I’m sick!

[rudad02]

Traveling on plane last night following on game thread and game tracker.
Tremendous defensive effort!
ISO still resulted in two easy buckets for Myles that he somehow missed.
ISO means Houston expends no energy on defense, but neither do we, I need explanation of why no rebounds in last 4 minutes after doing a terrific job for 36 minutes?
Please don’t say they wanted it more, something happened that we all of a sudden couldn’t rebound the ball

I am a big Pike fan. IMO the game was lost due several factors already mentioned but most of all due to the stupid hold the ball & let the clock run down strategy which we employed on our last FEW possessions [way too early if you were going to use it at all]. As a result we are looking for a play & bucket under pressure which we created. We had those guys & should have just continued to play basketball. Hated the strategy all year & it came back to bite us in the *** big time. Similar to a prevent D in football. It's one thing to get beaten, another to beat yourself. Still these guys accomplished a great deal. Congrats to them.

 

[Ronnie_B]

I am a big Pike fan. IMO the game was lost due several factors already mentioned but most of all due to the stupid hold the ball & let the clock run down strategy which we employed on our last FEW possessions [way too early if you were going to use it at all]. As a result we are looking for a play & bucket under pressure which we created. We had those guys & should have just continued to play basketball. Hated the strategy all year & it came back to bit us in the *** big time. Similar to a prevent D in football. It's one thing to get beaten, another to beat yourself. Still these guys accomplished a great deal. Congrats to them.

He sure does remind me of Schiano when it comes to game management, at least the first version of Greg.

 

[BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine]

No bad bounces on missed dunks that win game.
I need to know, were they that easy?
Were they literally no-brainer easy?

very easy--like swinging and missing at slow pitch softball

 

[wheezer]

I wouldn’t consider that a dunk a no brainer. Yes you would like a 7 foot tall center to flush it but that was contested.

It was the play of the game. Play of the year really. He makes that and basketball is changed forever.

I won’t rewatch the dunk attempt, but it it bounced all the way towards mid court it must have been forceful
A simple drop in, soft touch best right there? Even if it rolls off, still not a break away basket the other way
Oh well, so many ifs

 

[zappaa]

This explains why we lost. No other reason. The putback and 1, by Houston was the backbreaker. Three guys watched the ball, while the Houston guy went up for it.

And there was no watching for 36 minutes...maddening?
Unexplainable!

 

[czxqa]

zap,
Allowing Houston to rebound late was part of the problem.
RU made about 4 or 5 offensive mistakes within the last 4 minutes or so, which was just as responsible as the rebounding problems

I deleted the game immediately, could not stomach watching again......but, from memory

at least two unforced dribbling turnovers, Jacob and Geo

the blown dunk,

the blown easy put back by Johnson....

.the inability to bounce the ball off of a Houston player while falling out of bounds....

an ill advised three attempt by McConnell (who played fairly well otherwise)

it was a brutal meltdown

Any single one of those plays turns the other way and we would have won.

 

[RUnTeX]

Contested or slightly contested I understand.
All alone no

The dunk wasn't contested much but you could tell Myles didn't quite have great lift esp. by that point in the game. So he may have been just a bit off in his vertical positioning and thus didn't quite flush it with authority as you'd expect from him. Game of inches.

The put back on a later sequence was contested, and dare I say, possibly worthy of a foul call? Hard to say from TV angle but we never made it to the line in H2. Not that Myles would necessarily sink one or both FTs but you never know.

 

[RUnTeX]

I won’t rewatch the dunk attempt, but it it bounced all the way towards mid court it must have been forceful
A simple drop in, soft touch best right there? Even if it rolls off, still not a break away basket the other way
Oh well, so many ifs

Wasn't the dunk attempt off an alleyoop from Geo, though? So it had a timing element to it as well as Myles needing to get both hands on the ball cleanly. So if it clangs off the rim it could still deflect a bit further up the court, maybe unlike a dunk where he goes up with the ball already in his hands.

