handler will be gone.
While I have the same feeling, this is what happens when LSU plays a deep, athletic pressing team. The Tigers could not shake the pressure and when they did they didn't make plays because they exerted too much energy breaking the press. Add to that some pretty favorable home court "non calls" and the fact that I thought some of the Tigers didn't have their best games, and we lose a tough one on the road to the #7 ranked team. This is a game where Tack being there, and perhaps one of Mason or Martin would have helped. I'm curious whether Brady felt that Voogd wouldn't be able to handle this pressure. I'm not sure Temple was effective bringing the ball up at times--he not only turned the ball over a couple of times, but missed the front end of a one and one late in crunch time. Good bench play though from Darnell and Magnum. Just not enough to finish. Green's and Humphrey's 3s killed us (Temple also lost Humphrey on that play to let him hit the corner 3). Ah well, a loss that was expected, and one that doesn't hurt us nearly as much as Florida's losing would have hurt them. :geauxtige Word to Brady and team. We're going to see this more and more. Fatigue and conditioning of our starters, especially if Voogd, Lazare and Rolle don't start to see more minutes, is going to be key down the stretch.
Well, look at it this way, this is a game that Florida had to have, and Donovan coached a good game, and neutralized D.Mitch and Thomas (Tyrus, you're not ready for the NBA, dude :redface: ) and frustrated Davis with some home cookin' officiating (Davis getting banged, missed out of bounds call with about 4 minutes to go, etc.). With all of that LSU led with 12 minutes to go in the game in a very closely contested game. So, I don't think I'd characterize this as LSU getting beat "soundly." They just ran out of gas at the end, and with our three leading starters with off games, we had to rely on floating jumpers from Darnell. It does suck that Pearl has the Orange in number 1, but let's not lose hope, we do have a manageable schedule after this. And, perhaps these Gators will take care of business against the Vols the next time they play.:geauxtige
