Look, if you aren't going to contribute on the offensive side, at least do the little things. 1-5 from the FREE throw line is completely unacceptable

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Cigarboy sucks!

Pipkins has shown that he deserves Uguak’s minutes. Not sure why he only played 15 today.

It’s not uguak’s sole fault that we lost. We didn’t play terrible as a team and just hit a hot team on the road... And I have the utmost respect for Porter - there’s no coach in the country that I would trade for... but for the life of me, I just want him to explain what I’m missing when I watch every game that he sees that I don’t, which tells him playing Uguak for the amount of minutes he gets gives us a better chance at winning a game than if he tried to play someone else.

If you want to pitch “defense” to me - you can do it with Williamson all day. In my opinion, Williamson has struggled in games this year and underperformed offensively ... but I totally get why you stick with him. He actually does make a noticeable difference defensively, and even when he struggles, I know that he has the potential to score 10, 15 or even 20 a game. And he gets steals and rebounds. Plus, he had the big defensive play in the Miami game in Dallas, which makes me not care if he plays every game and never scores another basket. At least i can still have some faith that he’ll do something great.

But when has Uguak ever played a lights-out game in 1 1/2 years that impressed you? Point out a game to me in that time where you can say, thank God we had Uguak to count on. I can point to those type of games for Krut, Williamson, Hall, and now even Clemons and Kennedy (oh! And now even pipkins at ball state!) But not one complete game can I point to where Uguak has impressed me.

I would bet money that whenever our last game of the season is, if we keep betting on him to step up the rest of the season, his final game stats will be less than or equal to 4 points, less than or equal to 3 rebounds, and more than or equal to 2 turnovers.

This team is too good to not try someone else. Not trying Welch or Pipkins is dumb. I don’t want to lose those guys next year. If I was either of those guys, I would be extremely frustrated right now.

They fought hard. Was afraid they would fold once it got to 10 and end up getting blown out. Lots of fight in this team. Now we need to learn how to win these types of games to get over the hump. Everyone has talked about our poor free throw shooting and how it will cost us games. Tonight was the first game where we lost because of lack of makes and lack of opportunities. We settled for too many long jump shots in the 2nd half, which is why we only shot 2 free throws.

Pipkins needs to be playing in the 25 minute range each game. He can at least create his own shot off the dribble. Would love to see him drive more and pull up for a 12 footer. Also starting to worry about Frank’s lack of minutes. Didn’t play in the 2nd half again tonight. Are lack of minutes going to have him enter his name in the transfer portal at the end of the season?

Agreed with everyone on Uguak. I am really struggling with figuring out why he is getting the minutes he is getting when we have guys like Pipkins and Welch that have shown SO much more offensive potential and poise in less minutes (and neither is really a huge defensive liability). He is a black hole on offense. And we have a very large sample size to show it. Hate being down on one of our guys, but looking at box scores and watching the games, it is unmistakable.

The next two games are "must wins" if we want to battle for the Valley crown. Two likely PIG teams (Evansville and SIU) at home. Gotta have them with two vs ISUb, UNI and Bradley still on the docket. 4-1 start would be great.

I know you can't make every free throw but this was bad. Only needed to make 70% of them today to win or send to OT. Also, this was a game we missed Cooper bad. It would've been huge to have his shooting ability tonight.

I thought it could've been a lot worse though in terms of the score. I still feel good overall about how this season will go.

REBOUNDS ?????

brot, I'm not that worried about the rebounds. I know it looks bad in the box score, but we forced them into 19 turnovers while only having 6. That's 13 more times than us where they had the ball and didn't get a shot or provide a chance to rebound. I know we weren't great rebounding especially since they had 13 offensive rebounds, but it probably isn't as bad as the raw numbers look.

Interestingly, both of the next two games are against former assistants of Porter. Hopefully, he has the upper hand coaching against them as opposed to them knowing the system so well that they know how to scheme around it.

yep, I agree turnovers helped the horrible rebounding. But we stood around a lot when the ball went up last night. The most valuable player on the floor is a guard who can rebound. Coaches keep those guys on the floor. Uguak having 2 boards in 21 minutes was the key stat in my opinion, yet Drake only had 7 second chance points. What it did allow, was Drake to control tempo at key times. This team is so much fun to watch though. Loyola played well enough and hard enough to win against a good Drake team with only 6 threes at 28%. This should have been a blowout from a stats point of view. Krut throws such a great outlet and the guys are starting to run after he rebounds and get some cheap baskets but we need some more balance to get the board first. I've watched all the teams in the area and our Ramblers are by far the most entertaining.