by purple&orange » January 29th, 2012, 10:41 pm
ISU was better tonight. Exploited the UE D in the 1st half and got a number of open looks from beyond the arc and knocked them down. Throw in the turnovers from Evansville and you have your halftime lead. Aces got back in it in the 2nd half. Forever it seemed they couldn't get it under 6, the finally after they did, it seemed they couldn't take the lead and break from the 1 point ISU lead. Got it to OT and then a 2nd but just couldn't ever seem to get ahead and stay there. Honestly, never felt like UE was ever going to get ahead. Latham was strong tonight for ISU, got into the lane a ton.
Officiating didn't beat Evansville. Evansville did a lot to beat themselves early and ISU did their part too, moving the ball and hitting a bunch of open 3's early in the game and just never allowed UE to take a lead late in the 2nd half and answered anytime UE got a lead in OT. Haven't watched the replay yet but it looked like a ton of the and 1's both ways were pretty cheap, had a friend of mine texted me that while during the 1st OT. Would love to get the opinion of those fans outside of Indiana on that. You always seem to catch a walk on the opposition, not on your guys and so on and so forth. I saw the Sawvell-Oden play and Sawvell drilled him with a legal screen and from my seat, not seeing but 1 in house replay it looked like Oden went to him and Sawvell embellished the contact to a good degree. Didn't see any sort of foot action live or on the one replay but it looked really innocent and was surprised they went to the monitor so I was making sure Oden didn't go up high, that was my only thought for them going to the monitor but I already ranted about the extended use of the monitor earlier this week so I won't revisit.
ISU was better tonight. They did a really good job on Colt away from the ball, being physical at times but that's how you have to defend a guy who comes off as many screens as he does. Last year UE swept ISU but they turned around and won in STL. Doesn't look like potential seedings will allow for another rematch but they seem to be fairly equal, all the credit to ISU for winning both games in a close manner.