As you know by now, I'm the anti-thesis to T-Mill at the site. His optimism clashes with my more reserved pessimism. The *17 point loss to IU basically confirms what I've said all year. We are a NIT team, because we play like one. NCAA tournament teams don't lose the ability to shoot for over 10 minutes a game. Play like that and you will lose 90 percent of the time.
17 point loss is such crap too. It was a 4 point game with 2:30 to go or close to it. Hopefully people don't just look at the box score and think the team got ran out of the gym, but I digress.
Basically, we are too role player heavy. You can't miss on recruiting in this day and age. Matt Painter was off target slightly the last few years and it's killing us. We don't have enough firepower to do any actual damage.
I think our biggest problem was expecting Robbie Hummel to carry us this season. Without him playing for so long, our expectations shot unreasonably high. RH is not the guy who is going to carry a team. It's not in his skill set. You put Rob alongside a true post player and he becomes a weapon. You make him take 15 to 20 shots a game and it's going to get ugly. Plus, he looks like he's playing on 3/4 a leg right now. It's sad to watch.
I'll probably get blasted for that paragraph, but prove to me that it's not true. I love Robbie as much as the next guy, but it was too much to expect him to carry us back to the Tourney.
The season isn't over yet, but the Dance seems like a pipe dream. I'm emotionally prepared for the NIT and the acknowledgment that reality tends to really suck.