40 Minutes Of Turnovers

Congrats to Mike Anderson and Mizzou for grinding the 'Hawks down last night. I hope they go far -- just not at KU's expense from here on out.

I think we just got gassed in this one. Fran Fraschilla made the good observation that the Tigers' pressure is "cumulative." Hence "40 minutes of hell."

Of course, the officiating was an atrocity: Sherron was clearly fouled on his missed drive in the last minute; Marcus' bump of the ref seemed very clearly to be incidental contact; Morningstar would have had only one turnover if not for a ridiculous 3-second call in the backcourt and a downright ludicrous 5-second call on that inbounds pass -- the ref never even made it to 4 before blowing the whistle!

Our freshmen obviously made mistakes, as expected. But Tyshawn was our most productive offensive player, and Releford had a coming-out party.

Morningstar, Mario and esp. Reed played with a lot of grit, but we needed more scoring from them than we got.

To me, the biggest problem in this game -- and some of our other losses -- has been the stars. Sherron seemed completely stymied throughout. Cole was tough as a rebounder and defender, but despite Self's and Keegan's protests that he didn't get enough touches, the fact is that when he did get touches he repeatedly committed the Chenoweth-ian mortal sin of bringing the ball down to waist-level where the Lilliputians could strip it. That mask can't come off soon enough for me...

Also, Self needs to do a better job preserving those timeouts -- he seemed to think the sky was falling every time Mizzou cut it to 7.

Take heart, though, kids. Despite 27 turnovers and home cookin' from the zebras, we would have won this game minus a few unlucky bounces. Revenge will be forthcoming.