The Trojans have been living an unrealistic life. Due to some brilliant play when we needed it, we succeeded in walking along the edge of the cliff (or walking the tightrope) for ten consecutive wins. That habit finally caught up with us. Statistics are brutally frank. You cannot shoot a low percentage AND get beat on the boards AND have a lot of turnovers and expect to win very often. Most of the time we only did the first two and got by with it because we did some other things very well. We dodged the bullet successfully, but a team is only so light on its feet, and sooner or later it will stub its toe, and we did.
Our season stats mask our rebounding problems. We are only down 0.6 boards per game overall. However, taking out the two non-D1 games, we are down five rebounds per game. That is not uncommon with teams that shoot a lot of 3-point shots, like the Princeton Offense teams, but they usually shoot a high percentage from the field to make up for it. Yesterday we shot very poorly, and paid the price: we finally got shoved over the edge.
Because Coach Beard insists on good fundamentals, we can walk the tightrope most of the time - but (as we know know) not every time. If (when) Mareik Isom and Josh Hagins find their three-point strokes, we will make more slack for ourselves.
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