***OFFICIAL MIAMI AT MINNESOTA IN-GAME THREAD!!!!***

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Washington is a true freshman and played a ton of minutes against a top-10 team that could win the ACC. He had a 3 that rimmed out, and without his buckets in the second half we don't make the comeback. He'll learn from the turnovers and get better shot selection with time. He's 8 games into his college career. I'm not worried about Washington. He played 27 minutes, about double his average.

Fitzgerald had the length to make an impact on this game, but only played four minutes in the second half. Pitino clearly doesn't trust him against big-time opponents yet.

This game was lost on the defensive end of the floor. We out-scored them 20-6 on free throws, and they made up that difference by hitting 10 threes to our 5. We couldn't defend the pick-and-roll most of the night, and Miami exposed our defense when they got Lynch away from the basket. We have to communicate better on defense and close out on shooters. A majority of their looks from 3 were WIDE OPEN. Credit Miami -- Brown, Newton and Huell will likely all be NBA players. They got whatever shot they wanted when they got the ball in the middle of the floor.

McBrayer is day-to-day with a leg infection, so at least it's not a serious injury. You can live with him being out against Rutgers, but we'll need him at Nebraska and Arkansas. This town tends to jump off the bandwagon immediately if you lose a home game to a top team, I just hope the atmosphere stays like that in the Big Ten season. What a fun night it looked like at The Barn.
 

Gold Vision said:
Your answer to our guard depth issues is to play more of our slowest second and third power forwards at the 1/2 spot??

You seem unable to make the connection about what happened in both the Alabama game and the Miami game that forced more minutes for Washington.
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You seem unable to make the connection of why we lost our 12 point lead in the Bama game, and why we went down 7 points after being tied. Go watch again. Thanks.

If you don't know what happened, why even argue? Listen to the game announcers, even they hinted at Washington trying to do too much. lol, some people have such low sports IQ.
Even the announcers knew what went wrong.
 

Well... I am not gonna be Mr. Negative. Disappointed as of now but those minutes for Jelly will be important later on. That being said, man he was brutal tonight. Miami hit a lot of shots. Give them credit. Lets enjoy the season!

Go Gophers
 

No question depth is an issue for this team.

In a strange way, that is a major reason why the younger and less-experienced players need to get more minutes now. It may not be pretty at times - it may even cost the team a couple wins - but the Gophers have to force-feed minutes to Hurt and Harris especially. they have to get those guys, along with Washington, more minutes at this stage of the season.

At some point this season, the bench players are going to have to come through to win a game for the Gophers. That's not going to happen unless they get more experience in game conditions. Would you rather see them making mistakes in November or February. I would rather see the growing pains now, so they are not making the same mistakes in February and March.

A loss in November is not the end of the world. A loss in March can be the end of the season. I will trade a couple of losses now for a potential NCAA victory in March. But it's not going to happen unless the bench improves.
 


Not the least bit concerned. It is just disappointing to play defense that poorly and give up 86 at home.
 

My takes

1. Miami played very well, and hit a ton of key shots, including multiple contested shots. If Miami had shot the ball like they had earlier this season, the Gopher likely would have won easily. There's something mystical about Williams Arena and the opponents' ability to hit 3's, though.

2. Miami had several game-changing moments where the ball just kind of went their way, such as the loose ball that went through 3 Gophers and ended in a dunk. Murphy lost several balls through his hands that he usually holds onto. Some games are just that way.

3. Washington, again, tried to do too much. Early on, it cost them badly. He played out of control and didn't pass well; then missed his scoring opportunities. He needed to get the ball into the hands of the other Gopher scorers (Mason/Coffey/Murphy) far more often. Until he becomes a true distributor and makes better overall decisions, his potential value to the team will not be realized.

4. Washington, however, showed flashes of brilliance, particularly late. We may have just witnessed his breaking out.

5. Mason did not have a particularly good game. I was afraid he would try to do too much after the fiasco against Bamer; instead he tried to do too little. And he didn't touch it enough (#3.).

