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Bad officiating seems to be the curse of CUSA this year. It's frustrating to see the officials have such an effect on the flow of the game and force teams to sit players for foul trouble due to iffy calls. I could definitely see this being a good rivalry going forward...Tech is on the way up and MTSU is consistently at the top of the conference.Originally Posted by MT_OleBlue
A new article has been posted on www.latechsports.com:
Olivia Jones scored 28 points to lead Middle Tennessee as the Blue Raiders pulled away late to defeat Louisiana Tech 82-59 at the Murphy Center Saturday night.
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12-14 more like it. The refs didn't create the several unforced turnovers out of Tech's 22 total. Or leave MT 3-point shooters wide open.
Unfortunately you're right.
Got back an hour ago from Murfreesboro. Wrote down some things I'll put in separate posts to keep it more manageable.
Pre-game observations:
First impression? We're a team of wide receivers facing someone's defensive line.
MT has big, thick, downright chunky athletes. Their tall girls are of the same build. And #5 is built to take charges 'til they close the gym to strip the floor. I'm curious to see if they're quick, fast, or umm... leverage intensive.
MT's young assistants are very interactive with their team in warm-ups. They're helping with stretches, shagging balls, individual drills... meantime, our girls are totally on their own. No Tech coaches anywhere on the floor. Maybe that's by design--away from home, forced to depend on each other? I dunno. Just different.
In the shoot around, we're hitting maybe 40% of our shots. It's better in the spot-shooting drills, more like 50%. Our warmup shooting is not filling me with confidence. Not seeing much "classic shooting form" from our girls. Sideways jumping on shots, flying elbows, even a few inverted elbows. You'd think from watching this exhibition that our girls learned to shoot standing on a medicine ball.
Here was a nice moment. Both teams had left the court, lots of little things going on all around the Murphy Center, people chatting, maybe 13 minutes before tipoff. Suddenly I notice some scattered applause. Then more applause... getting bigger, until everyone sees Pat Summitt has entered the arena and is walking to her seat. A standing O from patrons wearing blue, orange, and red.
Game notes:
1st Half
We shoot better during the game, when things are happening fast--better in both form and results! Really impressive shooting, facing good defensive pressure. Small openings are being exploited.
Appears to me our girls are getting the benefit on more calls than MTSU. I think it's because we move fast and we move decisively. We're not reacting, weaving, stuttering... we're going directly where we intend, and the refs seem to respect that.
Tough job for our defenders in the post tonight. We are so slender, and they're so broad. They don't hook our girls with their elbows to spin past them--they can hook us with their shoulder blades! It's an incredible advantage to see in action. The simple physics of it, the arc of rotation shortened, a narrower shift to pivot, in effect speeds up the move 'til the MT post players are gone to the hole before we can drop a foot to turn and defend.
2nd Half
Reebok needs to provide us with something comparable to the rounded sole Nikes the Blue Raiders are wearing. It's amazing to watch these big MT girls, with just the kind of lower bodies that gravity has a crush on, tipping over like origami cows on stilts in a windstorm!
I saw a few pure flops, but most were just "conveying contact to its ultimate result"...on the floor. MT must practice this in zero-gravity. But they all do it, and you can see how hard it would be for a ref to swallow the whistle.
Sometimes bad ref-ing is sufferable if it's consistent. But consistency-be-darned, # 5 (Cason) is getting her own personal rule interpretation! She gets in the way of a driving Techster, backpedals not fast enough, creates contact, tumbles backward... NO CALL. Not a block, not a charge, just a loose ball with no whistle and bodies on the floor!
If in Ruston Cason hasn't fouled out midway through the 2nd half... home court advantage does not exist--and the ever controlled Tyler Summitt may earn a technical!
But don't let me paint the wrong picture. The refs didn't decide this game. Overall, they were better than average (well...) and consistent for the most part. We did a lot of thoughtless fouling. Frazier's 3rd or 4th foul had her shaking her head at herself. MT kept it close during our scoring runs, and began hitting their 3s just when we hit the wall. This was like a football game where the offense keeps running up the middle, running up the middle, not taking the lead, but wearing down the D, pulling in the safeties, until suddenly the QB's chunking it down the field for big gains and TDs.
When the end came hard, with maybe 3 minutes to go, our girls looked spent. Obviously we are in great aerobic shape, but I think it was the size/weight difference. It takes 2 extra steps just to get around those big girls, and there was so much body contact. If the staff is serious about getting more rebounds the next time we meet, they'll take the girls outside and work them against the blocking sled.
Halftime anecdote:
Guess who I found myself standing next to at halftime?
Tyler's Dad. I didn't say anything to him
...until we moved to the sinks and were washing our hands.
We talked for at least 10 minutes, mostly him, but still very much a dialogue. Gregarious man. He appreciated anyone supporting his son and his son's team, and obviously loves to talk basketball. It would have been a genuinely enjoyable experience regardless of the relationship.
He told me some things that I won't repeat (since they involve other people), though they may be unofficial common knowledge around Ruston. But they were all things that have been resolved and ended well for almost everyone involved.
One thing he said (that must have come from Leon) was that last year no one was working with Moten on her post play! But Mr. Summitt said she is responded very well to the coaching she's been getting since.
Another point he emphasized was how "classy" (his word) he's found the Lady Techster fans to be. Y'all have made quite an impression!
We were talking about the first recruiting class and he brought up something I hadn't considered. By the Fall of 2015, Tyler will have lost 10 players from the roster he inherited. Whew! That's a lot of rebuilding!
