Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You see is coming off. You might have heard a
loss on Tuesday to Texas Tech. And I had a
thought on Tuesday, as the clock was ticking down at
the end of the game, that what we could have
done was record this segment on Tuesday immediately after the game,
so that I could then see how much of it
I would actually be comfortable airing.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I mean, I'm usually pretty like you know, I keep
my head level. I'm not even arguing on Twitter after
losses anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now, you would have been the more levelhead of the
two of us on Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I mean I was still not very thrilled with what
I watched, just because so they needed to work on offense, right,
Like we knew that that was evident. But what can't
happen is the offense gets better and then the core
foundations that you've built on go away like that, you know,
(00:59):
it wasn't a matter of like Texas Tech has good
offense and they just made some tough shots. They made
open shots. They made shots that were a result of
bad defense and bad rebounding and bad rotations and bad communication.
Like they're not accidentally ranked in the top ten and
defensive efficiency. They have a good defense they didn't play
(01:22):
good defense that day, and I think that for me
was probably I mean, they scored seventy points mo like,
so the first time that's happened in Big twelve play,
and it didn't matter because they weren't really close in
the second half.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
No, I mean, I pointed this out and you may
have as well, that the last seven and a half
minutes of the first half they made seven of their
last nine shots, and in that timeframe they lost six points,
twenty two to sixteen. And so at halftime, I had
this just awful feeling. But I mean, it wasn't just
that they shot fifty two percent of the game. Like
I remarked to Dan and Terry, I'm like, this looks awesome.
(01:59):
This looks this is fun, this is this looks different.
There's flow to it. I know what they're trying to do,
but multiple guys are getting good looks like this, this
looks great. It was the opposite, and yet they still
lose that game by ten points. That is insanely frustrating.
And then you talked about some of the defensive issues.
Even when that starts to get cleaned up a little
(02:19):
bit in the second half, they give up rebounds.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
You just it was whack them all on Tuesday night.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, here was the number that got memo. Great first
eight minutes, right, great, first eight minutes. They hold Texas
Tech to seven points and eight minutes, which against that
offense is really really good. They were forcing them to
take shots that weren't good, shots that were rushed, they
didn't look comfortable. And then over the next twelve minutes,
(02:47):
Texas Tech scored thirty five points in twelve minutes. Yikes.
They go six to seven from three in that span,
and most of them were just catch and shoot rhythm.
And you know, I've heard people say, well, you know
they were, they were well defended threes. Look, man, just
(03:07):
because because the guy is jumping at the face, at
your face as the ball goes over his head. That's
not good defense. That's a slow close out, that's a
late closeout. That's bad rotation, that's bad position. And then
they give up an offensive you know, they get a stop,
they run good defense, they give up an offensive rebound,
and they kick it out and hit an open three
off the offensive rebound like it was. It was it
(03:29):
was you know, you plug one hole in another one springs.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, instandly frustrating. So why was a team that has
been reliable on the defensive side of the floor all
season along so bad On Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
One, they played a great offense, an offense that you know,
everybody has talked about. Cincinnati doesn't have like somebody you
can throw the ball to in the post. And it's
not just because that person can score. It's because of
the way the defense has to react. And since act
he had a bunch of different wrinkles that they tried
(04:03):
to throw at Texas Tech. They were running doubles, they
were bringing a guard down to dig on the big guy.
But then what that created was open space on the
perimeter because they were so worried about Texas Tech's interior game.
