The Hoosier Report expresses some of the apathy that seems to be running through IU country about the team’s on-court endeavors these days. He does provide a nice little tempo-free summary of our Spartans. As I commented on his site, though,
this sentence struck me oddly: “The Spartans don’t shoot many three pointers, but prefer to pound the ball inside.”
You’re absolutely right we don’t shoot many threes, but I wouldn’t say we pound the ball inside, either. Most of our inside baskets come on offensive rebounds.
Speaks to the lack of offensive identity we MSU fans feel this team exhibits. The best shot at such an identity is the mid-range game with Lucas and Morgan.
Bob Kravitz of the Indy Star, meanwhile, tells the Hoosier fan base to skip the “stripe-out” (an attempt to get fans in alternating sections to wear red and white shirts) and instead wear t-shirts with hand-written messages on them, like this guy did Wednesday night before Assembly Hall security made him remove it.
It wiill be interesting to gauge the mood of the IU crowd tonight . . .
KJ-
Here is the turnover story for the Indiana game:
I must have missed one as I only have MSU with 11 turnovers in the 1st half:
1. Suton bad lob pass @15:13 (13 seconds left in the shot clock)
2. Summers travel @ 13:52 (7)
3. Walton bad pass on lob @ 12:59 (29)
4. Walton bad inbounds pass @12:28 (35)
5. Morgan bad outlet pass @12:07 (33)
6. Naymick pass to Gray @ 10:32 (29)
7. Allen lost ball on lay-up attempt @9:37 (26)
8. Suton stripped @7:23 (11)
9. Morgan bad pass @ 4:36 (17)
10. Gray bad interior pass to no one @ 1:45 (11)
11. Suton charge @1:22 (16)
SECOND HALF
12. Lucas Stripped @19:43 (22)
13. Morgan bad pass at top of key @19:22 (22)
14. Suton travel @15:41 (9)
15. Neitzel off foot @13:33 (26)
16. Lucas travel @12:25 (20)
17. Walton travel @ 6:43 (17)
18. Neitzel bad pass to Lucas at top of key @ 3:04 (24)
No rhyme or reason to any of it. Team looks beaten and without fire.
Think you missed another lob early in the first half. I know we went for three alley-oops early and botched all three.
This is one where the boxscore doesn’t match my impression at all – we looked awful, but the shooting was almost even, we got to the line more, rebounding was reasonably close … it was just the turnovers. (That and Indiana got every possible roll at the basket – at least ten points on strange bounces off the rim that went in. Wouldn’t have mattered if we would quit @#$%ing throwing the ball away.)
[...] part, MSU was able to run its offense and simply gave the ball away in the process. GBBound has the turnover breakdown in the previous comments section. He sums it up succinctly: “No rhyme or reason to any of [...]