Sloppy. Plain and simple. Too many turnovers. Also, Hutson is totally outclassed down low.

Don’t want to nitpick, but we had that huge drought and no timeouts or lineup changes. Tough look.

A lot of really bad decision making on drives. Did we not recognize they had a giant in there who was dominating us?

And where was Clemons when we couldn't shoot?

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Drew and the entire bigs rotation get an F for that game. 4-9 from the line, will FT shooting ever not be a serious weakness?

At large bid chances mostly gone now barring some insane Valley season that is extremely unlikely.

Probably need to start playing more Uguak at the 5.

Looks like just throwing up threes is not a always a winning strategy, especially when the other team defends.

Feels like we just threw this one away against a team that we should beat by making silly mistakes.

We were 0/7 from three in the 2nd half until Kennedy hit one. Also...how we do struggle with free throws?! This is a veteran team!

Not sure what to say about the coaching. Feels like Valentine is just letting the guys dictate the plays, which is fine with a veteran team, but he needs to step in and make adjustments when things aren't working.

From a positive standpoint, it was good to see Kennedy get a bit loose. He had some nice drives.

Defense is still good, the effort is there. We just have to figure out how to dictate pace and play to win against high level teams.

Offensive execution....bad. Play by our bigs....bad. Failing to use our timeouts...bad. Free throw shooting...bad.

This team has a lot of work to do. Frustrating.

Defense was solid again.

8 more turnovers, they had 8 more shots. We actually shot a better percentage because of the hot outside shooting in the first half. Aher needs more than 2 shots and 20 minutes if he is going to be one of our leaders.

We just lost to a team that has the type of upside that could get them to the Elite 8 or Final 4. What we saw was that teams like Auburn can attract players that are just 'that' much bigger and more athletic than we attract. It's always been that way. The Ramblers can beat Auburn, but in order to do so, we can't turn the ball over as much as we did. Yeah, I get it, Auburn played some ferocious defense. At one point early in the 2nd half, Auburn had scored almost 1/3 of their points off our turnovers. Lucas Williamson's turnovers led directly to at least 9 of Auburn's points. If he cleans that up, we probably win. Williamson was outstanding against MSU and just didn't quite have the same game against AU. Kessler dominated us. OTOH, Hutty wasn't bad against him in the 1st half. Kessler will be an NBA draft pick or get a look as a free agent. Hutty hasn't played a lot of minutes and was likely gassed in the 2nd half. In fact, a lot of our guys were probably gassed. Tired legs show up in the 3 pt stats. Braden Norris wasn't burying his 3's in 2nd half and Lucas pulled up short on a couple-- tired legs? Also, if the Ramblers were killer FT shooters, this game would've gone down to the wire. How many times did we make two consecutive FTs this game? Maybe Tate Hall was the only one who did hit 2 FTs. That's a lot of points left on the table when the game is close. Since 2019, we've been poor at the line and that's worrying because it's tough to fix.

Michigan State beat UConn and will be in the Championship game. If they win that, look for them to rocket up the rankings. They'll have only lost to Kansas-- that's good for us. We proved we can hang with Auburn and MSU and probably most teams in the tournament. These weren't blowouts. Auburn and MSU should make the Sweet 16. The sky isn't falling. Beating teams like Vanderbilt and DePaul will be important if we want to stay in the conversation for an at-large berth and keep our Ken Pom ranking high enough. Better yet, let's just win the Valley Tournament.

That's a lot of words for "make your free throws", "use your timeouts", "value offensive possessions".