CU: The Aftermath (Part 2)

I am able to excuse the 1st half’s results on the acceptance of Frank’s explanation for it – bad offensive coaching strategy.

The real 20 minutes (2nd half) didn’t really show me anything beyond our ability to dominate a lesser team (which CU is at this point, honestly) when we put our minds to it.

Colorado has a couple of very talented guards – Higgins and Burks putting up 38 of the team’s 51 points speaks for itself. Also, they have a (seemingly extreme) lack of frontcourt size and skill. Many of their O-boards were guards getting long caroms and Lu was able to play 18 minutes, put up 9 pts (some of that could be attributed to luck I guess) while only committing 1 foul!

Another tid-bit: I had a co-KSU-grad-coworker buddy come over to watch the game (ESPN360 – I have it on my TV). He is the type that watches maybe 3 KSU bball games a year and about that many in football (both excluding any post-season action), so it is safe to say he is not very well informed/in-the-know about our teams most of the time. Yesterday, as Clemente was accumulating his 2-for-9 3-point statline, this buddy would shout and curse as Clemente’s shot went up and traveled to the rim – every time this was his reaction. However, I kept ‘betting’ him that each time Clemente shot a 3-pointer, it was going to be a positive team result. The two 3’s he made, obviously positive results. To my memory, every time he missed we got an offensive board and put-back or foul on CU (or both!). The games earlier this year that I watched on my own had me reacting mostly with the “NO Denis BAD… bad! Bad Denis!” shout even though I am a believer in the idea that a missed shot with a good o-rebounding team is frequently a positive. I think the experience yesterday, having someone else there to take my usual “Bad Denis” stance and leaving me to defend it, got me over the hump – from now on, Bad Denis = shooting a 3 with nobody to rebound and Good Denis = all other shots.

One more thing :-) … How about Irving getting 19 minutes of game time? Nothing spectacular to show for it, but no TO or bad plays either…