Polite Crowd Rattles Cougs

Maples was rocking tonight.

For a time tonight, I had visions in my head of writing about a road win and about conference parity and about how maybe this team could somehow scratch out a mediocre conference season. A very late 14-0 Stanford run dashed those hopes and with about two minutes left, I pulled out my laptop and set out to write about another loss. The Cougs and Card looked like evenly matched teams and just prior to the Stanford run, the Cougs even looked superior with only some impressive, if borderline, ridiculous shooting by the home team keeping the good guys from being the team to pull away. Alas, the Wazzu shots stopped falling and the smart guys' just never did. The result was somehow a double digit loss to a team that, quite frankly, isn't very good. For more notes on yet another disappointing Bone Era performance, click on the jump. Then when you're done, leave some comments. We can all talk about it together, like a community and stuff.

The big news of the night was that Will DiIorio got the start over Royce Woolridge on the heels of his strong, albeit total outlier, performance against UW. It was likely an effort to combat the size of Stanford, which makes sense. Ken Bone was off to a good start, logically.

Richard Longrus and Woolridge were the first guys off the bench tonight because rotation, schmotation.

Hey, it didn't take over 5 minutes to score this time. Hooray! Mike Ladd got off to a very bright start, both offensively and on the glass. You know, because Mike Ladd is our best rebounder and all.

Something we learned from Richard Longrus and DJ Shelton tonight: when someone is setting a screen and you pass to him, the ball just hits him in the chest and the other team gets it. This is not effective basketball, but it is effective comedy.

In case you're wondering where I stand on DaVonte Lacy's shooting slump, not a fan to be honest.

This game, like most games so far this year, and probably most games the rest of the way will, featured a lengthy offensive drought. When we're forced into situations where someone has to create his own shot, it's always going to get pretty ugly. It's a lot to ask for Motum and/or Lacy to continually bail the team out offensively.

Speaking of Motum, his struggles from the UW game carried over into the first half. When he's not doing awesome Brock Motum things, his limitations become incredibly glaring. His hands aren't very good, he's not much of a passer, he's not a good rebounder for his size and he's not terribly athletic. That said, the dude can score in some truly remarkable ways and I love him.

As we rolled into the second half, I came to realize that I was missing "Stars in Danger: The High Dive" to watch the Cougs. Blogger problems.

There are some lineups Ken Bone rolls out there that make you wonder, "Who scores when these five are out there?" When the five in question are DiIorio, Ladd, Longrus, Woolridge and DJ Shelton, the answer is that Shelton will hit a step-back three at the end of the shot clock, then come down and heat check his way into another trey the next time down. I feel like this is not sustainable, but it was pretty cool.

I haven't charted the game (nor will I be), but I'm pretty sure the Bone Zone went 0 for the night getting stops. All stats are unofficial.

My hopes got especially high when the Motum-Lacy bail out offense got going (consecutive three's by Motum plus an And-1 by Lacy) to pull the Cougs to a five point lead, but the magic was short lived.

It was short-lived because Stanford wouldn't miss shots. A couple three's came as the result of lazy close-outs on defense, but even so, the way Stanford shot was pretty fluky.

As the game went back and forth and looked poised to go down to the wire, the Cougs were actually able to get some easy buckets from carving up the Stanford zone. It was reassuring that this is in fact possible.

We were mostly able to limit Stanford's offensive rebounding, which is a huge strength of theirs, but the beginning of the end came when Shelton was basically alone under the basket and Dwight Powell dunked a rebound.

I felt like the Cougs kept getting pretty good looks during the 14-0 run, but shots just wouldn't go. And Stanford just would not miss. 

All in all, it's hard to say that the team played badly. There were poor moments to be sure, but they were far from a calamity. When you're shots don't go and the other team's do, it's just not going to be your night. When is it going to be our night? Hopefully soon.

Go Cougs.