I always felt like our defense wasn't good enough.

bobinator said:

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The problems we had against Michigan weren't the same problems we had in the other games though. I'm not sure if that's better or not, but it's not like Michigan lit us up from the field. We just couldn't keep them off the boards and off the free throw line.

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My biggest fear going into that game was the pair of 7 footers they had negating our rebounding advantage and it turned out to be a welll-founded because they out rebounded us by like 8 or 9 boards for the game

One of my keys coming into the game was we had to maintain our rebounding advantage and we didn't.

That's why we lost

It was equal parts the rebounding and the fouling. If you're going to be in a game where both teams are shooting in the 40s from the floor and the 20s from beyond the arc you can't put a team at the line 36 times.

Also all of the free throws let them rest. They were starting to look gassed early in the second half and I thought we had them dead to rights and then the foul a palooza started. They shot 27 free throws just in the second half.

I agree. And like I said it' was the defense.
Part of being good defensively is not fouling too much

Yeah the defense wasn't good, I'm not saying you're wrong, I was just pointing out that it was extra annoying because it was bad in a different way than we've seen before.

Like if a team has crisp ball movement, they're working the angles and manipulating our positioning and they're finding open shots for 40 minutes then that's how this thing normally falls apart. We play the defense the way we play it and teams that can do that are going to give us trouble.

It was extra disappointing to see it fall apart this way because we lost because of things we're normally good at. Just makes it sting a little bit more I think.

In my opinion, our defense fell off a cliff the last quarter of the season. We were so dang good for most of the season, so much better than last year.

I don't know if we got tired or what, but we did not play with the same energy defensively that we did earlier. It's why we were so good earlier in the season.

I thought we had a real chance to make a run this year.

Oh well, like my son, who's also an Aggie, says, I feel like I'm a tougher person because of Aggie sports...like I can handle whatever is thrown at me.

bobinator said:

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It was equal parts the rebounding and the fouling. If you're going to be in a game where both teams are shooting in the 40s from the floor and the 20s from beyond the arc you can't put a team at the line 36 times.

Also all of the free throws let them rest. They were starting to look gassed early in the second half and I thought we had them dead to rights and then the foul a palooza started. They shot 27 free throws just in the second half.

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Yep

They essentially beat us at our own game: rebounding and foul shots