Quote :

"before this game we were only averaging about 12 turnovers a game, stanford is the best pac 10 team defensively. stop blowing shit out of proportion "

the problem is that stanford didnt force that many turnovers

Most of them were unforced because of dumb ass plays by our players.

[Edited on December 4, 2011 at 10:16 PM. Reason : 11]

12/4/2011 10:15:53 PM

Just got home from Palo Alto. Sat in traffic forever and my beer buzz is gone, so here are my musings:

<.> Stanford fans are elitist pricks. UNC fans are annoying in their own right, but they have lots of championships/final fours to back up the trash they talk. Stanford fans act like they are some venerable powerhouse program, steeped in tradition and excellence. Their smug sneers got really old and if I had been drunk enough, I probably would have started a fight with one of their alumni because they looked like a bunch of pussies. Also, fuck Palo Alto for being a picturesque boutique college town run by a bunch of nerdy snobs.
<.> Maples Pavilion got loud as fuck and wasn't even 2/3 full. At the end of the game when State started falling apart, the crowd really made it impossible to hear anything. It made me miss Reynolds and the RBC center during an ACC matchup
<.> State just isn't there yet. Horrible ball handling, abysmal in the transition, and dumb, dumb, dumb mistakes allowed Stanford to whittle down a 12 pt lead. As a State fan, I'm fairly used to seeing these types of meltdowns, but it really sucked seeing it live.
<.> CJ Leslie is the glue that holds everything together. When he went out, I pretty much knew we were done for. Wood fouling out was the final nail in the coffin.

Overall, like others predicted, it was an entertaining loss and I'm glad I went. When this team figures out how to play a complete game, I think it could be pretty dangerous, but for now this team has a lot of growing up to do.

[Edited on December 4, 2011 at 10:37 PM. Reason : <.>]

12/4/2011 10:28:48 PM

so tuff

12/4/2011 10:31:10 PM

WHY MUST WE TALK IN NUMBERED LISTS

12/4/2011 10:32:51 PM

1) a thigh bruise--or any serious muscle bruise--will halt your basketball playing. please go play a sport.

2) Howell is straight up fucking useless for 2 games straight. I can't even articulate how much his play these last two games has pissed me off.

3) Scott Wood gets in foul trouble every goddamn game. That absolutely kills us.

[Edited on December 4, 2011 at 11:03 PM. Reason : lol]

12/4/2011 11:01:04 PM

^^ hahahah

12/4/2011 11:01:49 PM

Quote :

"stanford is not good. "

wildly inaccurate.

and seriously, I'm not terribly worried about us right now. we've blown two games in true State fashion, but I'd wager that if Lowe were still here, we'd be 3-5, and would've lost each of those by 15+, aside from maybe Princeton. Stanford doesn't have any quality wins yet, but they damn near beat Syracuse. Indiana handled Butler by 18, if I'm not mistaken.

We're on the right track. We're just not disciplined yet...as Justin said, we've got some bad habits to break, and we're not gonna break em over 8 games with a brand new coach.

12/4/2011 11:13:49 PM

i have played sports my entire life, football and soccer in high school and soccer on the college level - a thigh bruise is annoying but definitely playable on unless you are just being a pansy...period. make excuses for him all day long - if all he had was a thigh bruise and he was able to walk on it and move like he did when he came back in...he could have contributed...

12/4/2011 11:14:23 PM

^^ we damned near beat syracuse last year, FYI


^ maybe he is a pansy. nothing we can do about it other than make fun of him on the internet

[Edited on December 4, 2011 at 11:16 PM. Reason : .]

12/4/2011 11:15:55 PM

^^they said he was getting an IV in the locker room

He was cramping up really badly


so stop bitching now

V...he came back in after the initial dead leg. he went back out because he was cramping up. Cant do anything about that besides drink more fluids

[Edited on December 4, 2011 at 11:22 PM. Reason : asdf]

12/4/2011 11:16:57 PM

not bitching - honestly, sort of expect stuff like this to happen to state now - doesn't mean its not frustrating

12/4/2011 11:18:54 PM

Stanford is #17 in KenPom.

