Still Breathing?

All apologies for not getting this up yesterday, I've been out of town on business and from the looks of it, it may have been a good thing. I ended up watching this game in a bar full of Laker fans demanding my one little TV be switched over to the Laker/Sun game because nobody gives a fuck about Wazzu. Well, I gave a fuck about Wazzu and fortunately I had a solid 30 pounds on anyone who was bitching.

Anyway, not a lot to add to what other bloggers have said, but wanted to list a few. Let's start with the plus/minus for the game (it's not pretty)

Capers 8
Lodwick 8
Enquist 4
Harthun 4
Casto 1
Forrest -5
Thompson -22
Baynes -25
Koprivica -25
Harmeling -28
Rochestie -30

I really hate to say it, but I think this is the first time Coach Dreamy really ate a shit sandwich. I frankly can't believe the gameplan all week was "let's go out and trade threes with Gonzaga and just see what the fuck happens".... It seemed there was no effort to curb that when it was going on all throughout the first half. And maybe this one's not Tony's fault, but more of whoever on the staff is doing the scouting, but Austin Daye has had no J to speak of for the past few weeks, but is the Zags' best bet to beat someone off the dribble. So who do we stick on him? You guessed it: Daven. In fact Ehlo's facepalm this evening was "You know I can never remember Harmeling ever getting shook as badly as he did at the end of the first half." I'm going to go ahead and just assume Ehlo does not RSS this blog.

What to say about that 2nd half. Well, Gonzaga is great and all, but we really played like shit. I can't emphasize and bolden the word SHIT strongly enough. I'm seriously flipping off that second half as hard as I can... If you want a little difference that goes a long way from last year to this year is the way we handled Gonzaga's diamond press. It's not an incredibly aggressive press, in fact I don't know why they run it. For years, it's constantly gotten them out of position on defense and it produces few turnovers. Last year we exploited it by making the correct pass, ended up with a 3-on-2 or 4-on-3 and the early offense allowed an easy Baynes/Cowgill/Weaver score.

This year? If we were able to get the ball up the court before 12 seconds ticked off or before we chucked it out of bounds for no particular reason, once we got up the court with numbers we actually HELD ONTO THE FUCKING BALL UNTIL GONZAGA'S DEFENSE GOT BACK AND WAS SET UP! Seriously, either we have the classiest, most polite offense in the country, or we just don't know what the fuck we're doing. When you completely give them back the one disadvantage to running that press on every possession, there's no reason not to press every play. Last year we made them pay enough times that eventually they stopped running it. This year? Shit sandwich.

Everyone's freaking out about Rochestie. You want my solution? Don't play him so damn much. Sit him 8 minutes per game. Other than that, I've got nothing. I don't think he's forcing much, but I do think he might be tired.

Oh and with five minutes left, we had all of our starters pulled (save for Daven). Gonzaga's up by 3o and still has all their starters IN THE GAME still pressing and still jacking three's. So much for that classy Gonzaga/WSU rivalry. Fuck Gonzaga. Fuck them in the fucking ear.

One positive note on the evening: Sloth shaved that damn mustache.