As you said, maybe a soft drop in works there but if that's just a bit off and then rolls out we would be asking ourselves why didn't Myles just flush it.

They've done the oop hundreds of times all year between practices and games, it's just frustrating (even moreso for the players than us as fans) to not have it go down in that spot.

 

[ScarletCrimson]

Definitely nerves. Even as a fan, I could barely watch the game. No different for the young men on the court who hadn't been there before.

They played their hearts out- so proud of this team.

 

[Shell21]

Pike is a defensive coach....By holding the ball and running down the clock he was betting on his defense stopping them like we had been doing most of the game. His thinking is "if we score, its gravy", but we're going to limit possessions and force the other team to score on multiple possessions to beat us. Not saying it is right or wrong, but this is his strategy.

What I would have done, is run your offense, and take a layup if the offense results in it, and if not, run an iso, or quick hitter with 10 seconds or less. I think he is most confident in geo going 1 on 1 more so than anything else at the end of games unfortunately (minnesota game not withstanding)

I would have liked for the team to develop a few sets or plays that we don't run much but are comfortable running at the end of the game that results in a good look no matter what.

 

[scarletcrew]

RU was scoreless in the last 2minutes and I think 1 of 8 in the last 4:30. It is hard to win games without scoring (or rebounding) in the last 5min of the game.

I don't mind running the clock down to 15-12 seconds but I don't like the way we do it. I really don't like the way we stand around. At least have some movement and see if a defender makes a mistake, commits a foul, trips or falls down.

I feel for these guys.
This was a tough loss.

 

[bac2therac]

I am a big Pike fan. IMO the game was lost due several factors already mentioned but most of all due to the stupid hold the ball & let the clock run down strategy which we employed on our last FEW possessions [way too early if you were going to use it at all]. As a result we are looking for a play & bucket under pressure which we created. We had those guys & should have just continued to play basketball. Hated the strategy all year & it came back to bit us in the *** big time. Similar to a prevent D in football. It's one thing to get beaten, another to beat yourself. Still these guys accomplished a great deal. Congrats to them.

agree, just because it worked at times this year does not mean its the right strategy, we did it vs Minnesota and if not for a JY steal we would have lost, ditto for Clemson game with the Geo deflection and shot.

When RU has its spurts offensively its because its playing great defense, however RU in the last 5-6 minutes, the RU defense was pretty poor, we were slow, appeared tired and were outhustled, we fouled everytime and that put pressure on our offense. We are a bad team under pressure to score. We score when we move the ball not when we isolated. Again do not get fooled because it worked at times this year. Its the NCAA tourney, a different bear of a situation

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

Politi got it right - madding decision by Pike to slow the game down.

Why didn’t politi say anything the last 3 years when Pike has done this every close game? If it so maddening he had like 20 opportunities to bring it up.

I don’t agree with Pike, but that is what he has done and quite frankly more often than not we get the desired results.

 

[bac2therac]

Why didn’t politi say anything the last 3 years when Pike has done this every close game? If it so maddening he had like 20 opportunities to bring it up.

I don’t agree with Pike, but that is what he has done and quite frankly more often than not we get the desired results.

remember end game of Minnesota, went to overtime, only because we let JY take over instead of Geo is why we won

also because we won games we forget how easily we have lost leads...remember Northwestern 2x....Pike has to get this team to learn how to play better with leads

remember Ohio State, a lot of variables there but it seems like when something starts going wrong, we have a hard time getting it back to good

to me a sign of lack of leadership on the court. thoughts?

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

remember end game of Minnesota, went to overtime, only because we let JY take over instead of Geo is why we won

That was an incredible performance.

 

[bac2therac]

the JY vs Geo run team was a big part of our offensive woes. Pike could never really figure out what team he wanted us to be. He said (wrongly) IMO that there was no first team that the 2nd team was just as good but no that isnt true. There were certain lineups poisonous to Rutgers. I think failing to find the right identity and managing things ended up chipping away at our ceiling a bit. Also I felt certain players like Harper allowed to get away with not full focus basically because we didnt have anyone who could replace him in the lineup. Not being able to develop Mag really hurt.