6. Coffey had a run there where he was the whole offense. And then he stopped touching the ball. I don't know why.

7. Miami's gameplan was really good, and they executed the high pick excellently. The frustrating part watching that, however, was seeing the Gophers continue to try to defend it the same way the whole game - and that way wasn't working. There didn't seem a particularly good reason for Lynch to come that far from the basket either...he was taken away from near-bucket D and made no stops toward the outside. I don't understand why Pitino made no effort to at least change the D up, even just to simply get Miami out of the rhythm they were in.

8. Miami has a lot of talent on that team. They earned the win.

9. McBrayer is needed for this team to be a top-20 team.

10. Hurt did not have a particularly good game. He did nothing offensively, didn't defend particularly well, and didn't rebound. Same could be said of Harris. We need those two guys to produce...however, it is likely Miami's D had a lot to do with their lack of productivity.

While a loss is disappointing, it didn't seem like this was a bad loss at all; the opponent is very good. Onto the next.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
No question depth is an issue for this team.

In a strange way, that is a major reason why the younger and less-experienced players need to get more minutes now. It may not be pretty at times - it may even cost the team a couple wins - but the Gophers have to force-feed minutes to Hurt and Harris especially. they have to get those guys, along with Washington, more minutes at this stage of the season.

At some point this season, the bench players are going to have to come through to win a game for the Gophers. That's not going to happen unless they get more experience in game conditions. Would you rather see them making mistakes in November or February. I would rather see the growing pains now, so they are not making the same mistakes in February and March.

A loss in November is not the end of the world. A loss in March can be the end of the season. I will trade a couple of losses now for a potential NCAA victory in March. But it's not going to happen unless the bench improves.
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Going to be the biggest problem as they get into the B10 season....Murphy and Lynch are going to have to play huge minutes in a lot of games...They are gonna get worn down.....Even if Hurt improves, him and Konate are a colossal step down....At least the conference is as down as I can remember.
 

jrock said:
It was a 5 point loss to the #10 ranked team in the country. Miami got most of the breaks. If we played this team 10 times we would win 7 of them. It's November. Move on people. I hope we meet them in the dance.
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I agree with this.

I know it sounds like sour grapes but I think Miami was pretty lucky tonight. Doesn’t change the fact that they’re a good team, top-15 I think, but ordinarily I think we’d grind out a win in these circumstances, even without McBrayer.
 



Playing IW at the point for so many minutes was a mistake. I would have liked to see Harris get some of McBrayers minutes since he can shoot the three and Mason could have stayed at the point. IW too sloppy with the ball and took way too many shots. He has game though, damn.

Also not sure why Hurt played so much over Fitz.
 

1997vacatedfinalfour said:
Going to be the biggest problem as they get into the B10 season....Murphy and Lynch are going to have to play huge minutes in a lot of games...They are gonna get worn down.....Even if Hurt improves, him and Konate are a colossal step down....At least the conference is as down as I can remember.
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Just got home from the game. Really great atmosphere and I can not remember the last time our fans filled the lobby waiting to get into a game. Unfortunately, our terrible perimeter D was exposed by a team who had multiple 3 point shooters. Jelly's Mom sat next to us and got a kick out of the student section holding up pictures of jelly jars. I had to hold my tongue with his forcing the offense , costly turnovers and weak D. He has a huge upside and as a freshman is going to make his share of mistakes. This is a good time for us to get a wake up call that they will have to play much better team D to beat the good teams.
 

Watched the game on a delay tonight, pretty disappointing performance. I was very confident the Gophers would win when it was tied at half, but then they literally could not get any stops at all on the defensive end for a really long stretch in the second half. I don't want to blame the game on this, but Washington had a 3 go in and out, Miami banked in a 3, and Miami was had a loose ball bounce directly to their center for a dunk. If just two of those three play go the Gophers way, we're probably talking about a close win instead of a close loss.

Washington really hurt us for about the first 2/3 of the game, but I was really encouraged that he was able to shake that off and play pretty well in the last 1/3 or so of the game. That's a good sign that a Freshman was able to find a way to contribute late after struggling for much of the game.

