UNI vs ILS official game thread

[KaBullseye15]

thats a bad loss, you gotta beat lower level valley teams on the road. but whos honestly suprised, it seems we always jump out to a valley lead, lose a game that would help put a stranglehold on it and piss it down our leg to a 3rd or 4th place finish in the league

[KaBullseye15]

if we'd had one loss by now they mightve played with more urgency rather then thinking this win was a given

[UNIinMN]

Let down after SIU? Or really lucky by ISU (considering their 6-11 guy shoots 4-5 from 3 land)?

not luck, he is an outside shooter similar to koch but with stout's build


MV teams are starting to figure out Brooks, if you pressure him all the way up the court it throws our team out of our offense. All game it tooks us 10-15 seconds to start our offense and it was starting too far from the hoop.

At times we reverted to our "stand around and let ben j do his thing" offense but without ben j. I'd like to see a lot more movement on offense to help brooks out when he does get up the court.

Overall, ISU just wanted the game more and they took it.

[CR Panther]

Sounds like we were out rebounded, and had 15 turnovers. That speaks to lack of focus.

[blien]

I agree with UNI in MN, Mckowen is doing good but the pressure on him throws us out of our sets
, look what the southern defender did to him and the shot clocks that ran down so many times

[UNI Prof]

I don't think we lost to a bad team; IlSU is going to beat some people once they get used to each other on the court.

[joecooll6]

They arent a bad team, but if we wanna win the conference and make the NCAA tournament those are the kind of games we hafta win. This is a very similar situation to the Western Illinois football game.

Worst part is they beat us twice tonight.

[Khan4Cats]

They arent a bad team, but if we wanna win the conference and make the NCAA tournament those are the kind of games we hafta win.

That was kind of what I was getting at when I asked if this was a 'must-win'. If we want to win the Conference we have to do better than last year.
Last year we won at Normal. We also lost at home to Bradley, so for now we are even on the year. This makes protecting the home Friday that much more important as we lost to Creighton last year (and the year before) at home. Have to get back on the positive side.

[panther2317]

Bad loss...but now UNI has to come back nd defend the home court Friday night vs. another co-leader in the conference. The Panthers can move to 5-1 with a "W" Friday night!!! I hope the crowd is strong and as loud as it was Saturday! Can't wait to see everyone there! GO PANTHERS!!!!

[Matt Trump]

No loss is good, but I'd rather have lost this one on the road than last week against Evansville at home. Sometimes its good to get a wake-up call.

[Panther'73]

We knew going into this season no one would go undefeated in the conference.
Last night we played poorly away from home AND STILL almost won. The guys
will refocus. I just hope we stay healthy.

[UNIAlum95]

Tough but we need to move on...

I thought this was one of four road games we needed to pick up to win the conference regular season title. Win our remaining six home games plus three on the road and we are at 13 conference wins. I still think that is good enough to win the conference. Props to Il St as they came ready to win. Someone called it here on the board yesterday. It looked like we got off the bus flat and while the team showed a lot of character taking it to OT, the truth is Il St had us beat in regulation.

Time to take out the frustration on CU Friday night.

[UNI MadCat]

Glad to see that the typical meltdown that occurred after losses last year seems to have been replaced by more rationale thinking this year. Props to everyone. I think we all realize that this sucks but as I said in another thread, we played close to our worse game of the year (Loyola was worse) and they played at the top of their game... and we still almost stole one. Would be nice to get them all but in this tough league it just isn't going to happen. And if this type of loss becomes more commonplace this season (I dont think it will) then I would argue that this team wasn't going to win the title anyway.

I'm far less disappointed after this one then after Loyola. That one you could have predicted from a mile away and yet it still didnt seem like they were prepared. This was just a showcase game of how little distance there is between 1-10 in this league.

[MediaPanther]

Not sure why we needed another wake up call (Loyola)? Everyone says the conference is so balanced, so the team should know this and not show up flat against a team that has been blown out by SIU and Evansville...who was just murdered by about 50 last night. If we would have come out fighting I might have felt we lost because the league is so tough. While I do believe the MVC is very competitive, I don't think that warrants a loss to the last place team. Let's hope the team comes out fired up on Friday, so we can take care of this before it becomes a problem.

[UNIAlum95]

Not sure why we needed another wake up call (Loyola)? Everyone says the conference is so balanced, so the team should know this and not show up flat against a team that has been blown out by SIU and Evansville...who was just murdered by about 50 last night. If we would have come out fighting I might have felt we lost because the league is so tough. While I do believe the MVC is very competitive, I don't think that warrants a loss to the last place team. Let's hope the team comes out fired up on Friday, so we can take care of this before it becomes a problem.

You are right that there isn't an excuse for coming out flat. But the team left during the day (around noon?) yesterday for a 5-6 hour bus ride to Normal. I know I don't feel like moving well after a ride like that and I'm all of 5'8' (in shoes). I can't imagine how that feels being 6'8" and trying to get things going again. Illinois State is not the worst team in the league and they will win more games this year. We definitely have to win our home games and the toughest games will be Friday and MSU in February. Those two teams will require our best efforts even at home.