CU at SIU

[cpacmel]

Creighton 72
SIU 66
FINAL/ OT

Echenique 16 points 9 boards

Korver 14 points 8 boards

Young 13 points


Seck 18 points 14 boards

Bocot 9 points

[valleychamp]

Sounds like it was a mid-2000's showdown.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Another epic, OT battle. Something just happens when these two play -- intensity is always high; crowds are always great.

That was my first chance to see Mamadou (sp?) Seck play and I was very, very impressed. He's really long, lanky and uber athletic. He is one heckuva find for Lowery.

Teague v. Echenique will be a lot of fun to watch for the next two years. Too bad Teague was still banged up last night.

That was also the first time I really saw the newly renovated arena. I went to a game in Carbondale prior to the renovations and it was definitely needing some work. It looked good last night.

Korver probably played his best game as a Jay. Echenique probably did as well, passing out of the double team better than I've seen. The toss to Lawson for a monster jam was pretty sweet.

[bigdawg]

Reflections:

Fay needs to be the senior and make the FTs to win the game

SIU had no answer for 00 with a hobbled Teague.

McDermott is legit but Seck could be NOY if the team helped him

Where was Diamond?

A few years ago CU would have melted under SIU pressure but they have our number now.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Interesting comment by 00 Echenique in today's paper:

“Teague and I were talking, and we both said we wished they had let us bang even more,'' said Echenique, who played the latter stages of the game with four fouls.

I think it is pretty interesting that two of the conference's best big men both have the same complaint.

I think this is one of the things holding this conference back. The officiating is way to soft. It breeds soft players. In the big conferences, big men bang and bang and bang without the officials constantly blowing the whistle. If we want to compete with those conferences on the court and in recruiting battles for big men, they have to be able to play in a more physical fashion. We know that NCAA tourney officials are going to allow big men to bang away. Our officiating should be more representative of the officiating that our teams will see in the tourney.

By the way, I know I've said it before, but I think it will be a blast to watch Echenique and Teague battle for the next two years. In some ways, it is a shame that Odiakosa and Egleseder aren't around anymore as I think there could have been some really fun match-ups to watch. (Orupke may be the exact same, but I haven't seen him play yet, so I don't want to draw any conclusions).

[pafan]

Valley officiating is pretty reasonable compared to some of the crews we had at Roberts during the non-con. The guys who officiated Middle Tennessee at UE decided it was a good Saturday evening to call 55 fouls.

Do you like the double bonus? I can put up with lots of bad officiating, but one thing I can't stand is both teams being in the double bonus before the Under-8 TV timeout.

[sptah]

The inability of the refs to adjust to really tough big men seems to me to be a significant reason CU got beat by MSU last week. GE was essentially out of the game by quick calls against him made sometimes when he went apparently straight up but hit defenders who were within his body area. I also think Coach got GE to back off for fear of fouling out. He does not want GE to leave his feet on defense. Yet there were several times when, if he had just jumped, he'd of creamed the shot thus preventing easy lay ups.

It'd be more effective to have him knock shots down the throat even at the expense of called fouls in that the terror factor would prevent many from even trying shots in GE's Vicinity. It would also have the opposition more worried at all times about where GE was or was going. All this worry is worth much defensively. By rotationg Lawson and Runnels in, together with Ashford (who has some really good blocks too), the fouling problem should be manageable. What SHOULD NOT happen is for any team to score within the deeper 3 second zone and close therein to its sides while Greg or anyone else just stands there with arms up. Such action can be allowed if interspersed with the killer instinct most of the time...