Really bad minutes from Hurt tonight, and I don't understand why Pitino went with him instead of Fitzgerald in the second half. If there was something that should make you nervous about the Gophers ceiling this year it is that Hurt and Harris (though small minutes for him) didn't look like they could play against the level of athletes Miami had on the court. Hopefully Fitzgerald plays in a manner that earns him more minutes as the season moves forward.

It's brutal to waste the games that Murphy and Coffey gave us tonight. Imagine what both those guys could do if we actually could create space on offense? Miami had so much space to operate because they had multiple 3 point shooters on the court at all times. The Gophers normally had Nate Mason as their best 3 point shooter on the court and that's going to result in a lot clogged passing lanes and guys doubling the post.

I didn't think the crowd was very good tonight. There was definitely some noise coming from the student section, but we need a better home court environment than that IMHO. The 2nd foul on Mason and the no call on Murphy down low should have brought the house down with boo's.

I don't think a loss here is the end of the world, especially if the team gets the message that they will win or lose against elite competition with their defense. They didn't create enough turnovers and they didn't get enough stops.

Credit Miami for playing really well. The Gophers got them in the bonus early, but it didn't matter because Miami kept executing over and over on offense and coming up with the key turnover defensively when they needed it.
 

Frankly, this was a bad matchup for us without McBrayer. The guard oriented Hurricanes vs. The Gopher Biggs. We have Mason, and thats about as far as defense goes. When we have a rotation of IW, Harris, and Hurt chasing around very talented guards it can make for a long night. Hurt didn't play bad on the defensive side, but you could see the lack of quickness.

The thing that is disappointing though, is coming on here and seeing people write off players before we have even started B1G play. Did IW have a bad game? Yes, but the Gophers need someone to step up and help create. IW had about four shots tonight that should have went in, and if they do the game looks a lot different.

Also Lol at the comment that a poster had about reassessing expectations. From reading the comments it looks as if the Gophers got beat by about 20 points. They played a talented team, but couldn't find a way tonight. With our starting 5 healthy we are still a very scary team.
 



Midway through the second half Miami had 8 of 10 points on second chance effort, take away those offensive rebounds and the Gophers win.

I also didn't think the guards were fighting thru the picks giving Miami great match ups and easy points.
 

The negativity after reading through the thread is disgusting... Get over it. Gophers will be just fine. I am just as angry as anyone else. Its one GD game.
 


A few of my thoughts:
• Washington was rough. I know it was a rough situation with Dupree out, but there's no reason he should have taken so many shots. He took the most shots out of anyone in the game. We knew he was going to get more playing time but that doesn't mean he needs to keep throwing up shots.
• We played good defense in the first and made Miami miss quite a few shots but couldn't capitalize on offense. We should have been up at least 5 going into halftime based on their shooting. Then, when they started shooting well, we just couldn't keep up.
• Jordan Murphy with another missed 3. I know he's 2-3 in the past 2 games and it was only 1 shot, but I'd love to see him stop shooting those. He's 19% for 3 over his college career so far and we'd be much better off if he didn't shoot those unless the shot clock was running out.
• Rebounding and blocking were both very good. That kept us in the game. 14 offensive rebounds was nice to see.
• Too many turnovers. It seemed like we rushed the offense quite a bit and made dumb mistakes.
• Free throw shooting was pretty solid overall. Murphy had 2 big misses in the last 4 minutes but we shot fairly well as a team. Nice to see after some of our poor performances in other games.
• The offense didn't seem to flow as much as it has in other games. A lot more of individuals trying to make plays.
• Refs were not very consistent and missed a lot of foul calls. Lynch got away with quite a few in the paint. You have to wonder how the game would have been different if they called fouls consistently but I don't think it would have changed the outcome.
• Murphy and Coffey were great. Next year they'll be a very strong pair. Great play all around from them.
• The Barn got pretty loud at some points but was dull for most of the night. Also sad to see so many people leave early.
• Not too concerned about this loss overall. If Dupree was healthy, a few calls went the other way, and we ran our offense more, that's a comfortable win for us. Glad to see some solid competition now rather than hitting it for the first time vs. Michigan State. I'd rather lose a game like this now and get the experience than in the Big 10 tournament.
 


