MBB Final: Louisiana 85, Coastal 77

[ULvictory]

JMU was a guys night.
Tonight got the family court side tickets from Uncle J last minute. My birthday boy wanted to go see the Cajuns. I’ll never turn down lil MAT for sporting events.

I must say that Big Cat also has an awesome birthday.

[Million$Mullet]

Nope. Chose not to celebrate my birthday at the game. I had much better options.

Like posting on a message board about the game that you’re not attending? Sounds like a solid birthday.

Just messing with you man I hope you had a great birthday.

[Million$Mullet]

Yes. They were pretty close in size IMO. Tonight was probably slightly more.

Probably a few less students tonight. That should hopefully improve after classes resume next week

Agree that we had more overall tonight than Thursday. I counted 6 students last night.

[Big Tyme]

Dude is 19-20 and at the height of health and fitness. No reason playing 35 minutes twice a week should wear him down.

You are not serious.

[ManAboutTown]

You are not serious.

I’m sure you’ll find an excuse anywhere you can, Jen.

[CajunEXPRESS]

Charles played 38 minutes tonight and had a great game. I hope playing that many minutes doesn't catch up with him at the end of the season.

I don’t believe that young healthy, very well conditioned athletes suffer from too many minutes. Multiple aerobic books point out marathon runners gain endurance by pushing themselves in practice.

[Big Tyme]

It's not the aerobic aspect. It's the pounding on the knees, ankles, feet. Plus the elbows in the ribs, etc. Legs get tired in a game. You don't think they get tired over the course of a season?

[Big Tyme]

I don’t believe that young healthy, very well conditioned athletes suffer from too many minutes. Multiple aerobic books point out marathon runners gain endurance by pushing themselves in practice.

Let me know what the books say about those marathon runners moving laterally, stopping and starting, jumping and catching elbows.

[Esqueleto]

It's not the aerobic aspect. It's the pounding on the knees, ankles, feet. Plus the elbows in the ribs, etc. Legs get tired in a game. You don't think they get tired over the course of a season? You are not a serious person.

Have you never been young? At that age we were playing 4 hours every damn day we could. 80 minutes a week is nothing for these guys. 35 year olds are playing 40 minutes a night 4 times a week all over the world. I think you're the one that's not serious.

[cajun4life]

It's not the aerobic aspect. It's the pounding on the knees, ankles, feet. Plus the elbows in the ribs, etc. Legs get tired in a game. You don't think they get tired over the course of a season? You are not a serious person.

Work load management in college is a joke. They aren’t playing an NBA season.

[CajunEXPRESS]

Let me know what the books say about those marathon runners moving laterally, stopping and starting, jumping and catching elbows.

The father of aerobic endurance Dr Cooper, you’ll have to research this yourself, used a soccer team as an example of getting better results from aerobic exercise. Now you might have a case for joe Charles, and Kobe both with knee injury issues.

[zephyr]

What chaps my ass the most is if this team ran a D1 offense, we could legitimately be undefeated right now.

Defense, pace and effort are good enough to win every night. It was good to see some nice contributions off the bench tonight. Sorely needed. Hardy is a tough little player and needs more minutes IMO. I’d love to get excited about the possibilities but Bob holds us back in so many ways. Maybe he’ll learn to run the offense through Kitenge and tell Julien to stop taking stupid forced shots and we can actually be a consistent offense by the time the tournament comes around.

Joe Charles should be playing 30+ minutes a night and have a defined role. The team is improving overall.

I don't think we are that good on defense. In fact, many games we've had to outscore our opponent and the defense has let us down in crucial games like the JMU game and McNeese games to name a couple. We are excellent at 3pt % given up as a defense but near the bottom of the league in opponent fg % which means we are getting killed in transition and inside. It makes sense, we are a small team and we have the significant height disadvantage almost every game and certainly in conference.

We're at the bottom of Defensive rebounding which gives teams tons of second chance points. Just like the JMU game. I categorize that as a defensive stat and we just aren't good there.

Also, we are literally running most of our offense through Kitenge. Like nearly every possession down the court. That is not the issue. We just don't have guys that can beat people off the dribble and Marlin doesn't do much to get Kobe in good spots with the ball. I clearly remember late in the JMU game when it was close, JMU ran a nice double curl pick for their best shooter where he got an open shot that he buried to put them ahead for good. We don't ever get looks like that.

I'm in favor of getting Hardy and Ratliff more minutes. We have to be able to rest guys and still get production from others if we want to be successful. They've all shown some promise at various times and they can give some much needed rest to our starters. Last night they did that and we actually closed the game out with Ratliff and Hardy on the court as well as Michael Thomas. Not sure what was up with Fulks but Thomas had a great second half.