Wow, we win at the Barn and people gripe as if they were getting hung with a new rope.
- Thread starter gmhowes
- Start date
Started looking like the Wisky game. Great win and saw more confidence from Parker and Kopp than all year....Great sign!
If IU plays like they did the first 32 minutes, they can play with any team and will be a tough out come tourney time if they get it.
It is a game of runs, true. But it would still be nice of one of those runs wasn't very nearly blowing a 22 point lead with 6 minutes left.
Not all runs are created equal.
And it was a run where those Minnesota players would normally never hit 3’s like that. Scoring 36 points in 8 minutes is an aberration that’ll happen once in a decade at most.
Who knew Steph Curry was gonna show the last 7 minutes for the Gophers...I questioned Woody not calling the time out but his "figure it out" comment may prove valuable going forward.
Letting a 27 point lead get down to 3 in a few minutes is not a run. It is a collapse.
It is a sign our players can't identify scoring threats and make an extra effort to deny then the ball. It is a sign we don't understand how to manage a lead. Phinisee and Stewart both took quick 3s that resulted in a 3 from Minny. If you get a 27 point lead on the road, take your time and get into the locker room asap. I like being aggressive but you better take good shots and be prepared for a 3 point onslaught. This team isn't particularly smart. I hope Woody can change that over time. It won't happen this year.
You don't see Wisconsin blowing leads. They take good shots and take care of the ball late. Good teams do that.
It is a game of runs, me running to the fridge for another beer.
It was a NEAR collapse, not a collapse. And that makes all the difference.
They were hitting many 3’s they’d never hit again in a game. IU got sloppy and lazy, but if Minnesota shoots their normal percentage IU still wins by double digits.
More so a worry for me is this team doesn't seem to have the ability to stop themselves from collapsing.
It was one of the things I was most excited about with this team, coming out of the Bahamas trip. In both those games, they built a lead, the other team threatened in the 2nd half, and they buckled down and reestablished dominance and finished the game off.
The Minny game was yet another example that we've lost that ability.
So yeah, thank goodness we played as well as we did the first 30 plus minutes...because we needed nearly every single point of that 27 point lead, to hold off one of the worst teams in the conference.
What we did the first 3/4 of that game was awesome though! Not many teams had dominated them like that, especially in The Barn. It was similar to the stretch in the first half at the Kohl Center. There are short glimpses like that, that show how good this team can be. Makes it even more frustrating though, that we can't sustain it, and/or close games out when we have those abilities.
I'll have to remember that the next time I'm in a building or a bridge that just "nearly" collapses.
Obviously it's a good thing that we escaped with the win. And, yeah, we've long had difficulty winning in that facility -- regardless of records. And there's no question that runs happen in basketball games.
But iubud is right: this was no typical run. It was a couple missed free throws away from being one of the most epic meltdowns in Indiana basketball history. Yeah, we survived. But that doesn't mean what happened was nothing to worry about.
This team has a classic case of 40-minute-itis. I'd bet that, even when we were up 27 after RP's 3 with 8:21 to play, most IU fans had a sneaky fear that the lead wasn't safe.
Actually...I'm one of the biggest pessimists around with this teams ability to lose leads...and I had no thoughts that blowing that lead was even a remote possibility. My main thoughts were centered around how bad Minnesota was. And how I hoped the blowout win didn't make us overconfident heading into Rutgers.I'll have to remember that the next time I'm in a building or a bridge that just "nearly" collapses.
Obviously it's a good thing that we escaped with the win. And, yeah, we've long had difficulty winning in that facility -- regardless of records. And there's no question that runs happen in basketball games.
But iubud is right: this was no typical run. It was a couple missed free throws away from being one of the most epic meltdowns in Indiana basketball history. Yeah, we survived. But that doesn't mean what happened was nothing to worry about.
This team has a classic case of 40-minute-itis. I'd bet that, even when we were up 27 after RP's 3 with 8:21 to play, most IU fans had a sneaky fear that the lead wasn't safe.
Then, they showed me yet another different way they can collapse.
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