KU-Tennessee: My Thoughts After a Second Look

I watched the KU-Tennessee game again, this time with the benefit of the DVR rewind feature and with no bar noise in the background.

I'm not intentionally being negative here and I am not down on this team or do I think the season is over or that the world is coming to an end. It's just there were a lot of negatives in this game, especially when I got a chance to watch it more closely.

*Tennessee really hit some timely 3's and they and their crowd really
fed off of them....reminded me of the same type of energy MU always
gets in Columbia when they hit 3's against us. Likewise our team
really looked overly deflated/defeated after several of those 3's.

*I love Sherron, but he took some very poor shots and took several
defensive plays off. He's playing a ton of minutes and having to carry
the load offensively and it's taking a toll on him big time.

*I may have counted wrong, but I think X only took the ball to the
hole off the dribble twice the entire game. He is becoming eerily like
the Brandon Rush we saw for much of the 2008 season...camping out on
the perimeter and not attacking the glass. His offensive game has to
become less predictable.

*Cole looked tired on many occasions. He works his tail off defensively
and then "rests" many times on offense, which is one major reason why
he isn't scoring.

*How did we lose this game with Chism and Prince on the bench with 4
fouls each at the 13 minute mark?

*Tyshawn is a bad pass waiting to happen and he goes through the
motions a lot on D. After a few good games, he's regressed to the form
that got him benched for Elijah "MIA" Johnson.

*This team makes A LOT of lazy passes.

*We did a very poor job of getting back defensively with several
instances of players backpeddling downcourt instead of turning around
and sprinting.

*The timeout that Pearl Jr. got on that held ball was a ridiculously
horrible call.

*As much as Self hates it, we should mix in zone more often.

*There was a time where Lew Perkins had his head sitting in his hands.
He looked like he'd just heard that Mangino's son proposed to Perkins'
daughter.

*The Morris twins looked like scared, confused freshmen. So did Robinson.

*I'm wondering why we waited so long to full court press?

*How did we only get 3 steals?

*I would say in the last 2 games that this team has had to rely on
Collins about 70% of the time offensively and defensively/rebounding
we've had to rely on Cole about 75% of the time. It's draining both of
them to where other parts of their games are suffering. The rest of
the players have, for the most part, been casual
observers...especially late in the game.

*I hope Royce Wooldridge is as good as his half brother.

*Bruce Pearl should get coach of the year for beating the #1 team in
the country with 6 scholarship players, 4 walkons, and 2 players
fouled out.

*That McBee 3 made me throw up in my mouth. What a fluke shot to seal
the game. That kid didn't even know where he was. Damnit.

*I like that Tennessee threatens admission to future games for anyone
that rushes the court. That should be mandatory at all schools.

Keep Rockin and Chalkin,

Mic