What an absolute joke that was. The coaches and players should be embarrassed by that performance. I am embarrassed that I used a couple hours of my Saturday to watch that. Early in the first half, the Razorbacks were 7-9 from the field and had taken only one shot that was contested! There two misses were the one contest and a wide open 3. That's how a supposedly "good" team responds to a terrible loss at Nebraska...by laying down in the fetal position and letting the next team they play get anything they want.
One of the few times the Gophers had any shot to get back in this game was when they were down 5 with 2 and change left in the first half. Jordan Murphy gets an offensive board and Senior leader Nate Mason takes a terrible contested 3 early in the clock. The Gophers would then be down 8 at halftime. This was reminiscent to the Nebraska game again where they had cut the lead down, but gave the momentum right back to close the half.
The veterans on this team have to play tougher and smarter. The second foul on Lynch when he got beat down the court was ridiculous. He had no shot to do anything there and should have just allowed the dunk. Nate's defense has been poor all year and it's one of the larger reasons why this team is playing terrible on that end of the floor.
Coach Pitino has put a team out there that has looked very poorly coached twice in a row now. Our first offensive possession of the game included Jordan Murphy getting the ball at the NBA 3 point line and trying to dribble all the way to the bucket. This was against an Arkansas team that is long and athletic. There has to be more wrinkles to the offense than the dribble hand offs and the high ball screens. Against this type of team, the Gophers shouldn't be asking Murphy, Lynch, or my god Diediou to handle the hall at the top of the key. It doesn't seem like we have any adjustments though, we just run the same "stuff" regardless of opponent. Defensively the issues are all over the place. Pitino briefly went to a zone and the team looked completely lost in giving up open 3 after open 3 (one particularly egregious one was when Amir left the corner open to help on the ball). At no time in this game did I feel like the Gophers could get any stops and that was both due to a shocking lack of effort and a seeming lack of preparedness.
The free thrown percentage was unacceptable, but it was especially pathetic that our veterans were missing in big spots. If Nate, Dupree and co. hit those FT's that comfortable 10-12 point lead Arkansas had for much of the game would have been more in the 6 point range.
I'd love to know the difference between Reggie Lynch's 3rd foul to start the second half and the call ON Jordan Murphy defensively later in that half. They looked identical to me.
Another game goes by, and the bench seems to be getting worse instead of better. Fitzgerald missed multiple easy looks, gets called for the same foul he gets every game (hand check on ball handler) and still looks surprised by it, Hurt gets blown by immediately when he checks in then in the 2nd half misses a bunny and the front end of a 1 and 1. I won't even talk about Gaston. Pitino literally puts in Rudrud in blowouts and leaves Gaston on the bench. He's not a D-1 caliber player and going to him with Lynch's foul trouble instead of trying to go small made literally zero sense. You know he can't play, you've acknowledged that fact by not playing him for 3.5 years and now you play him big minutes in an important game? I am waiting for "adjustments" from Pitino, but that's not the type I was looking for.
If these are not the two worst games of the season, this is shaping up to be a hugely disappointing year. I thought Pitino really had this program in a good place, but this team has regressed badly from where it was the second half of last year despite returning 4 of 5 starters and 5 of the top 6. They should be ahead of teams right now with that familiarity and instead they look like the young/inexperienced team. With Providence losing to UMass today, I think we need to start looking at the reality of that not being a "quality win" come March. There's a real chance the Gophers will have a pretty thin resume beyond what the do in the B1G making even just matching last years #5 seed a chore and that's assuming this team actually starts playing up to expectations.