Now that I have had some time to reflect and try to take in exactly what happened I can offer a little more review of the game.
This was probably our poorest performance of the year. We shot 36% from the field. That is horrendous. MBA only attempted one shot in the second half and blew it. It was a point blank, 3 footer that should go in 100% of the time. Aziz is also guilty of missing a close and easy shot.
What killed us was free throw shooting. Free throws win close ball games. Free throws win close ball games. Free throws win close ball games. What happened? Holiday missed his free throw. He was not the only one. MBA went 2-4. Overton missed the front end of a 1 and 1. I.T. missed one. Right there you miss out for sure on 3 points and if Overton converts the front end you have 5 missed points. Make your free throws, win games. Simple.
We rebounded great. By we I mean Aziz and MBA. Holiday had a few clutch boards as did Suggs. Ross added 4. 33-26 is a good night normally, but when you can't make a shot to save your life it doesn't do a whole lot of good. They also missed out on several key defensive boards that led to Stanford put backs and tip ins including the game winner.
What happened to our bench? Sure Suggs hit a huge 3 pointer, but he led the bench with 6 points. I'm not expecting 10+ point performances from everyone, but scoring more than 13 points between the 4 of them would be nice.
Our bigs are still fouling like no other. Darnell Gant had 3, MBA had 3, Aziz had 4. The first half they did a pretty good job of not fouling. They second half they picked up a ton. This gave Stanford 21 attempts to our 12. They hit 8 more free throws than we did. Take away two of those and its a tie game. Stanford made their free throws, they won the game. (66% vs 50%, neither number is great, but the higher percentage won out. Surprising....)
Holiday lit it up the second half after going 0-5 in the first. As a senior, he should have made those free throws or at least the front end to give us a chance. Sure it worked out in a way that he missed and we had another shot, but a free throw is a high percentage shot. Holiday was shooting at an 80% clip. He is a senior. He may not come in to mind immediately as the clutch free throw shooter, but he shoots 80% so why not. Disappointing way to end the game.
We were terrible handling the ball. I don't know how many times I heard us pass away the ball or fail to convert on a nice pass and easy basket. 14 turnovers to 11 assists is not how the Huskies play. They let Stanford control the pace and fell into their hands.
No point in doing player reviews as Aziz, Holiday, IT, and maybe MBA were the only players who had decent games. Aziz did exactly what he was supposed to. Rebound, rebound, rebound, and rebound. He scored a few points and missed one easy shot, but he did his job. Holiday, while he had a terrible first half, was critical in us taking an 11 point lead that we proceeded to blow. He missed his last second free throws and shot attempt, but you can't blame one player for a lost game, especially when there were so many open opportunities that were blown. IT had 7 assists and should have had at least two more if not for missed lay-ins and easy conversions. He had 4 turnovers as well, but like I said when you factor in his assists and how many he should have had it is easy to ignore. Say he finished with 10 assists instead of 7, an A/T ratio of 2.5 is great. Other than IT, no one added more than 1 assist. MBA scored 8 and had 7 rebounds, but attempting only one shot in the second half and blowing it is terrible. Its hard to tell if he was getting the ball (Thanks FSN...), but if he was he needs to create more opportunities. After averaging a double double in the first 4 conference games he should be getting shots and making them. The rebounding was nice, but we needed more production from him.
So what does this mean for the Huskies? In the long run, hopefully not much. They can still go 17-1, which is fantastic. Sunday's game is a sort of must win for the Huskies as we play second ranked Arizona at home next week. Arizona is a half game back at 3-1, while we are at 4-1. Losing to Cal puts them up half a game if I have done my calculations correctly. On the plus side, we didn't surprise a fair amount of people by losing this one. We have only won twice in the last 17 years at Stanford and those both came in the last two seasons. Cal is always a tough road game as well, but the Dawgs need to take this loss to heart and realize they have to play their best each and every game. Down year or not the Pac-10 is always tough and being the only ranked team and favorite to win the conference puts a big target on your back.
By no means does this loss mean we need to win the Pac-10 tournament to go to the NCAA, but it does not help our seeding. If we can get the split by winning Sunday we should see our seeding remain level and probably our ranking move a spot or two either way depending on who wins and loses. I don't really care about the ranking, but its nice to have and is great for getting recruits.
Heads up Dawgs. Get focused. Get the wins.
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