Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Close Game = Akron Loss

After treating us to an hour of the Cavaliers' post-game show last night, FSN finally switched over to the Akron/Dayton men's basketball game. Just in time for the halftime show. And after what seemed like four days later, I got to watch some basketball.

Summary:
After a first half explosion from Chris Wright, the Zips trailed 42-31 at halftime, pulled back to 54-54 thanks to some ridiculous three point shooting, then did what every Dambrot-coached Zips basketball team has done in the last few years in a close game; tired out and allowed their opponents to walk away with a victory. This one happened to be a 76-68 victory.

There is absolutely no reason that the Flyers should have walked away with that win. They're a great team, don't get me wrong. But Akron was leading midway through the second half with 7'0" Zeke Marshall and 6'10" Mike Bardo on the bench with foul trouble, thanks to over 50% three-point shooting. With around 5 minutes left, Marshall reentered the game. Done deal, right? Surely McNees and McClanahan would stop shooting NBA-length threes. Surely they'd realize that hot streaks end. Surely they'd start giving the ball to Cvetinovic and Marshall, letting them get their work done on the inside.

Nope.

The Zips shot a ghastly 22-60 overall. Of course, that may have been largely due to their 14-36 three-point shooting. They were also dominated in every facet by the Dayton offense, who led in rebounding 42-27 and shot 30-56 overall. On top of this "Please don't touch me!" defense, the bench looked awful. For the love of Pete, folks, Nikola Cvetinovic led our team in assists with 7. How many did starting point guard Steve McNees have? 0. Not one. And he was 4-13 shooting. And he was 4-12 from three-point range. I feel like this blog is turning into College Basketbawful.

The good news is, it's a long season. The bad news is, this Zips team looks like the last few Dambrot-coached teams; playing to the level of their opponent, hanging in a close game, then failing miserably in the last two minutes. The rest of the good news is, Dambrot-coached teams translate end-of-game regular season failure into end-of-game tournament success. The rest of the bad news is, the streak of three-point shooting we saw yesterday won't happen every game. It probably won't happen in half of the games. If Zeke Marshall, Dakotah Euton and Mike Bardo can't establish a low-post presence, we're going to be in trouble.

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