Dre

D'Andre Williams has been amazingly durable this year to be as frail-looking as he is. Tough player.

"System" offenses

Offenses such as the Princeton, which rely overly on the system itself and thus the team as a unit, rather than on individuals, work well usually. However, sometimes at "crunch time," when some individual has to rise above the situation and take things in hand, they fail to deliver.

One silent pressure factor

Steve Shields (and others in similar situations) has one pressure on him that other basketball coaches do not have. Because Little Rock does not have football, basketball is the sole revenue sport. If anyone is going to make money, basketball has to do it.

Burn The Horse

I highly recommend Jeff Slatton's excellent website Burn The Horse. He does a great job of getting all sorts of inside information about the Trojans program.

http://www.burnthehorse.blogspot.com/

Unclear prospects

Until we know if Will Neighbour is going to be completely healthy before the end of the season, our prospects for the balance of the schedule are not clear. We are a different team without Will in the lineup.

Who will it be?

If this is to be anything more than a very sub-par rebuilding year for this program, someone is going to have to step up big time. Who will it be? Will it be anyone?

The end of big men

I heard a commentator on the radio the other day (I assume he was a coach) say that big men were largely irrelevant in today's game. He said that all you needed was one big guy in the middle to do a little rebound and play defense, and four guards. I really hate to say it, but he is probably right. Any big guys who can walk and chew gum at the same time are in the NBA early entry, and the 3-point shot and ESPN have made everything but the 3-pointer and dunks obsolete. Everything is showtime now. Good basketball is a thing of the past, and that is the way fair-weather (off-season football) "fans" and television want it.

Blown opportunities

Every possession that ends in a turnover before a shot is a blown opportunity. Blow too many of them and you blow yourself right out of an opportunity to win the game.

Another reason I like Taggart Lockhart

He stayed with his own small-school alma mater instead of jumping to a high profile school that would have given him more visibility.

All the same

A spectacular, rim-rattling dunk counts the same as a quiet layup.

Little Rock - home of the ugly wins

I do not see how this team wins a lot of the time. Their numbers do not indicate they ought to be winning, but they are finding a way to get it done. Typical of Shields teams.

Northwestern gets an upset

Just when I had written off Northwestern as "soft" and being unable to get the big wins, they upset the #6 ranked Michigan State team - always physical and tough. Who knows? I still think they have to be .500 in the Big Ten to stand a chance of an at-large berth.

Pet Peeve

One of the things that irritates me the most in basketball is post men that won't post up. They want to sit out on the 3-point line and shoot the long ball. Having a big man who can shoot the 3 is a plus, but if the big buys aren't going to bang down low, who is? Sort of the moral equivalent of clean-uniform shotgun formation quarterbacks.

I saw it, but . . .

If you showed me the box score from the FAU game, I would have said we got blown out. Our stats were HORRIBLE! How a team could have those numbers and still win is just amazing. Somehow, we did. So, we picked up an ugly win at home, and are one game closer to Will Neighbour returning. We'll take it.

Where's the coach?!

Fayetteville's Ricky Scott has attempted 29 three point shots and has made THREE of them. At some point, doesn't the coach say, "Don't shoot any more!"?

Losing Neighbour

It is tough to lose your best player just when hope springs up that you might have a decent team in conference. Oh well, these things happen. If we still had Gus Leeper, it would not be nearly as big a deal, but with your two best big men out at the same time, it will be tough to bounce back. We'll see what happens.

Relatively speaking

It is hard to understand why fans might be proud of a 22-point loss. But we went to Kentucky without our star post man, and already short another starting post man from late last season. We led them at the half, but they wore us down after that. Just too much talent. Our guys played hard and played well. Nothing to be ashamed of.