re: Why Men's Basketball is Much Improved this Year

Baker would have been valuable to this team. With Reed, Fountain,
Collins, Chest and hopefully Boyde to play down low, Baker could have played the 3 on offense. He was a good shooter from the outside, but not good at all from down low, which was we had to play him last year because a lack of size. With the additional size this year, plus Sears ability to penetrate and kick out, he could have spotted up and been an effective 3 point shooter.

Last night LSU showed very little effort both on the defensive end and on the glass. CSU's guards were essentially able to get anywhere they wanted just off of simple ball screens. CSU had some strength inside that they used to push LSU around, but they also just attacked the glass harder. If not for Miller, who seems to have developed this "unique" skill of being able to hit open mid-range jump shots, LSU would have been down by double-digits in the first half.

No question it was a let down performance. Definitely not LSU Yeti cup level. That wasn't necessarily surprising given the drop down in caliber of opponent from the last game as well as the stadium atmosphere...which was dead. But that's not an excuse. The basketball program is going to have to earn fan support and shouldn't be relying on the crowd to create energy. Win and that will come.

Worst case scenario the K-State was an aberration and K-State is a bit overrated (they struggled for a while last night vs. a really bad Miss. Valley St. team). Best case scenario, it was just one of those weird early letdown games. Wisconsin led wire to wire vs. #9 Arizona on Friday. On Monday they are in a 1 point game with less than a minute to go vs. UT Rio Grande. Not a lot of teams are consistent in the early part of the season.

Pitt will be the best opponent LSU has played to date, and maybe the best team they play in the non-conf. schedule. I expect the energy level for LSU to increase. This will also be Pitt's first game away from home, though the "stadium" environment should be a non-factor because the game will be played in literally a hotel ballroom.

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UT Rio Grande

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They'll always be Pan Am to me.

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The game is neutral site in West Virginia.

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That made me think it would be much more like a home game for Pitt, but it's farther than I thought it would be from there. 4-5 hours.

Young team with a lot of new players feeling each other out. They did not match the energy and effort of Charleston, other than V Miller, for 54 minutes but turned it on in the last 6 minutes. Mcmahon is still testing this team so I don't think he felt the need to change the defense to stop their big , Kelly from backing down our bigs to score in the paint which pretty much kept them in the game as well as their PG who was pretty solid and a good scorer and that was probably their best outing of the year. A team shooting 58% from the FT shot 90% in the second half and a player that hadn't shot a 3 in 5 games hit 2 in the second half. It happens. We also got Bad Reed who gave us spurts of good but then disappeared at times. Wish he could get the same motor as the other bigs. Pitt will be a good test for them Friday.

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Theoretically it would be an easier travel for Pitt fans than any of the other schools. Realistically, I don't even know if that would matter. Unless they are adding more seats, you're probably looking at a crowd of about 1,000 people...at most!

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Can anyone explain to me how this tournament makes sense from a business perspective? I get why the schools would want to play against other good schools but how does the tournament make money with such a low capacity. Do the schools pay to play? Is the TV contract worth it?

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Can anyone explain to me how this tournament makes sense from a business perspective? I get why the schools would want to play against other good schools but how does the tournament make money with such a low capacity. Do the schools pay to play? Is the TV contract worth it?

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It probably doesn't cost the resort a lot to put on the tournament. Like I said, it's held in an onsite ballroom with portable bleachers. The TV networks are the ones that really drive the tournaments because they want programming. The event will also bring in fans to stay at the resort (even if it is not a ton of people) who otherwise wouldn't be going at that time of year. The Greenbrier probably wasn't going to be booking any big conventions/meeting for this week anyway, so this basically allows them to do so, with CBS doing a nice chunk of the legwork, all while the Greenbrier gets a two day long informercial

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UTRGV (who the frick even is this?) beat them by 10.

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They just took Wisconsin to the brink in Madison in a very high scoring affair.

This game was sandwhiched between K-state and Pitt.

The game last night was always going to be sloppy

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Mcmahon is still testing this team so I don't think he felt the need to change the defense to stop their big , Kelly from backing down our bigs to score in the paint which pretty much kept them in the game as well as their PG who was pretty solid and a good scorer and that was probably their best outing of the year.

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Yep I was definitely disappointed we got pushed around inside. I was hoping that would be much better instead of only marginally better.

I realize they were much more motivated to play us that we were them, but we lost out on almost all the 50/50 balls, that was disappointing.

Pittsburg, I think we'll be the best test of where we are this year to this point.