Getting blown out by VCU?!?!?!?

[SoonerfanTU]

and they are not playing that good on D and the offense has looked lost.

You blame that on youth?!? Have you seen our defense the last few seasons? It's been a problem. As for the O looking lost, that is a skill problem, aside from WW.

 

[MsProudSooner]

Pathetic

If you are looking for this team to play great team defense and play offense like a Swiss watch, you should probably come back in 6 weeks or so.

 

[mattham4]

I remember the good old days on this board, before a certain someone came along.

 

[NickZepp]

You blame that on youth?!? Have you seen our defense the last few seasons? It's been a problem. As for the O looking lost, that is a skill problem, aside from WW.

Our defense has not been this bad in decades.

 

[SoonerfanTU]

We've played HOW MANY games Einstein?

We've played HOW MUCH together?

It's knee jerk.

What does that have to do with anything?!?

I'm sorry that YOU don't understand the game enough to see that some of our shortfalls aren't correctable this year. We haven't been good on defense under Capel, really, in any season. Wright isn't going to get better. Tiny isn't going to turn into a really good INSIDE player in one season. Willis, Davis.....not going to improve.

So what does that leave? Yes, WW will play better. I can't imagine Crocker or TMG playing much better, they've been our two best tonight. Come on, WHAT is going to change? We aren't losing b/c we ran a bunch of young guys into a hostile environment, and clanked wide open shots, and turned the ball over. Not. At. All.

 

[SoonerfanTU]

Our defense has not been this bad in decades.

You are wrong.

 

[NickZepp]

Give this team some time together and they will be play better. Heck they will probably play worse than they have today also. I said before the season that we will go as Willie Warren goes. Today Willie hasn't shown up. That's led to the result we've seen in this game. We aren't giving up but we just really don't have the answers on offense because WW isn't doing anything. We don't have a lot of guys that can just score like he can very few guys in college basketball can.

 

[seniorsooner]

TU I've never understood why you spend so much time and energy being negative.

 

[MercedeSooner]

We need to show some heart and make this a single digit game down the stretch win or lose.

 

[Gutter]

Just because you played AAU ball, you're still a freshman.

This game sucked, but our young guys will get better.

 

[skyvue]

Funny how everyone's jumping on TU when it's the oringinal poster in this thread who exhibited utter cluelessness and negativity.

KillerB, if you thought we were going to waltz into VCU's arena and roll over them, you've not been paying much attention to college hoops in recent years.

I think that, entering the season, many of our fans expected too much from our freshmen. It was McDAA this, McDAA that. All that hype means little once actual gameplay begins.

D-1's a whole different world from even AAU and high-level high school ball, but somehow, many fans manage to forget that year in and year out.

 

[MsProudSooner]

Based on a couple of comments Capel's made, I think this bunch still has some things to learn. After the first game, he said he hoped they learned to pay better attention to the scouting report. They had been told the opponent would try to fast break at every opportunity. but we weren't getting back on defense. After the second game, they struggled and he said they played the way they had practiced the day before. This is the youngest team we've had since I can remember - maybe since Tim McCallister was a freshman. We start 2 freshmen. Hopefully, they'll get better.

 

[NickZepp]

I think we'll get better as the year goes on of course. But we aren't going to win many games with Willie Warren playing like that. We need to improve on defense and other areas but WW needs to play like a leader and take over this team. He never took over tonight.

 

[SoonerfanTU]

Based on a couple of comments Capel's made, I think this bunch still has some things to learn. After the first game, he said he hoped they learned to pay better attention to the scouting report. They had been told the opponent would try to fast break at every opportunity. but we weren't getting back on defense. After the second game, they struggled and he said they played the way they had practiced the day before. This is the youngest team we've had since I can remember - maybe since Tim McCallister was a freshman. We start 2 freshmen. Hopefully, they'll get better.

I agree with most of that. You could tell Capel wasn't happy with the effort on numerous occassions.

As for the youth, yes we are young. But we did start two frosh in 2004 (Lav and L-Mac), and two for a part of 2003 (Bookout and DA), and basically two in 2000 (Price and Raymond).

 

[NickZepp]

I agree with most of that. You could tell Capel wasn't happy with the effort on numerous occassions.

As for the youth, yes we are young. But we did start two frosh in 2004 (Lav and L-Mac), and two for a part of 2003 (Bookout and DA), and basically two in 2000 (Price and Raymond).

This year we have 3 or 4 guys that played at all last year playing this year. Then 4 freshmen. That's a lot of turnover. Those teams had a lot less turnover except for maybe the 04 team because of injuries. And that team went to the NIT.

 

[MO]

I've got to agree with CoolM. I think this game will help us learn to play and in that sense, it probably was a good experience.

I have my doubts about this being a very good team even later this year, but that will not diminish my support for the process.

 

[SoonerInJersey]

In our first two wins, we "turned it on" for just part of the game, and that was more than enough to win. Hopefully we at least learned that won't work in every game. Our effort has to improve or we may lose a lot of the games against the good teams.

I was sort of surprised that no one mentioned the passive play against the full court press. We did not attack the press much in the first half. Since we struggle in the half court offense, not attacking the press seems, to me, to be a mistake. We did attack the press a bit in the second half, and had some success attacking the press. Wish we could have done that earlier in the game.

 

[fmrick]

Hope you don't mind a VCU fan jumping in here.

I saw VCU's loss at Western Michigan Wednesday. Our fans were saying the same things as I see posted here. The two games were very similar. The home team took control and the away team played like...an away team.

OU and VCU both lost their best player to the NBA. Both teams seem to be struggling to find a player to take over and fill the void left by that player. Teams play the best when there is a floor leader. It does not have to be the guy who scores the most, but it needs to be a guy who steps up and steadies the other guys when there is conflict. We also have a new coach, which makes it ever harder for us.

You guys are good and Jeff will get it together. Shaka, our coach, told us that he had the best practice of the year Thursday, the day after losing to Western Michigan. I'm sure your guys will recover.

I'll leave you with a Jeff story- One game in his second year here we played really bad. I mean REALLY BAD. Jeff was frustrated and I think a little pissed. In the post game interview on the radio (I was driving home, a little upset myself) Jeff said he did not know what to do, but he was considering getting a VCU van and driving up Broad Street (the main street through Richmond) and picking up the first 10 guys he could find, because he was sure that they could have played better then the players we had. Well, the players got the message. We went on to win the the next eight games in a row, and the next loss was to Wake Forest in the NCAA first round by one point. The guy can coach, and he knows how to motivate his players.

Good luck. All of VCU will be cheering for you the rest of the year!

 

[aaronterry]

The way we played against lessor teams at home, I think we could've lost to VCU in Norman. They justed looked better. They looked like they had the best player and players on the floor.

Our team has upside and potential, but the way they are playing, we could be in for a long rebuilding season.

 

[Mr.B!!!]

Sometimes I wonder if some folks get any enjoyment out of sports...not pointing at anyone directly, but the season is three games in and we are "rebuilding" or doomed to "suck".

Seriously?