Quote:
Originally Posted by illinifan999
It was an UNBELIEVABLE game tonight. Gaffney came out in warmups trying to act all cocky towards the crowd, and when he was walking back to the lockeroom, he pointed up to the student section. He then proceeded to dunk a put-back in and screamed towards the student section. After that, he was singled out and it was great. We had pretty loud chants of "Gaffney sucks" going the entire game.
Scary situation when one of our big men took a tumble, and fell into the knee of one of your big men (can't remember the name, big white dude with a beard) and he came out with crutches and a lot of ice around his knee.
The officiating was terrible, seemed like SIU was getting called for any sort of touch, and the refs called an intentional foul on a layup when it was plainly obvious he was going for the ball. Then they didn't call one, when our big man just leveled a guard on a layup. Don't know if he realized he fucked up the first call and was just giving it away, but I couldn't believe it, I mean he just used his entire body and flung it at the guy in mid-air.
Dillard looks like he's going to be something special once he gets the mental part of the game down and doesn't telegraph his passes so bad. He came up with some huge baskets though in the second half. Towards the end, Gaffney wouldn't even look up at us.
But UMass looked really good, the guards were hitting some unbelievable shots, I mean, hand-in-the-face fadeaway type shit. They were out and running the entire first half and were penetrating very nicely. Great game, great atmosphere, and UMass played really well in a place that's not easy to play in.
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That's weird about Gaffney - he was basically a recruited walk-on who became a hustle guy and earned a scholarship. He was always excitable, but I'm not sure why he'd talk shit - he can't shoot anything other than a lay-up. Looking at the box score, you'd think he had a fantastic game 6/9 with 7 blocks and 2 steals.
The big guy is Luke Bonner, Matt Bonner's younger, more awkward brother. He might be done for the season, and while I feel bad for him (he's a hilarious, nice kid by all accounts), I don't think we'd lose that much. He just can't run with the other players and doesn't fit the styles we've played. We'll definitely take our lumps now with essentially only freshmen up front after Gaffney, but I think we'll be a better team by conference play.
Our guards are absolutely legit. Harris and Gurley are straight ballers shooting the rock, and sounded like both played well. Chris Lowe might be the best of the bunch, and there is talk of him being A-10 PoY candidate, which is why your pg/gameplan has to be absolutely commended. 0 assists and 10 turnovers? That's the worst game of his career and probably his life, and I would have loved to see the game so I could see if it was your pg's defense or what that caused it.
Overall, I didn't expect a win going into SIU (you've lost what, 3 games in 6 years there or something?) so I'm not really bothered by this loss. It's gonna take the team some time to adjust to the DDM, and while I'm not entirely sure it's a better fit for our current personnel than Ford's offense was (Lowe needs to be in fast breaks more - there's no guard quicker in the open court than him - and Kellogg has them running much less in practice which may have hurt our stamine at the end there (hard to say without watching)) it's certainly helping recruiting and UMass' profile. Now go beat Duke.