It’s just one note. No ones under the impression that a perfectly reffed game changes this outcome
It’ll be interesting to see how these teams match up next year when the game is in Santa Clara.
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You have to be a masochist to be a bronco fan.
And you can’t spell masochist without “M A H I”.
I kid though, I actually like mahi a lot - just wasn’t his night (or 9 different guys’ night for that matter).
Great fight from the squad to get back within one point, then threw it straight out the window. Hopefully learn some lessons, be ready for the next one in a tough environment.
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I hope this is just an emotional overreaction on my part…but this feels like we are on the verge of this turning into another season of Lucy pulling the ball away and Charlie Brown landing on his ass wondering why he thought it would be different this time.
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They’re lucky it’s an away game. This will stay Q2. It’s a big missed opportunity, but won’t be killer in the big picture. The loss isn’t the concerning part. It’s how it happened and what it forebodes about other games that may destroy their chances.
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This was the wrong team, in the wrong geography, to try to be full-court aggressive on defense.
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I hope this week without a game is a good reset period because that was ugly…
Most of the second half was like last year- too many 3’s, no defense and too much dribbling. Mahi especially needs to stop dribbling so much.
We will need to shake this game off - the rest of Dec is very winnable.
Oh no!!! Not Tommy Nunes. HE DOES SUCK!!!
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I really hope that when Normand is ready to go, we will see Sash’s minutes decline. He was awful tonight and it wasn’t the first time.
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Has Herb considered just cloning Ensminger? That might be an effective strategy worth considering.
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For FOUR YRS I have whined about WCC officiating. Some of the absolute worst. Always favor some teams in particular. St Marys comes to mind.
Sash was 0-8 from 3 (1-9 overall), 2 assists, 4 turnovers in 19 minutes. He was -29 when he was on the floor. MINUS TWENTY-NINE!!!
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Oh, and Bukky had more fouls (5) than points (4) in his FOURTEEN minutes on the floor. He had 2 fouls after 1 minute and 21 seconds in the first half.
Last year, the team could live by the three sometimes. This team cannot. Their winning strategy was good passing and points in the paint in the first several games. That has been phased out since SLU. They got away with it against Minnesota (because they were hot) and Utah Tech (bad team). This revealed how bad of a strategy it is.
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There are seven games between here and Gonzaga. SCU probably needs to win all seven. They will be favored in each contest. Can they execute?
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ASU definitely won’t be a cakewalk especially with Jake likely still out.
Moe Odom is at ASU, he carved us up in our loss to Pepp in the WCC tourney last season. And Knapper, Sash and our guards in general haven’t done a great job of staying in front of their man. Odom could turn it in to a layup parade and put pressure on Bukky and Graves to help and protect at the rim and we see how that’s often played out with one or both getting in foul trouble.
Yeah I’d throw the house on Moe having minimum 20 against us. Also has a solid freshman big he can throw lobs to which is a big part of his game and was last year as well with Coulibaly in the WCC tournament. If Bukky for example could neutralize that, generally it’s easier to keep him outside the arc/fighting for mid ranges. Still, he will without a doubt be the best player on the court.
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Just adding to my thought about not being a good outside shooting team…of the players with at least 25 attempts on the season:
- Hammond: 44% – really good
- Mahi: 33% – right on the line for efficiency purposes
- Gavalyugov: 29.5% – not good but enough room for improvement, albeit Sash probably takes the lowest percentage shots on the team, so you would think he would be fine if he just took in-rhythm shots from just behind the arc rather than the logo
- Knapper: 25.6% – Knapper is better than this and should be able to get that number up. But not good so far.
- Darlan: 24% – lowest sample size of this group, so the stats can easily improve by a few going in consecutively, but not what you’d expect from a G-Leaguer
- Cochran: 22% – some excuses for a true frosh finding his rhythm, but this is not his game at this point
Compare to last season–not quite apples to apples with a full season of stats but bear with me:
- Mahi: 43%
- Bryan: 42.9%
- Knapper: 42.9%
- O’Neil: 39.6% (huge improvement after a brutal start, so it’s possible)
- Stewart: 39.4%
- Bal: 37.5%
Point being: Last year’s team could go cold and lose terribly. Plus, they were not a great defensive team aside from a couple good individual defenders (Bryan, Tongue, maybe O’Neil). But they could get away with it by trotting out four 37%+ 3P shooters in almost every lineup. This team does not have that. So the regression from good defense and drives inside to hoisting threes is all the more frustrating because it’s not a skill that this squad has to date. Last year’s team would torch this one from behind the arc, but this year’s squad up through the SLU game would likely win 6.5 out of 10 games against the 2025 Broncos by being more efficient and playing actual defense.
To say something positive (or at least less negative): at this point last year, SCU already had what would become three Q3 losses. I’m making assumptions here, but I think the schedule so far will leave Santa Clara 1-1 in Q1, 2-1 in Q2, and no “bad” losses. So the path is still there, but they cannot play another game like last night the rest of the way.
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Better 3pt shooting will help but there is so much more this squad needs to clean up. The more objective folks on this board have pointed out that the winning wasn’t/isn’t sustainable unless several aspects of our play improved. That improvement hasn’t occurred.
The huge foul disparity remains problematic, on the season opponents are out scoring the Broncos by 6pts a game and that number is misleading skewed downwards by the two games against weak opponents Humboldt and Utah Tech where we didn’t send them to the FT line much. You’d be hard pressed to find 22-25 win type teams with that level of FT disparity.
Transition D has been bad, giving up too many runouts and 2 or 3 on 1 fast breaks.
Defensive rebounding has been mediocre….kind of strange given the offensive rebounding has been very good.
3pt shooting covered well by Patty above……yet we still continue to jack up 3’s at an alarming rate. Off memory I think our bigs (Graves and Bukky) hoisted more 3’s than traditional low post touches.
And D and D rebounding has trended down, subpar to bad in the last 4 games. A return of Jake would help that, but it’s problematic if your team D is that reliant on 1 guy for success.
And the on-ball D by guards has been bad. Lobos and especially Albury played downhill all night, got in to the lane with ease breaking down our team D, then we were on our heels struggling to help and recover. Could be a real problem if we can’t defend the point of attack: GU (Braden Smith), SMC (Mikey Lewis) and USF (Beasley) all have quick, dynamic pt guards. We’ll see repeats of last night if we can’t shore up this aspect of the our game.
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