(best rankings)

12/4/2011 11:26:56 PM

Stanford is definitely good but we were so much more athletic and they shot like shit

We lost because we didn't rebound, made careless turnovers, and lost wood/Leslie.

Sucks, we needed that game to get back on the bubble.

Refs also destroyed us by allowing them to hold Wood off the screens and that little dude bumping and hand checking Lorenzo the whole Damn game. Unbelievable how we get called for all these fouls when we block shots 90% clean but we can't get a call to save our lives. We can't even get the refs to call travelling on dead inbounds Jesus. What did they have, 30 free throws? It's freaking sick.

12/4/2011 11:46:41 PM

^FTs were 34-20 in their favor. FWIW.

12/4/2011 11:49:04 PM

^thats fine with me. Our damn field goal percentage is usually only slightly lower than our FT percentage anyways.

12/5/2011 12:42:54 AM

Came to post my analysis.

We played bad and I got

12/5/2011 12:43:55 AM

the most frustrating thing with this team is just the stupidity and carelessness of their play at times. The talent is obvious at times when they are focused...but those times are few and far between. Gottfried has to want to pull his hair out after some of the boneheaded crap he has seen

12/5/2011 12:45:57 AM

let me tell you the most infuriating thing about this. that fucking arena was first of all a high school gym and second of all full of people that sounded like they were on a walk through a park and stumbled upon a basketball game. by and large they had no idea what was going on in the game.

12/5/2011 1:17:46 AM

The problem with losing is that it really does breed losing. Guys get the "here we go again" feeling the minute things start to go awry and suddenly they are playing the last five minutes looking nothing like they did the first 35 minutes

The program has been completely ravaged by constant losing and there's simply no way to cure it overnight. We have a really talented team, I'd say top 25 in talent easily but we have an inordinate amount of bad habits like losing focus on defense, careless turnovers, etc.

The thing I'm most interested in seeing corrected is the FOULS

people really underestimate the problems that fouling creates. You take a team like Stanford that was shooting 30% and then let them substitute those shots with 80% free throws. It's impossible to shoot 80% from the field to match that. Not only that but you lose valuable contributors to foul trouble and start giving the other team points by incidental fouls 60 feet from the basket that are now free throws.

The most blatant terrible foul was Lorenzo at the end of the game. It's like he was completely unaware of the score/situation and just ran over and fouled a guy pretty much intentionally when we are down 3 with 8 left on the shot clock. No excuse for that.

Howell bumping into that guy dribbling also sticks out as a ridiculously bad foul.

Mathematically, fouling a guy is essentially the exact same thing as allowing him to shoot an uncontested jumper from 15 feet. No one thinks that is acceptable, so why would you think its acceptable to ever foul someone unless you are preventing a dunk or layup? Somewhere along the way our team just became indifferent to fouling people and its wreaking havoc on our defensive efficiency.

12/5/2011 1:29:58 AM

Those fouls were so mind-numbingly dumb that you almost have to laugh.

Not fouling in those situations should be common knowledge for kids on a middle school team, let alone a college squad.

12/5/2011 1:41:34 AM

Quote :

"Guys get the "here we go again" feeling the minute things start to go awry"

this is very apparent w/ richard howell and free throws. once he misses one big one, he's done for the game.

and scott wood with fouls, what the hell? he gets in trouble and just starts hacking at people. did anyone think this game was going to end well when he fouled out with 12 minutes left?

12/5/2011 2:20:11 AM

Unlike the Indiana game (which we simply gave away), the refs dictated the outcome of this game. It's easy to grab offensive rebounds when you push your defender in the back/go over the back on every board. Stanford is very well coached at holding/hooking/extending their arms to either create space or slow players going around screens.

Accountability: Howell is maddening; he finally sheds some weight and now he's missing bunnies. Painter gifts four points by not boxing his man on a free throw attempt and doing a horrible job of playing help defense on that drive/dunk by dickbag #3. Scott Wood needs to stop talking to refs whenever he's whistled for a foul. That being said: how in the living fuck is his final foul legitimate? Zo is, without question, our most important player. Subsequently, it hurts even more when he loses the handle 2-3 times/game by dribbling it off his foot with no defender within a mile radius.