They did a great job on Darian Williams, didn't do
such a great job on Toppin, But you know, it
(04:23):
just it was a confluence of events that I think
they had a game plan. They tried to do some
things that maybe they don't always do in their defensive coverages,
and I thought it made them sloppy. I thought it
made them a little slow to react. I thought, like
I said, that their closeouts weren't effective. They weren't. They
(04:44):
weren't on time, They were late, which allows guys to
catch and shoot. And you know, it makes me wonder,
this is not This is not I talked about this
with you in the preseason. This is not a team
with a bunch of top one hundred guys, right So,
I think a lot of what they do is geared
(05:07):
towards what they practice, what they drill, what what is
important to your coach becomes important to your team. Right So,
over the last two weeks, because the offense was so bad,
they've had to spend a lot of time drilling offense
in practice, which I think just naturally means you have
less time to drill defense. And I think we saw
(05:28):
a slip, and you know, maybe it was because they
were doing some different things defensively that they haven't done
before that the attention to detail wasn't there. But you
know that that is frustrating because in theory, you should
be able to continue to do the things you good
(05:49):
at you're good at, while you work on some things
that need to improve, and that is not what we
saw from this team on Tuesday night.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Chad brendel Berk at Journal dot com. What has happened
to Dan Skillings.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I wish I had a good answer for that one. No,
The thing that blows my mind is his superpower, right,
His thing that makes him, you know, a guy that
is supposed to be one of the better players in
this league is his rebounding. And it's just gone out
(06:24):
the window. Five defensive rebounds. None of them were really
out of area, none of them were really like, oh man, look,
you know we've had that how many times in the
previous two years where you're like, I can't believe Dan
wouldn't got that ball. I don't remember thinking that in
Big twelve play really more than once or twice. And
he's got to get back to that. The other thing
(06:45):
that if I had a pen, I would have thrown
it every time he got stuck center of the chest
of a screen. Yeah, I mean, he is just getting
picked off on screens left and right, left and right,
and that's bad defense because you trail. It gives the
It gives the offense an advantage that they're able to
(07:06):
work from, you know, a plus position because Dan is
usually going to be guarding one of the better scorers
on the other team, and now they're open because Dan
is late and trailing the play like that's technique, that's footwork,
that's I've almost questioned, like it does hit bad periphial
vision that he just doesn't see that there's a seven
foot guy standing there waiting to screen him and he
(07:28):
runs into the middle of his chest. Like that part
for me has been really frustrating defensively for him. You know,
he's he's an unorthodox player on offense, So I think
to an extent, that's always going to be a little
inconsistent where you're going to have those nights where he
has eighteen and those nights where he has seven. But
it's all the other stuff that now you have seven,
(07:52):
you don't rebound, and you're playing bad defense. Well you
know that maybe maybe it's time you play a little
bit less. Maybe it's time you're not on the floor
as much, and this team is not as good if
Dan Skillings isn't playing to his potential and on the
floor helping the team.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
No question about it.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I think a lot of folks have used finishing five hundred,
as you know, in the Big twelve, is the baseline expectation.
If they do that, they're a tournament team. And I
think I think that's fair and accurate. And there have
been major conference teams that have finished below five hundred
and have still made it. But I think most of
us that are ten and ten of the Big Twelve
do what you got to do in the non league.
This team's going to be okay, they have to go
(08:29):
eight and five the rest of the way to finish
five hundred in the Big twelve.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Are they capable of doing that?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Capable? Yes, Like we weren't wrong about this team though,
Like I think we were pretty right in our assessment
of like how this roster has constructed what they need
to do to be successful. I do think over the
last three games, especially offensively, we've seen them make strides
and see them trending to be more of that team.
