SicEm365s Ashley Hodge goes in-depth with his analysis of Baylor's loss to Texas Southern on Tuesday night.
the loss sucked. Texas Southern is not a bad team but they won't sneak up on anyone else after beating us so fans will freak out more as they get blown out in upcoming games.bularry said:
You maintained a pretty optimistic tone That was very bad
Tbh, can't lose to SWAC teams at home and expect to make the tourney.
agreed. I thought we looked best when we were trapping and we not only have the guards to keep guys fresh but we have good height at guard which can make traps more effective. Our defense in the 2nd half was terrible. Great post setshot.setshot said:
Ashley. I never pay too much attention to losses like this, but I do pay attention to how they are lost.
Kegler's loss was unexpected and troubling. The problems with Mason were both expected and equally troubling.
Our notions about how this team would perform this season was based in part on having those two players available, and their absence was critical, as it will be in games ahead.
I know that Drew is not an advocate of up-tempo basketball, but the practice I watched convinced me that this is a tteam geared for a faster pace, with an emphasis on transition. He has enough depth at the guard positions to do this, and at the wings. They should go to the man for man defense as a primary defense and use the zone situationally, and they should press and double team a lot, forcing other teams farther out in order to make the entry pass a more difficult one. We have the personnel to do that, but half court sets are going to cause us major problems.
Again, Drew knows his personnel better than I do, but for significant periods in that game he had combinations on the floor that seemed to me to lack scoring punch. If Vital is one of your go-to players at the offensive end you are in trouble. Mayer, of course, despite his near-insufferable self confidence, is talented but not yet ready for prime time. We need him to be a scorer and he will evolve into that role, but he is not there yet. Butler is a nice young player, but he is more of a game manager and facilitator at this point than he is a scoring threat. I like Bandoo and Allen as possible scorers and defenders to complement McClure, who shelved his early-game passivity and became what we know he can be, a dynamic scorer.
Clark has to be on the floor for this team to do well, and his propensity is to foul early and often, as we saw last season. He got at least one, perhaps two, "vicinity fouls" in that game, when officials decided that a foul had been committed and they rang him up because he was in the affected area. His fourth foul fell into that category and it probably cost us the game.
The Bears were not well organized and it appeared that they had too little respect for their opponent, but with so many new faces, that is not surprising. Drew and his staff did not have the team playing with the same physicality and defensive intensity in this game as they showed in the practice I watched, but Teague and Mitchell were participants in that workout, as were Kegler and Mason, so it was a bit misleading.
