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

Anyone else think of Bernie Mac when the cameras show a close up of Gaston?
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Up by 17 and the coach is yelling at the refs and stripping down????
 





It's almost unbelievable how quickly the outlook on this team turned.
 






Besides Hurt, who in this game actually looks for people to box out, does anyone else box out or just try and out jump their opponents every possession.

Actually, Gaston has done a very good job of looking for people to box out. He got called for a foul right away in the game for boxing out a play that was just standing there looking at the ball.

Overall, I would be super pissed off right now, but they just looked so bad tonight its just on to the next one. We need someone to step up outside of Mason and Murphy. Defense is a legit concern right now, but hopefully its something that can be fixed as the season goes on. This wasn't out hardest non conference game, but it was a good test, and the gophers just simply did not answer.
 

We have 6 straight games at home now - they are all winnable - hopefully we can get our stuff together and improve.
 

Forget the fnck whether or not this is a tourney team. The question is why they weren't competitive in or ready for this game.
 



Sad and pathetic bench. Literally PATHETIC. Biggest homer there is but there is nothing, and I mean nothing outside of 6 players (6th being IW).
 

What has changed? Still a good team. Still a good B1G team and still a probably tourney team.

I think it is safe to say expectations have changed.....A sweet sixteen team was a hopeful dream coming into the season....If there is not vast improvement , winning one tourney game will be challenging.
 

Forget the fnck whether or not this is a tourney team. The question is why they weren't competitive in or ready for this game.

Right. That's back to back games where they were out coached, out hustled and didn't have the energy to be competitive. Missing that many FT's and losing by 10+ points almost the whole game is a big concern.
 

Back to my baking, and then I'm going to start drinking. There may be some overlap.
 

This is a critical point in the season for this team. Who is going to step up and lead? Arkansas played extremely well but we made it easy for them at times as well. Just not much fight at all. This team can play harder on he defensive end. They did it last year.

Not sure I've heard a crowd whine so much in such a blowout before. They were going crazy even after obvious foul calls.
 

Rip me for being a troll but if u can't see the glaring weaknesses on this team you are a blind homer...i will say it again.. Borderline tourney team.

You're a cu*t troll because you ONLY post when the Gophers are losing. If we searched through your 400+ posts, 95% of them are negative. PLEASE BAN
 

Gophers will have 10 wins in the conference. Big ten is bad again and will stink in the tourney like last year. Might have one team pull off a Michigan streak as runs happen in the tournament.

Um, 3 teams in the Sweet 16 "stinks"?
 

Fix the defense and we’ll be alright.

Season hinges on Washington, Fitzgerald and either Hurt or Harris developing as players.




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You bake too!?

Tonight I'm making Chex Mix. (Best in the west.) And today Bert is a chimney sweep. (Mary Poppins is on ABC. If the Gopher game didn't make me cry, "Feed The Birds" surely will.)
 

I think it is safe to say expectations have changed.....A sweet sixteen team was a hopeful dream coming into the season....If there is not vast improvement , winning one tourney game will be challenging.

A hopeful dream is not an expectation.
 

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.
 


Watch out EG...I have been saying the same thing and people have attacked me.

You're a fooking troll. Quit trying to link yourself with longtime posters who are actual fans of the team.

Maybe see about finding a girlfriend...or a friend. Period. Find a new hobby. You are a worse existence on this earth than Trump
 

What...expectations.

Your post shouldn't make me feel better, but somehow it actually does. I guess it helps to talk about it and try to get your arms around it.

It's hard to imagine this being the same team that pounced on good teams earlier in the season. Like Yogi said, 90 percent of the game is half mental. I wonder if the Alabama debacle punctured their confidence. Even so, I'd still consider their high water mark to be when they led Miami by 6 late in the first half. At that point they lifted their foot off the 'Canes' throats, got sloppy, and have never regained their edge since.

All the talk about recapturing last year's defensive attitude is just talk. The more they talk, the less they work. Can the gain of one player and then the loss of that player (Springs) actually make as much of a difference as it has seemed?
 

What has changed? Still a good team. Still a good B1G team and still a probably tourney team.

What has changed is everyone, including a lot of national basketball press assumed or predicted we would be a top 3 team in the big ten and we were ranked as one of the top teams in the nation.
 





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