Post Game Thread - vs Milwaukee Bucks, Home

NOT a good showing vs a potential 1st round opponent.

They shot 53%, we shot 40%.  We had 16 TOs and they had 9 steals.  It's amazing this came down to the last shot.  We should have been blown out.

IT had 32 on 9-17.  The rest of the team was 26-71, 36.6%.  I think I might have found one of our problems...
Crowder - a Smart-ian 4-12
Bradley - another Smart-ian 5-14
And then there is the Brickmeister himself, 4-15, 1-7 from 3.  To be fair, 2 of those 3s were buzzerbeaters.  So, that makes him, legitimately, 4-13 and 1-5 from 3.  That still sucks.
That's a combined 13-41, 31.7%.  So, our 3 other scorers of our top 6 players shot worse than the team average. Our bench was 10-31, 32.2%, in limited minutes. Furthermore, we took 88 fgas total, so 41 fgas is almost half.  Our starters and 6th man were offensive liabilities and they didn't stop anybody.

Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.  How can you be so amazing on one side of the ball and so completely inept on the other side?  He was making one great play after another after another.  On defense and on offensive rebounding.  He had 11 rebounds, 5 of which were offensive.  He has the instinct to be in the right place at the right time most of the time.  But when you watch him shoot from anywhere except point-blank you can see he has no touch at all.  It's all arm and not enough fingertip and wrist.  Still, his winning plays kept us in a game we shouldn't have been in because of our shooting and our inability to stop them from scoring.

The refs were awful last night.  Smart gets a hand on a pass over the top and goes for the loose ball.  Middleton comes in from behind and whacks Smart in the mouth and they whistle Smart for the foul.  It was only because Smart was bleeding they went to the video review to see if it was a flagrant foul as well and they ended up reversing the call.  HOWEVER, even though they agreed they blew the initial call, they still T'd Smart up.  Smart gets an offensive rebound and goes out of bounds with The Freak there.  It's either a foul by the Freak for pushing Smart out of bounds or Smart fell out of bounds and it's a turnover.  Instead, they saw Smart catch The Freak's toe as he stepped over Smart and called a flagrant foul on him, which gave the Bucks 2 fritos and the ball.  This happened with 4:46 left in the 4th and the score 92-87.  A close game, 2 possessions with lots of time left, and they called that.  A weak call, at best.  Later in the game, with 1:20 left, Crowder is back dooring baseline weakside.  Tony Snell turns to face him and two-hand shoves him out of bounds.  Not even the remotest attempt to make a basketball play and this was called a common foul.  One thing, you'll notice, Smart was in the middle of a lot of this, being an agitator.

IT and Smart both got T'd up.  There's 2 fritos for the Bucks too.  All of these calls, both weak and inconsistent, make a difference in a 1 possession game.

The Freak hit 2-4 from 3.  I agree with Mike Gorman.  If he can learn to hit those with consistency over a season he will be unguardable.

Malcolm Brogdon, who killed us, doesn't play like a rookie.  He's very smooth, like the game has already slowed down for him.  He went to UVA instead of Butler because he didn't think Brad Stevens would be there for 4 years, he thought he would be NBA-bound.  That tells you something of Brad's reputation at Butler.  It's not the school, it's not even the program, it's Brad.

Speaking of Brad, not impressed with this game.  I understand not playing Kelly much.  His slow and awkward might not work well vs long and swift Freak and Maker, although he did pretty well against Greg Monroe.  Our defensive rotations were so shitty last night.  Monroe had Kelly down low in the paint and Kelly knocked the ball away.  Even though Horford was nearby he didn't help, so Monroe was able to retrieve the loose ball and put it in.  No help defense.  What I don't understand was not playing Zeller more.  Zeller played 8 minutes and he had 7 points on 3-5.  He'd have been 4-5 but he missed a flip shot he should have dunked and that made me scream.  Why no Gerald Green?  Nobody could do a damn thing on offense besides IT, so why not put in another shooter?  Normally I'm a big Brad Stevens fan but not last night.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400900508


bob


.