Apparently, the Utes have a thing about drinking the SEC-W's milkshake. LSU's basketball team trudged up to Salt Lake for the honor of suffering a 30 point beatdown by Utah. It was a fugly, fugly game. At first, I was disappointed it wasn't televised anywhere. Now, I'm thankful. It was bad enough on radio.
Let's do this one the shit sandwich way. The bad, sandwiched between any good I can possibly find in this mess of a basketball game.
THE GOOD
Uhhh....wait. It'll come to me. Oh, LSU had a relatively low number of turnovers (11) and 7 steals. Seriously, Trent Johnson puts a disciplined, hard working basketball team on the court every game. And that's a good thing. Eventually, that's going to pay huge dividends in close SEC game. Marcus Thornton continues to impress - he's all over the floor and he never lets up, even when he's got a cold hand. And Taz Mitchell has been playing very good basketball as well.
THE BAD
Basically, the Tigers can't stop a quality big man in the paint. There's no one on the team physical and talented enough to keep a good center or big power forward from owning the lane and getting easy layups and 5 footers. Chris Johnson can block shots. But it's tough to block a layup from another 6-11 center. Johnson, who averages 2.2 blocks per game only managed 1 tonight. Of course, he had a tough assignment. Utah's 7'2" Luke Nevil averages 18 ppg and got 23 points tonight. He was 11 of 13 from the floor. In fact, the Utes as a team shot 63% from the floor. That's lights out. Of course, 50 of their 91 points came from the paint. So it's not like they were having to drain the jump shots.
THE GOOD
Uhhh....well, I guess we'll go back to Marcus Thornton, who despite a drought from 3pt land tonight, had a team high 17 points and was 7 for 7 from the free throw line. Oh, and Terry Martin, Bass and Graham got some minutes. So that's something.
Alabama is next. On the road.
I think this will be a good basketball season, but there are going to be some more disappointing losses.
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Looks like LSU is paying their basketball coach too much if they get waxed by mid major team. Seems to me they weren't motivated.
ReplyDeletePerhaps. Guess we'll see.
ReplyDeleteLD, I think you're being disingenuous. LSU was abused inside. Motivation didn't really matter. The Tigers were in the game until sometime in the second half. The story of the game is how Utah's big man, and LSU's lack of inside presence showed up in a big way.
ReplyDeleteAnd besides, cleaning up the mess Brady left will take just a bit more than half a season.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think he was being sarcastic and throwing my stuff back at me - which is cool.
ReplyDeleteThat was my first impression.
ReplyDeleteFirst impressions are usually correct. :)
ReplyDeleteLD, you should be laughing. For some reason, what you wrote didn't click until I wrote that last comment.
ReplyDelete