Oklahoma Panhandle State (12/28/10)

[CMJ]

Ben Knox gets the start for the 3rd straight game. I am thinking this might be the lineup going forward.

[CMJ]

NT 16

OPSU 8

14:28 to go.

White with 8 early points. Passing well too.

[CMJ]

NT 19

OPSU 10

11:51 to go

Tristan struggling a bit in the early going...think he's missed three early shots.

[CMJ]

NT 31

OPSU 18

7:30 to go

We went on a nice run there. Tyler Hall with a couple of treys early.

[CMJ]

NT 33

OPSU 23

3:50 to go

[CMJ]

NT 41

OPSU 28

Halftime

[CMJ]

NT 51

OPSU 39

13:33 to go

Lind of lethargic half so far...by both teams really.

[CMJ]

NT 53

OPSU 45

11:27 to go

Getting a little scary now.

[GrandGreen]

NT better get with it, they look as bad in this game as they did good against LSU.

[CMJ]

NT 57

OPSU 51

Aggies timeout 8:34 left

We are just limping along right now.

Edited December 29, 2010 by CMJ

[CMJ]

NT 59

OPSU 51

7:52 to go

[gruu]

It's very nice to hear David Burrall's voice on the MGR again.

[CMJ]

NT 63

OPSU 56

6 minutes left - Aggie timeout

[CMJ]

NT 69

OPSU 59

3:41 to go

[CMJ]

NT 83

OPSU 62

Final

[GrandGreen]

Horrible game but glad it was against a bad team. NT went on a 22-6 run at end of game to make the score repectable. A division 2 team with 2 wins without it's best player and having not played in nearly 2 weeks or practiced in days, give NT all they could stand. I doubt NT could have beat anyone else playing this bad. Thompson at least got interested and essentially sealed the win.

I hope that NT got a bad bad game out of their system and will be ready for two a lot tougher conference games this week. Overall 11-2 oc is great so I guess I should look at the positives.

Edited December 29, 2010 by GrandGreen

[emmitt01]

The good-

1)We came back from the break and won by 20 in easily our worst game in several years.

2)Knox continues to be serviceable.

3)Reserves got some minutes and early ones to boot.

The bad-

1)This is ateam that should have been mercifully put to bed EARLY in the second half.

2)We showed that we cant afford to go to our bench a lot. Starters are gonna need to log mucho minutes against teams like UALR and WKU.

3)We sleep-walked through about 25 of the 40 minutes.

All in all I'm not worried, not encouraged.

[MeanMag]

All in all I'm not worried, not encouraged.

That's a good put Emmitt. This is the first home game that I've missed this year.

This goes without saying, but it's going to be really hard to replace Odufuwa's production. He shows up every game. No one on this team is more consistent.

[KoldBeer]

I didn't get to see the game tonight but it doesn't sound like I missed much. I'm not going to worry too much about this game but we should have won by 40 points. I hope this is the last regular season game ever against a Div II school.

[sparkmank]

hope to many people on this board dont overreact to tonights game... played horrible (which i saw coming after a big win and also its kinda hard to get up for a school no one has ever heard of)... not worried one bit and you shouldnt be either... believe me this game will be forgotten at around 7pm thursday... pleeeeaaassse dont overreact mean green nation, although ugly we won and did so by 21 were fine and have been playing good... GMG!!!

[ColoradoEagle]

Ben Knox gets the start for the 3rd straight game. I am thinking this might be the lineup going forward.

This kid is an orders of magnitude worse free throw shooter than Shaq.

[CMJ]

I'm not concerned. I figure LSU would only beat them by 1.

[CMJ]

This kid is an orders of magnitude worse free throw shooter than Shaq.

He has made huge strides as of late in everything.....BUT his FT shooting. Good lord, it's like a a turnover if he's fouled.

[GrayEagle]

I tend to disagree on the comment about the bad bench. The starters logged 128 minutes and scored 56 points (.43 per minute played). The bench played 72 minutes and scored 27 (.37 per minuted played). In fact, both made 50% of their field goal attempts. The difference was in free throws, mostly by Thompson who hit 13.

What I don't know is how well that they play defense. I think that you need playing time to hone that skill and except for Dom Johnson they're not getting it.

[KoldBeer]

I don't know if bad bench is right term, but it's short bench. According to Kenpom stats, North Texas is #312 in nation in percentage of minute played by bench players. They only make up 24% of the minutes compared with 32%. http://www.kenpom.com/team.php?team=North%20Texas

Tonight's bench scoring was really helped out by Hall hitting those two 3 pointers.

Looking over box score, the biggest issue I saw was defensive FG%. OPSU shot 45% overall and 53% from 3pt range (on 17 attempts). The goal should be 40% and 35%.

OPSU did turn the ball over 22 times but we were only credited with 8 steals.

North Texas FT percentage is unusually low for us but that was result of Knox going 1 for 6. Take him out and we were 24-33.

So ready for Thursday so we can get conference play started. Here's to back to back Sun Belt titles.