I haven't been able to come up with tons of info on Wright St, for this year, but from what I can tell, they aren't predicted to be that great!!!! It is definitely a younger team than us and with less experience. We should have a nice rebounding edge, I'll believe that when I see it though. They don't look to shoot the 3-pointer at all which is totally different than a lot of smaller teams. Some teams can stay in a game or even win it if they are hot from the 3-point line. Then how is Wright St even going to come close to winning this game?? They play more of a Big Ten style of play, 55-65 points, bang inside, half court game. Get the ball inside with a pass or driving to the basket and take it to the hoop!!! It may be a good thing we have a few big men because it wouldn't surprise me to see several in foul trouble early in the game. If Tulsa ends up playing a half court game with them, they could even win this game because they do it better than Tulsa. Tulsa seldom takes the ball to the hoop. I have to believe Tulsa will try to run some and with that in mind, I think Tulsa wins this one something like 70-60 but there won't be a lot of people leaving early!!! If Tulsa plays their half court game, I see it Wright St 59-55!! :eek:

I just hope the team dosen't get cocky overlook Wright st and get ready for Arizona. hopefully well beat them and play and play the cats in Tuscon.

No respect from the bookies, Tulsa is a 6.5 point favorite. Take away the points for home court, they are saying this is about a 2 point game!! :eek: So 97 you are right, we better not look past this game or we will be sitting at home until the regular season starts. I don't think Tulsa will think this is an exibition game after the first five minutes, because these guys will be tough around the basket a lot of pushin' and shovin", elbows in the mid section--good ol" Big Ten basketball!!!

I almost feel like a prophet :bang: 59-55, I predicted if we play half court ball with them, instead it was 56-56---I missed it by two points total.The NIT set it up for a lamb to brought to be slaughtered and Tulsa would play Arizona and they might get at least some ratings!! Someone forgot to tell the lamb unfortunately!! :eek: Earth to Tulsa, we have a problem!!! :mad:

So depressing. I was hoping for a balanced attack, but it looks like we will rely on Glenn for the scoring. Of course, it's only the first game. I fear the John Phillips era may be coming to an end.

I will say it for the tenth time, if we play a half court game, we may very well not win nine games this year. Wright St is not a great team from a great conference!!!! We have a few Grambling type games in our OOC schedule but outside of those it would be interesting to see if ANYONE would bet any money on us to win any other games this year!! It is truly pathetic!!! The only consolation is a bad year means a new and maybe exciting coach----only 28 more games to go til next year!!!!

Any idea why Gonzales isn't playing?
We are still a young team with only one senior starting. Hopefully McDade won't have 5 turnovers every game. Getting outrebounded is the most distressing thing to me. I thought that was one of Coach Phillip's strong points, teaching big men how to box out and post up and stuff.
Anyway, I'm always hoping for improvement.

richardm Wrote:Any idea why Gonzales isn't playing?

I would guess that he's just getting outplayed in practice by Davis and Cardwell. That's pretty disappointing. Look at the two juco players brought in last year... both are seniors this year and both are mired at far end of the bench. Some would say that's a waste of two schollies...

What's most frustrating to me is that we're so horrible in the fundamentals. Honestly, have you seen a worse fundamental basketball team in the past 5 years? Sloppy turnovers every third possession, big men trying to bring the ball down the court on the fast break, struggle to break the press, not securing rebounds, constant travelling... it looks like 7th grade youth league stuff.

When Phillips was hired, we were concerned about his lack of head-coaching experience and his recruiting skills, but we were all confident in his Xs and Os. Well guess what...

Wright State just looked better. They were quicker than us. They outrebounded us. They executed their offense. They played as a team. And quite frankly, they were a better-coached ball club than us. I won't say they had more talent, but they got far more out of their talent than we did.

When we had tremendous athletes who thrived on causing and capitalizing on chaos, our style of play worked well. We'd force the other team into a scrum, take advantage of their turnovers and let our athleticism win the day. Now, with our level of talent and athleticism, that style of play just makes us a bad basketball team. The athletic teams whip us and the inferior but fundamentally sound teams keep it close and pull it out at the end because they do the little things well.

btw, a big portion of the blame for the disarray on the court has to go to the assistant coaches, who are just as responsible for teaching the fundamentals as the head coach.

If we don't get more fundamentally sound in a big hurry, it's going to be a long season... and the coaching staff's last.

Good post CG, you are right we really don't do any part of the basic game of basketball very good?? It is all of the coaches fault, but as we know the head coach gets it in the end!! One other thing that has stood out for more than a year, is there is no enthusiasm, no energy. no life in the team on the floor or the players on the bench or by the coach!!!! It is almost like everyone is just going through the motions. 99% of the time if you could isolate just a picture of JP and show it to people, they would think he was watching a drama on TV or grass growing. A number of these players came to Tulsa very highly ranked and had played and done very well against players that are playing for Kansas, OSU, OU, etc and some how in a matter of a couple of years they can hardly play anymore---That is my biggest concern!!! :eek: Collins, McDade and Kelley were all BIG TIME players, I saw them play against the top Texas players, they were pretty close to the top players themselves, and either held their own or beat the sh!t out of them---what happened????

richardm Wrote:Any idea why Gonzales isn't playing?
We are still a young team with only one senior starting. Hopefully McDade won't have 5 turnovers every game. Getting outrebounded is the most distressing thing to me. I thought that was one of Coach Phillip's strong points, teaching big men how to box out and post up and stuff.
Anyway, I'm always hoping for improvement.