One other point I should have made in my post because it still annoys me and it can't be stated enough. Pitino needed to move on from Gaston after last season or not take Stockman as a sit one play one. Because he didn't, we started the offseason with an absolute best case scenario of 11 B1G basketball players. When Curry went out late in the Summer, we were then down to an absolute best case scenario of 10 B1G basketball players. Now with Dupree missing this game we started with 9 in a best case scenario. The zero bench points highlights the fact that some of these might not be quality options. With a really good nucleus coming back, adding one more guy who could play this year should have been the move. I hope that we aren't one guy short in a critical game in March like we were tonight.

And regardless of that specific criticism, I think Pitino is a very good coach and I am very happy to have him leading Gopher hoops.
 

EG#9 said:
One other point I should have made in my post because it still annoys me and it can't be stated enough. Pitino needed to move on from Gaston after last season or not take Stockman as a sit one play one. Because he didn't, we started the offseason with an absolute best case scenario of 11 B1G basketball players. When Curry went out late in the Summer, we were then down to an absolute best case scenario of 10 B1G basketball players. Now with Dupree missing this game we started with 9 in a best case scenario. The zero bench points highlights the fact that some of these might not be quality options. With a really good nucleus coming back, adding one more guy who could play this year should have been the move. I hope that we aren't one guy short in a critical game in March like we were tonight.

And regardless of that specific criticism, I think Pitino is a very good coach and I am very happy to have him leading Gopher hoops.
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Like you, I completely agree with your last statement but Pitino obviously isn't without flaw. Taking on Stockman is still slightly shady to me after his scholly went to a kid UofL/Adidas was planning on paying. He in a likelihood will be our 3rd option at center...just a very weird situation. It would have been nice to use Gilbert's scholarship on a grad transfer guard so there wasn't as much pressure on Isaiah and Harris to contribute right away. I'm not at all crazy about his game but someone like a Mark Alstork at Illinois would have been a nice bench piece.
 

CharlesBarkley said:
The negativity after reading through the thread is disgusting... Get over it. Gophers will be just fine. I am just as angry as anyone else. Its one GD game.
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You mean the expectation that we would go undefeated this year was unrealistic? Get out of here. :cool02:
 

EG#9 said:
One other point I should have made in my post because it still annoys me and it can't be stated enough. Pitino needed to move on from Gaston after last season or not take Stockman as a sit one play one.
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I hope after this season Pitino commits to the mind frame that you simply cannot afford multiple wasted roster spaces. Players transfer, get injured, kicked off the team, etc. and your lack of depth may become critical. You would think by now, he has had enough examples of those mishaps (Curry, Springs, Fitzgerald, McNeil, Martin, Morris, and Lofton) as well as players who simply can't play well enough to see the floor (Diedhou and possibly Konate at this point) and others who are slow to develop. When in doubt, always go for a grad transfer. Even if they're not great, they're mature and a large percentage of them have shown that they can play to some degree in D1. There are now enough of them each year that the chances of landing one are not too bad.

As far as Stockman, I'm sure I'll like him much better next year. He's a unique case in that Richard probably wouldn't have made that commitment without dad being involved.
 

Until the last 90 seconds of the game, I still had little doubt that the Gophers had a chance to win this game. Years past....not so much.

this Team is GOOD! Bench needs to learn! IW needs to know his place, McBrayer needs to be healthy. simple as that
 

cjbfbp said:
I hope after this season Pitino commits to the mind frame that you simply cannot afford multiple wasted roster spaces. Players transfer, get injured, kicked off the team, etc. and your lack of depth may become critical. You would think by now, he has had enough examples of those mishaps (Curry, Springs, Fitzgerald, McNeil, Martin, Morris, and Lofton) as well as players who simply can't play well enough to see the floor (Diedhou and possibly Konate at this point) and others who are slow to develop. When in doubt, always go for a grad transfer. Even if they're not great, they're mature and a large percentage of them have shown that they can play to some degree in D1. There are now enough of them each year that the chances of landing one are not too bad.