(08:57):
But you have now I hate this, I hate that
we talk about this, but the math is starting to
get hard. Yes, And if you don't go out to
Utah and take care of business and now now you
got to go it's seven and four or eight and three,
like it doesn't you still you still have trips to
Houston and Iowa State. They ain't winning those games MO
(09:20):
right right, So, like there's two losses on the schedule
already when you're when you're doing that that math and
figuring out what they've got to do, you're essentially saying
you have to beat every team that you know you are,
that that you should beat. And that's just not how
it works in this league. Like you're gonna go on
the road and play a team that maybe you're a
(09:41):
little bit better than, but they're gonna beat you, or
bo you're gonna you're gonna play at home and you're
not gonna be able to win, because that's what happens
here now. Apparently.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah, you know, it's it's funny you say that's it. Well,
it's funny you say that because I was.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I was asked yesterday about the crowd, and I said
that felt like a crowd that didn't expect to win
because fair or not, they've had so many opportunities for
wins in games like that in their building that they
haven't won. And so I think, unfortunately now there is
this expectation that at home in games like that. Again,
I mean, look, Texas Tech is good. I don't think
(10:18):
anybody says, boy that they can win the Big twelve
or that's that's a team that is sure to be
playing in the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, but
against a good team Q one opportunity. They lose at home,
and the vibe in the building to me felt like
one of a bunch of people who didn't expect the
team to win. That to me as a fan is
(10:38):
that's that's not good. That's that's incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I think there was definitely frustration at the end of
the first half to offensively have played as well as
they played and they were losing. Yeah, like there was
an air of inevitability, right, like they're not going to
shoot sixty percent from the floor again in the second half,
because that's it's if that was easy to do, lots
of teams would do it, So I think there was
(11:06):
that fear. And then you had that that point they
cut it to five, the building gets loud, Danae Thomas
gets fouled, goes to the line, misses the front front
end of the one and one had a chance to
cut it to three, and before I could, you know,
type on my computer, it was eleven and it was
(11:28):
the under four media timeout, and and Texas Tech was
coming out of the top out of the timeout, going
to the line. To make it twelve. What the bleep happened?
Right like that? That's that's how that's the fan base felt,
because it was like, okay, like you played a team
that that was was outstanding offensively for a large portion
(11:48):
of that game, and you had it at five at
the line to cut it to three with five minutes left,
if you had all the momentum, their shots weren't going
in anymore. Like you got couple stops, you made your run,
You were in position to like really put pressure on
Texas Tech that they weren't going to win that game,
(12:09):
and they crumbled completely folded. And yeah, the fan base
is going to react in kind to a situation where
they looked at it and said, okay, here it comes.
Here's how many times over thirty years in this building
that we saw them do that, and this team just
doesn't do it. They you know, they the same almost
(12:31):
exact same situation against Arizona. They draw it all the
way back to tide and then they fall apart. You
know what, it was a day they missed Dylan Mitchell
blockshot ASA's thinking he's a Chema Lojawan with the spin
move and the hook that he missed and then two
dance going turnovers and five is twelve and people are
(12:52):
heading for the exits in Clifton. I don't blame the
fans for that.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Nope, I don't either.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I don't. Unfortunately I I don't either. Well, maybe they
can get one on Saturday and change change my mood,
change my outlook, and uh, if they can win two games,
this conversation will be dramatically different next Thursday.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I mean, mo, I looked at this last night. You
want to hear something crazy. They're one game out of
like seventh place in the conference. Sixth, seventh place in
the conference. There's ten teams under five hundred in the league.
Do you realize that the top of this conference is
bludgeoning the rest of this conference? And they're not far
(13:41):
out of what you know, they were predicted six they're
one game out of seventh. I know it doesn't feel
like that, and that's uh, that's not excusing how poorly
they've played, but it is not completely out of their reach.
If they can go on the road and get a
couple of road scouts and make up for they're three
(14:01):
in the hole on home games. Yep, you're one and
three at home. You've lost three home games. You got
to make those up on the road if you're going
to get to ten and ten. Let's see if they
can do it.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I hope they can. We'll talk next week. Thank you,
as always.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Where are you at on ten o'clock weekend home or
weekend road games?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Win the game, I don't care. They could play it
at five o'clock in the morning. Win the damn game.
That's where I am. If they could play at one
thirty in the morning on a Monday, if they win
the game, I don't care exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
All right, thanks mooch, all right, jud.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Chad Brendel, Bearcat Journal dot com. They're playing in the
Big twelve, a conference that has a bunch of teams
in the Mountain time zone and further west.