Maybe we better put some perspective on our hopes for next season. Progress is seldom steady, and nothing short of 6'9" trumps college experience.
[Nearly done now... caffeine's wearing off]
Post game:
Met several LaTech alum... a couple who graduated in the early '60s came over to see who was doing all that yelling for the LTs. And I met several more like myself--longtime UT fans who've adopted LaTech because they follow Tyler. The MTSU fans I encountered were friendly and hospitable, even before they secured the win.
PRE pre-game:
If you're ever in Murfreesboro, take in a meal at the Blue Cactus Cantina! We had the Cajun Fried, Blackened Tilapia Tacos (surprisingly substantial) with Cilantro Pesto rice (not just a side--noteworthy), and the Boudin Crawfish Burger--an 8 oz. patty with Boudin, Crab & Spinach Aioli, Crawfish tails, Smoked Gouda, Creole Tomatoes, Arugula and Battered Fries. You could taste each individual flavor on the burger, and the last bite tasted even better than the first.
If I lived nearby, I'd eat there every week until I'd tried everything on the menu. Might take awhile, but I wouldn't rush it.
Thanks for the notes, Orange! I was very discouraged last night watching the game (from home). We still have intensity, but consistency still plagues us. We were horrible in the second half and just half as good as we have been in the first half. I don't think that team beats us again, so I hope we draw them in the tournament. Like has been stated over and over - we have yet to play a complete game. The early foul trouble for Whitney and Kav really really hurt us, as well, but we will recover. I was nervous about this game due to MTSU losing their last one like they did and that was a correct assumption. Anyway, we knew this would be an up and down process for a while.
Just keep moving forward, Techsters! Build it right!
How small is that gym for MTSU? One of their fans posted yesterday that they average around 4000 a game. It looks like that is all that place would hold. Was that just the perception on tv or is it small?
Up and down this year. I expect that to continue, but with more ups as the season progresses. Have to find consistency and THEN catch fire at the tournament. We knew it was going to be this way. I think it makes it very difficult when I see a team I think we should beat, though. MTSU and Southern Miss were both teams that I think we beat by tournament time.
Here's the thing, most people on this message board would have said that ending the season at .500 would be a pretty decent expectation with the coaching turnover. We just lost to a team that is top 2 in our conference...and most of us felt that with more consistency and a few less foul calls, we had a chance to beat them. We have some very winnable games coming up and are still light years ahead of last year in so many areas of our play. It's disappointing when you see flashes of what is possible, but overall this is still a solid first season for me.
Full capacity is around 11,500. The top tier of about 18 sections was retracted for our game. I always heard it was a copy of Notre Dame's basketball facility. It was pretty new when I came there in '76.
The building is the Murphy Center. The actual basketball arena is named for Monte Hale, long-time announcer who had been diagnosed (with cancer I believe) when I was there. Ironically, I had his namesake son in one of the HS classes I was student-teaching. He was totally focused on becoming a sports announcer, too.
I like the arena: intimate enough you can see who's talking to whom anywhere in the stands, see all the action on the floor (better than the zebras, as every fan knows), while keeping the crowd noise focused on the task at hand.
As for the seats I chose in hopes I could watch Tyler work the game and hear what he was yelling to the players on the floor... I heard him only once. He yelled, "One!"
But it was the way he said it...
I was impressed with our girls' play in the first half (other than our fouls). Interestingly, the MTSU fans were unimpressed with their girls' play until that final 6-8 minutes. I got the impression that segment was more typical of their play. We got hands near the faces of their outside shooters the first 3/4 of the game, but MT was still missing a lot of open shots. My impression was it could have gotten more worser much earlier.
[I'm sure I stole that line from either Grantland Rice or Dizzy Dean--apologies to whichever.]
That explains why it looked so small. Thanks!Full capacity is around 11,500. The top tier of about 18 sections was retracted for our game. I always heard it was a copy of Notre Dame's basketball facility. It was pretty new when I came there in '76.
The building is the Murphy Center. The actual basketball arena is named for Monte Hale, long-time announcer who had been diagnosed (with cancer I believe) when I was there. Ironically, I had his namesake son in one of the HS classes I was student-teaching. He was totally focused on becoming a sports announcer, too.
I like the arena: intimate enough you can see who's talking to whom anywhere in the stands, see all the action on the floor (better than the zebras, as every fan knows), while keeping the crowd noise focused on the task at hand.
As for the seats I chose in hopes I could watch Tyler work the game and hear what he was yelling to the players on the floor... I heard him only once. He yelled, "One!"
But it was the way he said it...
I was impressed with our girls' play in the first half (other than our fouls). Interestingly, the MTSU fans were unimpressed with their girls' play until that final 6-8 minutes. I got the impression that segment was more typical of their play. We got hands near the faces of their outside shooters the first 3/4 of the game, but MT was still missing a lot of open shots. My impression was it could have gotten more worser much earlier.
[I'm sure I stole that line from either Grantland Rice or Dizzy Dean--apologies to whichever.]
As for their play, we were not playing well even in the first half. The team I saw (albeit on tv) was the team I saw in the FIRST half of the last game, not the second half. We did not play to our potential at all. I take nothing away from MTSU, but I think if we play our game and don't have the unforced turnovers, we can take them. They are talented. Don't know how Southern Miss won against them, but Southern Miss is sneaky this year. You think they aren't that good and you look up and they have won. WKU is still the class of the conference this year. I think the next 4 (including us) can beat each other on any given night. We play for seeding, though, and hope someone knocks WKU off on the other side of the bracket.
Totally agree......
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