As far as Stockman, I'm sure I'll like him much better next year. He's a unique case in that Richard probably wouldn't have made that commitment without dad being involved.
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I agree regarding the roster spots, and I expect that Richard does, too. It is likely the case that he just couldn’t close the deal on the guys he wanted and had little choice but to take a flyer on some of those guys. You have to remember that we were not exactly considered a premium destination when he recruited Gaston and Bakary. They sure look the part (athletic, size). Unfortunately, turns out they just haven’t been able to learn how to play. Now that we have a much more shiny product to sell, I don’t think we will have a lot of dead weight on the bench going forward.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

It's too bad that Pitino couldn't find a low-level program willing to take Diedhou like we took Stockman. I know player development is always unknown, and behavior issues are unexpected, but we seem to have struck out on a good number of players.
 

cjbfbp said:
I hope after this season Pitino commits to the mind frame that you simply cannot afford multiple wasted roster spaces. Players transfer, get injured, kicked off the team, etc. and your lack of depth may become critical. You would think by now, he has had enough examples of those mishaps (Curry, Springs, Fitzgerald, McNeil, Martin, Morris, and Lofton) as well as players who simply can't play well enough to see the floor (Diedhou and possibly Konate at this point) and others who are slow to develop. When in doubt, always go for a grad transfer. Even if they're not great, they're mature and a large percentage of them have shown that they can play to some degree in D1. There are now enough of them each year that the chances of landing one are not too bad.

As far as Stockman, I'm sure I'll like him much better next year. He's a unique case in that Richard probably wouldn't have made that commitment without dad being involved.
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I'm quite certain Richard agrees that you cannot have multiple (even one) "wasted" roster spaces.

It's his recruiting blunders in his first 2 years we are still paying for as he juggles class sizes and depth issues. If Pitino brings in a grad transfer as you suggested this year he's not got much veteran depth at the 4 and 5 and relying completely on Daniel Oturu to play 20 + minutes at the 5 next year. Does circumstance say he should have found a contributor to provide front court depth this year given how good we seem to be? Sure, but at that juncture how does he sell to someone you're going to play 10 minutes on a top 3 b1g team? Curry, Murphy, Lynch were slated to play the majority of the minutes across those two positions, thats a tough sell.

That being said, Mats, if he can provide 15 minutes next year, makes us quite the squad AGAIN next year, and actually insulates us from exactly what you are taking about (someone transfering/injured) He rolled the dice this year and was hoping he could get by with Curry, Murphy and Lynch with support from Bakary, just as he did the year before.

At the 4 and 5 positions, we've got Curry, Mats, Muprh, Oturu and Fitz to cover 80 minutes at the 4 and 5. Thats a ton of proven talent and some upside if Matz and Oturu are ready to play.
 

Winasota Gopher said:
I'm quite certain Richard agrees that you cannot have multiple (even one) "wasted" roster spaces.

It's his recruiting blunders in his first 2 years we are still paying for as he juggles class sizes and depth issues. If Pitino brings in a grad transfer as you suggested this year he's not got much veteran depth at the 4 and 5 and relying completely on Daniel Oturu to play 20 + minutes at the 5 next year. Does circumstance say he should have found a contributor to provide front court depth this year given how good we seem to be? Sure, but at that juncture how does he sell to someone you're going to play 10 minutes on a top 3 b1g team? Curry, Murphy, Lynch were slated to play the majority of the minutes across those two positions, thats a tough sell.

That being said, Mats, if he can provide 15 minutes next year, makes us quite the squad AGAIN next year, and actually insulates us from exactly what you are taking about (someone transfering/injured) He rolled the dice this year and was hoping he could get by with Curry, Murphy and Lynch with support from Bakary, just as he did the year before.

At the 4 and 5 positions, we've got Curry, Mats, Muprh, Oturu and Fitz to cover 80 minutes at the 4 and 5. Thats a ton of proven talent and some upside if Matz and Oturu are ready to play.
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And Jarvis Thomas.....
 

bga1 said:
And Jarvis Thomas.....
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No doubt.

I don't anticipate Jarvis needing to contribute much with that much experience in front of him. He's in a great position to redshirt a year and bang with Murph in practice.
IF he plays, hopefully its because he is really good and not because of injury or poor performance.
 

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