12/5/2011 7:59:54 AM

Quote :

"The most blatant terrible foul was Lorenzo at the end of the game. It's like he was completely unaware of the score/situation and just ran over and fouled a guy pretty much intentionally when we are down 3 with 8 left on the shot clock. No excuse for that. Howell bumping into that guy dribbling also sticks out as a ridiculously bad foul. "

Yeah, I can take losing if we're just not good enough. But losing because of stupid basketball pisses me off more than anything else. It doesn't matter how good we are, we should have avoided a lot of stupid mistakes from yesterday - CJ's inbound, Brown's foul, the ridiculous bounce passes in traffic, not boxing out on free throws.

12/5/2011 8:19:15 AM

Quote :

"Unlike the Indiana game (which we simply gave away), the refs dictated the outcome of this game. It's easy to grab offensive rebounds when you push your defender in the back/go over the back on every board. Stanford is very well coached at holding/hooking/extending their arms to either create space or slow players going around screens."

might as well get used to it because those were fucking ACC refs.

12/5/2011 10:12:27 AM

^i'm pretty sure it was the same team of refs as the indiana game

12/5/2011 10:18:17 AM

Quote :

"<.> Stanford fans are elitist pricks. UNC fans are annoying in their own right, but they have lots of championships/final fours to back up the trash they talk. Stanford fans act like they are some venerable powerhouse program, steeped in tradition and excellence. Their smug sneers got really old and if I had been drunk enough, I probably would have started a fight with one of their alumni because they looked like a bunch of pussies. Also, fuck Palo Alto for being a picturesque boutique college town run by a bunch of nerdy snobs"

I laughed.

12/5/2011 10:20:52 AM

Quote :

"Howell is straight up fucking useless for 2 games straight. I can't even articulate how much his play these last two games has pissed me off."

I feel fairly comfortable watching our guys play offense when they are slowing it down and playing smart. But every time Howell gets the ball, I immediately expect a brick and no rebounding. He has played terrible two games in a row now, and what makes me the most angry is how he just smiles about it. He laughs it off like it's no big deal. I'd rather see Vandenburg get his minutes than continue watching him miss from right beside the basket and shoot LITERALLY 0% from the FT line.

12/5/2011 11:49:59 AM

Quote :

"^i'm pretty sure it was the same team of refs as the indiana game"

Nope, they were ACC. Last night was Jamie Lucky, Ray Natili, Tim Nestor

Indiana was: Bryan Kersey, Roger Ayers, Earl Walton

12/5/2011 12:00:22 PM

^^?

everytime i saw howell he was sulking.

12/5/2011 12:21:37 PM

yeah, howell looks miserable out there dude. what are you talking about laughing it off?

12/5/2011 12:44:33 PM

I think he is mixing up Painter with Howell.

12/5/2011 12:50:28 PM

I'm not going to go rewatch the last two games for you and post pictures. Look again, especially versus Indiana. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is after he whiffed that fuckin break away layup

12/5/2011 3:32:36 PM

I was stuck on the road so I had to listen to the game on the radio. I thought it was really convenient that one of our best players got banged around hard enough to have to leave the game. I'm sure those of you who saw it will tell me it was clean, but I've decided that Dawkins is a dirty coach and will harbor deep resentment about it for the rest of his dastardly career.

12/5/2011 4:57:52 PM

The foul that knocked Leslie out wasn't a particularly dirty one, no more so than any blocking foul. On the other hand, Johnny Dawkins apparently took the Blue Devils' brand of hand checking and grab-happy defense with him to Palo Alto.

12/5/2011 5:05:54 PM

(howell's grandma died )

12/7/2011 11:17:41 AM

^Saw that on twitter. Sucks for him.

12/7/2011 11:25:50 AM

so richard howell has a daughter...had no idea...thanks twitter

12/7/2011 11:29:25 AM