Runnin’ Utes Lose

[cj13]

Mississippi State shot 9-38 from three and we still lost. Brandon Carlson with 0 points. 14 total turnovers.

[D T]

MSU’s a good team…..Best effort I’ve seen out of us on the season, particularly defensively.

[Sanders]

Their entire bench went oh for 16 and another starter was one for 11. Brutal to lose to a team shooting that bad.

[Ute Dub]

Did we “make” them shoot that bad?

[Anonymous]

In these two games we were -22 TO’s (-19 steals).

This team plays hard, but it’s obvious they are severely lacking in talent and athleticism.

Our true bigs are slow and soft. Brandon Carlson, supposedly our best player, is easily out-physical’ed into being a non-factor. Keita is an exception, but he is extremely raw.

Other than Madsen, we have no decent 3pt shooters. Worster, Stefanovic and Saunders are pathetic shooters for guards.

The newcomers haven’t shown much. Saunders has been terrible. Ben Carlson is Riley Battin 2.0. Baxter is physically limited. Exacte and Keita have shown some flashes of ability, but both have a lot of development to do before they can be reliable contributors. Tarlac hasn’t played enough to judge.

Overall I’m not seeing much reason to think this team will be much better than last year.

[GameForAnyFuss]

I’ll argue one point in your post, and that’s Mike Saunders. He hasn’t been terrible. He’s the best ball handler and slashing guard on the team and it isn’t even close. He doesn’t get more minutes simply because of the well-known-yet-insane man crush that coach has on Rolly Wooster, who is a poor-shooting turnover machine. This team will get a lot better (addition by subtraction) when Rolly graduates.

[Anonymous]

Saunders has been objectively bad. He’s shooting 33% (12% 3pt) and -1.7 A/TO ratio (and most his minutes so far have been against cupcakes). Worster is shooting 46% (27% 3pt) and +1.75 A/TO ratio. He is averaging 2.0 TO/game, which is not really bad for 30 min/game.

Saunders is quick, but plays wild/out of control. In his short Miss St stint he had multiple wtf plays; I understand Smith yanking him. Even when Worster fouled out of the GT game, Smith opted to use Stef at PG instead of bringing in Saunders. This is Saunder’s third season at D1, his game should be more polished by now. I’m not a Worster fan either, but I think he is clearly the steadiest option we have at PG right now.

[Ute Dub]

They shot 9-38 because Utah played good defense?