 

[fluoxetine]

remember end game of Minnesota, went to overtime, only because we let JY take over instead of Geo is why we won

also because we won games we forget how easily we have lost leads...remember Northwestern 2x....Pike has to get this team to learn how to play better with leads

remember Ohio State, a lot of variables there but it seems like when something starts going wrong, we have a hard time getting it back to good

to me a sign of lack of leadership on the court. thoughts?

I don't remember every game and I haven't done any statistical analysis to back this up.

I think we've actually lost fewer leads in endgames under Pikiell than would be expected. As I mentioned in another thread, the ESPN, Kenpom, and Torvik models all pretty much agree that at Houston's lowest point, which was 58-49 with 4:32 left, they had a ~10% chance to win.

Have we blown 10% of the games in which we had that kind of lead under Pikiell? I honestly do not think so.


(Ugh I know I'm going to end up going through and looking at every game )

 

[RUBlackout]

I know we are trying to be critical bc it was such a gut wrenching loss

BUT

are we completely forgetting Pikes game plan for
The first 35mins of the game where we were dominating the #6 team IN THE COUNTRY. I think his plan the entire time was great and we just had some poor execution down the stretch

 

[rudad02]

agree, just because it worked at times this year does not mean its the right strategy, we did it vs Minnesota and if not for a JY steal we would have lost, ditto for Clemson game with the Geo deflection and shot.

When RU has its spurts offensively its because its playing great defense, however RU in the last 5-6 minutes, the RU defense was pretty poor, we were slow, appeared tired and were outhustled, we fouled everytime and that put pressure on our offense. We are a bad team under pressure to score. We score when we move the ball not when we isolated. Again do not get fooled because it worked at times this year. Its the NCAA tourney, a different bear of a situation

You cant have one guy hang onto the ball for 2 minutes[probably three possessions] & the other four guys stand around with their fingers up their asses & expect them to turn on a switch & play fast aggressive defense. Athletics don't work that way. Busted up our rhythm & flow. Once again we had those guys. Just needed to play our fast aggressive basketball during those possessions.

 

[bethlehemfan]

You cant have one guy hang onto the ball for 2 minutes[probably three possessions] & the other four guys stand around with their fingers up their asses & expect them to turn on a switch & play fast aggressive defense. Athletics don't work that way. Busted up our rhythm & flow. Once again we had those guys. Just needed to play our fast aggressive basketball during those possessions.

That did not happen

 

[BossNJ]

Traveling on plane last night following on game thread and game tracker.
Tremendous defensive effort!
ISO still resulted in two easy buckets for Myles that he somehow missed.
ISO means Houston expends no energy on defense, but neither do we, I need explanation of why no rebounds in last 4 minutes after doing a terrific job for 36 minutes?
Please don’t say they wanted it more, something happened that we all of a sudden couldn’t rebound the ball

They seemed to get all the fortuitous bounces those last few minutes. They had a few bad misses that happened to bounce the right way.

 

[rudad02]

That did not happen

It did in the game I just watched.

 

[bethlehemfan]

It did in the game I just watched.

Wrong

 

[Pancho1939_rivals]

the JY vs Geo run team was a big part of our offensive woes. Pike could never really figure out what team he wanted us to be. He said (wrongly) IMO that there was no first team that the 2nd team was just as good but no that isnt true. There were certain lineups poisonous to Rutgers. I think failing to find the right identity and managing things ended up chipping away at our ceiling a bit. Also I felt certain players like Harper allowed to get away with not full focus basically because we didnt have anyone who could replace him in the lineup. Not being able to develop Mag really hurt.

all that means nothing. In reality it all means nothing as long as we make the tournament. Once we made the tournament any game leading up to it gets tossed out the window. The fact is pikiell did a very good job managing the players yesterday and had the right guys in at the right time to win the game.