John Phillips said Gonzales nand Tiechman aren't playing becuase there not showing enoguh effort. Im all for that but this isnt high school this is D I

Cane Gang Wrote:

richardm Wrote:Any idea why Gonzales isn't playing?

I would guess that he's just getting outplayed in practice by Davis and Cardwell. That's pretty disappointing. Look at the two juco players brought in last year... both are seniors this year and both are mired at far end of the bench. Some would say that's a waste of two schollies...

What's most frustrating to me is that we're so horrible in the fundamentals. Honestly, have you seen a worse fundamental basketball team in the past 5 years? Sloppy turnovers every third possession, big men trying to bring the ball down the court on the fast break, struggle to break the press, not securing rebounds, constant travelling... it looks like 7th grade youth league stuff.

When Phillips was hired, we were concerned about his lack of head-coaching experience and his recruiting skills, but we were all confident in his Xs and Os. Well guess what...

Wright State just looked better. They were quicker than us. They outrebounded us. They executed their offense. They played as a team. And quite frankly, they were a better-coached ball club than us. I won't say they had more talent, but they got far more out of their talent than we did.

When we had tremendous athletes who thrived on causing and capitalizing on chaos, our style of play worked well. We'd force the other team into a scrum, take advantage of their turnovers and let our athleticism win the day. Now, with our level of talent and athleticism, that style of play just makes us a bad basketball team. The athletic teams whip us and the inferior but fundamentally sound teams keep it close and pull it out at the end because they do the little things well.

btw, a big portion of the blame for the disarray on the court has to go to the assistant coaches, who are just as responsible for teaching the fundamentals as the head coach.

If we don't get more fundamentally sound in a big hurry, it's going to be a long season... and the coaching staff's last.

You realize that your team has only played one game, right?

Fundamentals are usually very poor in the first outing...turnovers, travels, etc. Give your guys and coaches some time. See how they perform the next couple of games. I would be disgusted to see Tech fans write off their team after one lousy performance.

Tech Dawgs Wrote:You realize that your team has only played one game, right?

Fundamentals are usually very poor in the first outing...turnovers, travels, etc. Give your guys and coaches some time. See how they perform the next couple of games. I would be disgusted to see Tech fans write off their team after one lousy performance.

You did not see this game. You did not witness how pathetic the team played. Our guys had no idea what they were doing out there. This from a team that graduated one player and on Tuesday only played 2 guys who didn't suit up last year -- one of those was a redshirt who practiced with the team all last season!

The fact we lost to a team that wasn't particularly strong, a team from a small conference, the type of team we used to FEAST on just a couple years ago, a team who Arizona absolutely toyed with last night... in our home opener, in the preseason NIT, in our first opportunity to come back from last year's disaster... losing that game was bad enough.

Even more distubing was how we played in that loss. And THAT'S what I find just sickening. It wasn't rust, it wasn't early-season kinks... it was pathetic basketball. We had no quickness, no athletes, no shooters, no rebounding, no offense, and absolutely no grasp of the fundamentals. It was utter disarray, which is disheartening. Coming against a team that won't finish above 150 in the RPI this year? That's a serious red flag.

So I will repeat, word for word, exactly what I said in my previous post: "If we don't get more fundamentally sound in a big hurry, it's going to be a long season... and the coaching staff's last." Unless we want to repeat last year's record, we need to get better real damn quick, because we looked just as bad or worse than last season on Tuesday night. The mere thought of regressing further...

We don't accept that slop at Tulsa. Maybe you do down in Ruston.

And while we're discussing geography... you have a big, hairy pair to come on the Tulsa board and lecture a Tulsa alumnus, season ticket-holder and lifelong fan about his reaction to a Tulsa team losing to someone not named Louisiana Tech.

Three questions. Can JP change? If he doesn't will we ever return to our past level? How long can the school afford this? :bang:

not much longer. It could be hello DIAA

I did see the game and I agree with Tech Dawgs. For some reason lots of people prefer to focus on negatives rather than positives and there seems to be more than the average number on TU message boards. There were lots of good things to see in the game if you are willing to see them. Brett McDade looked good, sharp passes, good court vision, etc. People were talking about him making 5 assists and 5 turnovers but at half time it was the A/TO ratio was 5/1 which is pretty good for any point guard much less a redshirt freshman. He didn't play as well in the second half but I think that's because some on the team started feeling pressure and tried to do too much. There was also great hustle out there from the players and I think there is a great desire to improve. This was just one game and I'm not going to give up on my team because they didn't live up to my expectations in the first game. Face it, the only games that mean anything this season are the three (hopefully) games in the WAC tournament. The WAC is likely to be a one or two bid league this year and unless we went undefeated or won the WAC outright we aren't going to get an at-large bid this year. If the coach is smart he shouldn't put to much into any win or loss but focus everything on improvement and peaking in March. If a fan is smart he should do the same thing.

Final thought, if a team is only hitting 35% of their shots on a given night it's hard to beat anybody, especially someone who is hitting 50+%. This can happen to anybody, look at North Carolina. If losing to an inferior team in the opener requires a coaching change then Roy better pack his bags.