theeagleman5 Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 A double defeat for ORU in Macomb today as the ORU ladies fell in OT to Western Illinois, 76-72....tough loss after coming from 6 points down at the start of the 4th qtr....the Golden Eagles join four other teams now with one loss in the Summit League....should be a fight to the finish over the next 2 months..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oruvoice Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 WIU is decent. Not the end of the world. Same formula applies for the women. Hold home court and split the road games, in conference. The two games at home, against SD & SDSU are huge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueGold Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 2 hours ago, oruvoice said: WIU is decent. Not the end of the world. Same formula applies for the women. Hold home court and split the road games, in conference. The two games at home, against SD & SDSU are huge. I agree that WIU is decent, but they didn't play anyone worth a darn in non-conference, and we did, and except for at Arizona State we've played tough on the road and obviously had the big road wins at OU and Arkie, and I expected us to come out of Macomb with a win, so it's still very disappointing to me that we lost. I'm not going to say "How can the same team that won at OU and Arkansas lose at Western Illinois?" but I've been thinking that since it happened. Doesn't make sense, but part of it is that 'it's just basketball.' Sometimes your shots don't fall and the ball bounces a certain way and maybe players aren't feeling physically well, and maybe we didn't play with a 'full deck.' Our shots didn't fall like they needed to, we only shot 35.6%, and you usually need to outshoot the home team when you play on the road in order to win, and we didn't (WIU shot 40%). Still kind of amazing that we even got it to overtime with some of our 'stars' not shooting well, and with having to play catch up for the entire second half. Still bothered that we allowed Western to score the last 8 points of the first half after we were leading 34-33, and then we didn't do enough in the third to cut their lead, and we went into the fourth down six, which might've been too much the way we were shooting the ball, but they fought and scrapped and managed to tie it and send it to OT. Still bothered that we've had to come from behind in the second halves and 4th quarters in both of our conference road games, I keep thinking and saying over and over that it's tough to win on the road and it's usually true, but I would've liked for us to have gone out in both of those games with more of a fire and more of a touch and executed much better, and taken the games by their throats like we've taken other road games this season. Will we do that in any of our road games for the rest of the season? And as those of us who follow this team pretty closely know, we haven't played with a 'full deck' at any time this season... Jordan Doyle and Mia Marti haven't played at all, Dorka Balla has played just a few minutes in just one game, Lakota Beatty has missed 2 games, and now Montse Brotons is out, she's missed the last 3 games, and I thought I saw her in a walking boot when I was watching the Fort Wayne game a couple of Saturdays ago, and who knows if she'll even be coming back to play again this season? Almost every team deals with injuries, but it seems like we've been snake bitten the last couple of seasons in particular, last season we lost Bria Pitts, our leading scorer at the time, and Dorka when conference started, and this season with Jordan and Mia, and Dorka still not fully healthy enough to really play, and now Montse, who was giving us really good minutes off the bench all season so far. She's shot the ball at a high percentage, and she has been really good in knowing where to be in the post to receive passes and to finish at the basket. To be honest, I don't know what to think about this team, even now, after 16 games. They tease me with strong performances and strong wins, and then they 'revert' and don't get it done. Too much inconsistency for me, I guess I expect them to win every game and when they don't, and I look at the stats or I review the game in my mind after watching it and it frustrates the heck out of me. I know that the girls aren't machines, and that basketball, like I said, is a funny game in the way the ball bounces and in how it's played and in how important matchups are in determining how games are either won or lost, but I don't believe that my expectations for this team are too high, especially when I've seen what they can do. We're still the only team that's beaten OU at home so far this season, and we controlled Arkansas at their place, and we've played competitive games on the road at Northwestern, Kansas and Little Rock, and we've been really good at home (undefeated so far). And that brings me to the 2 games we have at home this week. I'm not going to make predictions. I'm just hoping for the best, but I will still look at these 2 games, as well as the rest of the games we have this season, and wonder which ORU team will show up, and hope that they will make me happy. On a side note, I've mentioned before how I sometimes lurk on other message boards to find out about news and interesting things from the world of women's college basketball, and about how arrogant some of the followers of some of the power conference schools are on those boards. Some folks on a couple of the boards still have the attitude that just because they have ORU on their schedule that it should have been a guaranteed win for them, that just because they are Arkansas that it was a game that they absolutely should've won, or they reference their loss to ORU when they preview their next opponent by using such phrases as "Their Oral Roberts loss was against..." It makes me laugh and gives me great satisfaction to feel their pain. I also enjoy reading through their posts after they've lost, many of them are worse than me, which to me is a little shocking, in how dramatic they are. It's almost literally the end of the world to them. I'm not even that bad. They want to fire the head coach and the coaching staff and the managers and the PA guy, and some even think that they should shut down the program. The folks that follow the team in Fayetteville are especially prone to getting into these types of extremes, lol. Also saw someone link to a story about a brawl during the Utah State-UNLV women's game last Saturday night. Happened in the third quarter after a UNLV player was fouled driving to the basket when 2 other players started pushing and shoving and then arms started swinging and the benches pretty much cleared. Coaches were running into the melee, and one girl whose leg is in a cast hopped off the bench and hopped her way across the court to jump in, it's pretty crazy. Thankfully no one was hurt, but 4 players from each team were ejected, and UNLV played the rest of the game with only 6 players and ended up winning 55-53 in overtime. Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out: Eight players ejected at UNLV-Utah State after benches-clearing brawl Happy New Year! Go Eagles! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORUalum Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 a big factor this year has been the improvement in turnovers (whether that's a function of Doyle being out or just the others players having a yr more of experience).....unfortunately that problem reared up again against WIU --- 23 turnovers in the loss. how about Maria's near triple double......18 pts, 15 rebs, 7 assists??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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