IMO, the game displayed what happens when one team was playing with a huge edge and the other team was not (first half). That’s probably the main cause of so many road upsets in the SEC.
The main positive I saw come out of that last night was the emergence of AB playing with a huge edge in the 2nd half. He took a battering from Auburn defenders through a lot of the game and you could see when he had enough. He took over the game and for a long period of time, was clearly the best player on the floor.
I saw a different AB in the post game interviews. He was clearly upset and mad about the game. It showed how mad he was about the loss. This Auburn game may have set that edge for AB for the rest of the season.
If this whole team can play with that “edge” every game, they can still do great things this season. It is difficult for a freshman to take over leadership of a team, but we may need AB to do just that. I think he’s up to it. If there’s ever been a great time for that to happen, it’s Wednesday, when Bama arrives.
AB was a little mad post game. I certainly played needs to display that attitude for the opening tip.
The foul trouble early last night was the difference. The poor free throw shooting made Muss mad as well.
If the Hogs keep coming up with less than stellar offensive output on the road then they could be looking at a 1-5 start to the conference season.
Sorry, but these Hogs aren’t beating Alabama at home or anywhere else at this point in the season.
We might be looking at something near a .500 conference record.
Yep he was on a mission the 2nd half and we have to get everyone doing that.AB needs to go ahead and make up his mind that we need 18-20 from him every game.
Good post, Larry. There is a reason why AB is my favorite player on this team. You could see the steam coming off him in the post-game. Bob asks him about Flanigan…WTF?
The Flanigans have done everything they can to screw Hog hoops for 30 years. Allen says in the run-up that this game is personal for him, because Coach A didn’t make him a priority. Why would he, when there was less than zero chance that he would ever sign with the Hogs? Pearl has been mining that s$%t like the POS he is.
I love AB. The little punks from Auburn tried to get under his skin, but they only added fuel to his fire. Wish we had them at The Bud this year.
That said, I have flushed this game. We have a huge opportunity Wednesday night, and I suspect we will rise to it. And I bet AB will truly shine on the big stage.
Go Hogs!
Saw a tweet today from an analytics site that based on shot quality, we should have won by 8. But we couldn’t throw it in the ocean (although all those blocked shots probably had something to do with that too). Missed 13 FTs too, which at least would have made it competitive.
I think I recall one of our guys completely missing the rim on a FT yesterday. I’d love to know how much practice they spend on FTs; seems like last year’s team was SO good on FTs, actually winning games with their FTs.
I’m pretty sure the routine is the same year to year I know last year our guys were very good at the line and they said it’s because there’s more pressure in practice than it is in the game because they have to make so many in a row or they have to start over. We came into the game shooting right at 71%, which was about 7th in the league but we definitely did not do it last night. Mitchell was absolutely awful but he had some help in that area as well.
What I’ve noticed is that when other teams start talking trash to AB his game goes to an whole other level. I hate If’s but if we hit 75% from the line, make a few more lay ups and Devo doesn’t get two early fouls we win at Auburn pretty easy.
People were dogging on Pinion for his defense on the smaller guards but if you go back and look he was in great position almost every time, the dude just hit the shot. As bad as our zone offense is Pinion is going to have to play. You hope his offense will offset any issues he has on D.
Yeah pinion was not in bad position Guy just made some shots with hands in his face
. We still need him in the game some because we got to have someone who can hit a three.
We don’t have a whole lot of room for error and we’re going to have to make our free throws and make the shots right around the basket if we’re going to win them close ones
Good point on the position on Pinion. They did make some difficult shot’s on him, but also got around him a couple of times. Defense needed to rotate to help.
AB contributed his 75%, and he shot most of them. Now, the rest of the team; they need to pick it up. Nevertheless Aubie is a tough place to go in and get a W - they are on a massive streak. I thought those first two fouls on Devo were very unfortunate if not unfair…maybe overly zealous official.
No doubt it is very hard to win there. I just hate we have to play Alabama next, I just don’t see us beating them unless they have a off night from three.
I don’t see any better than average free throw shooters on this team like JD or Lykes last year. Average free throw shooters shoot better at home than on the road. We had mostly home games so far except one true road game before this one. That probably explains 71% coming into this game.
We certainly don’t have a Lykes (88%), but JD (77% Sr and 76% Jr) wasn’t a great FT shooter, but was a good FT shooter. Toney and Wade were better FT shooters than JD last season. This season Ricky is at 79%, Devo is at 76% and AB is at 72%. Our Bigs are definitely hurting us this season with free throw shooting. Even Brazile was only shooting 67%.
We also have a player in Pinion who could be our Lykes if he can continue improving his D. He’s 6-6 FTs this season and is a better 3 point shooter than Lykes. In games where we have a narrow lead late in the game, I could see him using Pinion like he did Lykes a lot. Work in bound plays where he frees Pinion to receive the ball and shoot the FTs. Joseph isn’t prone to TOs. He’s played 76 minutes and has zero turnovers.
I think Pinion is probably a great free throw shooter, but I don’t know if he can get to the line enough to make it count. Now you know why Lykes got all those free throws in the closing stages of the game. Because he became the primary ball handler in those late stages. Those fouls occurred because they could not strip the ball away from him, they had to foul him.
I do expect Pinion to be in the game when the opponent is in a must foul situation. But I am not sure he will have the ball enough to get fouled repeatedly. AB will and should have the ball along with Devo.