 

[Pancho1939_rivals]

Damned if you do damned if you don’t. Regardless of what happened pikiell was getting blamed if we lost. Hell in first 5 minutes people already started putting it on pikiell. Pikiell chose to stop the bleeding and limit houston possessions. I agree with what he did. One defensive rebound and we win. Guys need to execute. We didn’t. If pikiell choose to play aggressive and that didn’t work people would have attacked him for not burning clock with the lead.


I can only imagine what people would be saying if houston did to us what Oregon did to Iowa.

 

[Yeah Baby]

Zap, Houston was relentless on the boards all game long. Boxing out takes a lot of energy. That’s why we slowed it down. They got the bounces and they obviously got the calls too. Look at the fouls in the second half. They picked up their 6th with an intentional foul at the end. We were well over 10 fouls. Luckily they missed some. Unluckily their 6’8” F got a hand on the ball over Myles back after 2 misses and it bounced back out to the FT shooter who drained a 3. Ouch. They were crashing hard and got called for 1 or 2 over the backs. Could have been called more IMO but the 2 seed gets the calls over the 10 seed. That’s how it works. We played great to get that lead.

 

[rudad02]

Wrong

You sure are entitled to your opinion.

 

[Yeah Baby]

what makes me sick is watching the final play highlight and seeing montez and Jacob just standing there at the foul line as Houston gets the offensive rebound.....

This is completely wrong. JY and Tez were guarding players outside the 3 point line. The offensive rebound came off the baseline. Way off base here and shocked so many liked it. That one was a foul on us. We did also make mistakes as did Houston. I felt they were sent to the line way too many times the last 5 minutes and we didn’t get there at all. RHJ got fouled on a rebound and strong drive. geo got fouled up by 2 before that last play and Myles got fouled on the outback. Okay that they were not called but Houston got at least 3 phantom calls just at the end. Girruelt got 3 gift calls himself that I can remember and 2 other guys got gift calls with no contact. I think they scored around 7 pts on those alone.

Regarding the ISO plays, Geo scored the first one and got fouled the second as I said above plus Myles got fouled on the putback. The next iso was JY and we turned it over but that was just good defense imo.

Houston plays smothering D and so did we. I just cannot see how they got to the line so many times and we couldn’t buy a call. First half we got to the line more so maybe it was the same official making the calls. It sucks but it happens. Lots of bad bounces went against us. Great effort and great coaching by the staff.

 

[kapyoche]

Rutgers could not execute to win against Houston as it did against Clemson.
We had a very little room for error.
We should have won, but game is not 38 minutes but 40 minutes.
Even with all the screw-ups and bad bounces, RHJ had a chance to tie the game. He had a clean look.
He missed. We had the ball in our hands at the end. That is not a bad way to lose.

 

[rudad02]

Rutgers could not execute to win against Houston as it did against Clemson.
We had a very little room for error.
We should have won, but game is not 38 minutes but 40 minutes.
Even with all the screw-ups and bad bounces, RHJ had a chance to tie the game. He had a clean look.
He missed. We had the ball in our hands at the end. That is not a bad way to lose.

Went to slow down ISO way too early & often. Lost all momentum & IT cost us the game.

 

[Yeah Baby]

Went to slow down ISO way too early & often. Lost all momentum & IT cost us the game.

We went to iso at the 2 minute mark with a 2 point lead. We scored the first time. Had 2 layups with contact the 2nd time and then turned it over the 3rd time and last time all with a 2 point lead. Not way to early and often. This was a dogfight and we did what we had to do. They got some calls and we didn’t. They made the big putback and we didn’t. Of course they got the foul call anyway but he put the ball in the hole and we didn’t after the Geo layup which was under 2 minutes left. They wanted more chances because they were shooting poorly. We wanted them to have less chances:

 

[NiTeKnight]

Maybe we didn't rebound as well because of Myles' ankle injury. Plus McConnell, who is a good rebounder, had fouled out. Also, we may have gotten tired at the end -- we had a tough game Friday against #7 Clemson and Houston had an easier game against a #15 seed.

