UAB

I thought things were going to go well tonight when the "Fly Guy" on the UAB didn't come up during MU's starting lineups. The first half, MU did all of the things they needed to, to stay in the game. Marcus Jackson did an excellent job bringing the ball up the floor under the circumstances. Joe Chapman was great with 5 3's and 17 points. But I did see some glaring weaknesses on the defensive end again. I thought if UAB would just wait around and be patient they would get wide open lay-ups which they were getting time and time again. Still, we led at the break 39-38.

The second half was awful. Again, and this is happening way too much this season, the other team jumped on us and took a huge lead. I think at one point it was 55-43, UAB meaning that they had gone on a 17-4 run to start the second half. We used to be awesome in the first 10 minutes of the second half, that was where we would jump on teams or climb back in games (at Louisville, '03). Chapman's injury didn't look very good, but I'll wait to hear how it is. My roommate said that his knee had huge gash in it. The good thing was that he looked like he was putting some weight on it, as he went back to the locker room. By the way, there was a no call on the play where Joe got injured, after he drove the lane, and banged into. Basically, UAB was way more aggresive on the defensive end on the second half, and we never adjusted and neither did the officials.

If you see on a previous posts, I put 6 games on our C-USA schedule and we are now 0-4 in those games. Unless we beat Cincy, there's no way we are getting to the tournament with our resume. I just don't see it at this point. We haven't lost to anybody bad, but we haven't beat anybody good, sans Wisconsin. So, rest Diener for as long as he needs it. Save him for Cincy and the C-USA tournament, where I think this team could do some damage.

I'll try and post some Cubs stuff tommorrow, big day.