 

[RUsojo]

I know we are trying to be critical bc it was such a gut wrenching loss

BUT

are we completely forgetting Pikes game plan for
The first 35mins of the game where we were dominating the #6 team IN THE COUNTRY. I think his plan the entire time was great and we just had some poor execution down the stretch

Pikiell gets a lot of credit not for his gameplan, but for adjusting it, as he moved off it pretty quick. It was a very good move to do so. I’ve never seen us play such great perimeter defense in my life in the bulk of this game.. Unfortunately, he then abandoned that game plan later in 2H.

Wont get into the end of game debacle other than this is not the first time he has gone to this strategy unsuccessfully.

 

[Kbee3]

We didn't make the plays....they did.
We go home.

 

[DHajekRC84]

This is the part that really has me still reeling about this game and missed opportunity. Yeah it was a great season. But none of those other B1G Round of 32 losses were even close. Imagine the press both inside and outside the league had we finished that game. Talk about legacy ... gut wrenching still. Up at 4am two days later cause it still bothers me. (and sorry, I do not really care about how the other teams did in their loses of at least 13 points. That is their problem).

(1) Michigan def. (8) LSU, 86-78

(2) Houston def. (10) Rutgers 63-60

(7) Oregon def. (2) Iowa, 95-80
(2) Alabama def. (10) Maryland, 96-77
(1) Baylor def. (9) Wisconsin 76-63
(8) Loyola Chicago def. (1) Illinois 71-58

Just a little end game focus on shot selection and ball control and rebounding. Just some offensive movement to make them defend 5 guys and not 1.

If we learn and grow from it. OK. Honestly I've seen it before and I don't think it changes unless coach figures it out and puts more time and effort into some more offensive discipline and player role.

 

[bethlehemfan]

This is the part that really has me still reeling about this game and missed opportunity. Yeah it was a great season. But none of those other B1G Round of 32 losses were even close. Imagine the press both inside and outside the league had we finished that game. Talk about legacy ... gut wrenching still. Up at 4am two days later cause it still bothers me. (and sorry, I do not really care about how the other teams did in their loses of at least 13 points. That is their problem).

(1) Michigan def. (8) LSU, 86-78

(2) Houston def. (10) Rutgers 63-60

(7) Oregon def. (2) Iowa, 95-80
(2) Alabama def. (10) Maryland, 96-77
(1) Baylor def. (9) Wisconsin 76-63
(8) Loyola Chicago def. (1) Illinois 71-58

Just a little end game focus on shot selection and ball control and rebounding. Just some offensive movement to make them defend 5 guys and not 1.

If we learn and grow from it. OK. Honestly I've seen it before and I don't think it changes unless coach figures it out and puts more time and effort into some more offensive discipline and player role.

I think what makes it harder in a way for me was I really think we have a chance to beat anyone we play. Yea maybe Gonzaga or Alabama have too many playmakers but we can hang with almost anyone. Does anyone doubt we could have gotten to the final four if things broke right? I don’t. Unlikely maybe to string all those together but that’s true for many teams. You need some luck along the way. Houston earned it but they also got every bounce at the end. But - we were right there. Says a lot for pike and the program.

 

[rudad02]

ISO slow down cost us the game. Everyone who knows sports & saw the game says it.

 

[King of S]

ISO slow down cost us the game. Everyone who knows sports & saw the game says it.

Did Pike ever comment on his end of the game strategy?

 

[DHajekRC84]

Did Pike ever comment on his end of the game strategy?

He's "Stalling"...." (sorry, had to)

 

[wngarbarini]

Think of the bright side. I heard from a Midwest friend that Pike was up for the Indiana job but the last 5 minutes of the Houston game may have eliminated his candidacy.