What was Tubby Smith doing five hours after coaching his way out of the NCAA tournament? He was giving pre-game speeches to both St. Thomas and Steven's Point, apparently.
I didn't make an official sighting, but the stats can't be mere coincidence. How else do you explain the horrendous perimeter shooting (22.5 percent), rash of missed layups and general offensive malaise on display? The Tommies scored 26 points less than their average and shot almost 20 percent below their season average. The Pointers finished 24 points below their average and shot 14 percent worse than normal.
Plain and simple, it was Tubby Time in the final game ever played at The Shoe. It made for an ugly display of basketball between two of the best teams in the nation, though the Tommies survived and that's all that matters in March. They travel to Wheaton next weekend to play Puget Sound, who finished the #7 in the final D3Hoops.com poll.
Joking aside, was the slow start by design? Tommie assistant coach Johnny Tauer had asked Gustavus coach Mark Hanson for advice in beating the Pointers earlier in the week. The response was classic Hans.
"Let them get ahead by 10 early so they don't take you seriously. Being up at halftime certainly didn't work for us."
The Tommies tried to follow that advice. Here's a glance at their possessions over the first eight minutes of the game: turnover, miss, miss, miss, MAKE, turnover, turnover, miss, turnover, miss, turnover, miss. The Pointers were equally as inept, leaving the score at a very Gophers-like 6-5 with 11:52 remaining. It never really got much better. Somewhere Tubby had to be smiling.
Even on crutches, I'm pretty sure I could have played a more aesthetically pleasing game of 1v1 with former Macalester scrapper Adam Denny. Assuming no fouls would get called, anyway. We were hackers.
For the first time in awhile, I've got no major beef with the way things were officiated. The fouls and free throws were almost exactly even and there were no egregious mistakes. But that doesn't really tell the whole story, judging by the reactions from the UWSP coach and the various MIAC coaches sitting in my section.
Every game is filled with 50/50 calls, some of which are called and some that aren't. As a largely unbiased observer, I'd say the Tommies owned the 50/50 calls by a count of at least 80/20. I'm not sure that it changed the outcome, but it certainly was a factor — the Pointer big men battled foul trouble all night. You could literally see the Steven's Point coach begin to boil as every close call went against him, particularly down the stretch.
So what's the bottom line? The Tommies claimed an ugly, impressive win over one of the best programs in Division III. In many ways, it finally legitimized the product St. Thomas has been putting on the court all year.
As I reflected on the performance while crutching down the stairs, Hanson disappeared for a few minutes. I've got to imagine he either spotted Tubby or wanted to help pull the playoff gorilla off Fritz's back.
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What if someone said they didn't think the game was ugly at all? Maybe it was just hard-nosed defensive basketball. Besides, I don't think anyone would ever portray a Hanson coached team as playing very pretty. Maybe boring, with 1 1/2 ft passes, etc. Good fundamentals I guess, but very boring.
Hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion. You have every right to disagree with me and I always appreciate the feedback.
At what point, in your opinion, does a defensive struggle become an display of offensive ineptitude? I mean, the Tommies were one of the most efficient offensive teams in MIAC history this year...and they just shot 35 percent and barely broke 50 points. I'm not saying they're bad players — they clearly aren't — but it was an awful offensive game.
It was the lowest scoring game of the tournament thus far by a wide margin. Of the 40 games played thus far, only seven teams have failed to score 60 points. The two lowest numbers took place Saturday at The Shoe.
My high school coach always made us strive for a point-per-possession average of 1.0. We achieved that most nights, but heard about it when we didn't. A lot. The Tommies posted a PPP total of roughly .74 last night.
To me, calling that game a defensive struggle is taking the glass-over-flowing approach.
In response to the annonmyous posting, I feel like a defensive struggle and offensive ineptitude are not mutually exclusive things. If two teams are contesting shots all night, forcing turnovers, gathering defensive rebounds to eliminate second chance points, this is a defensive struggle. If the same teams are getting open looks but aren't hitting, missing bunnies in the paint, grabbing offensive boards but still not getting second chance points, that's offensive ineptitude. I think what happened on Saturday night was a combination of both, leaning towards ineptitude of O. Both teams played tough D, but Joe Scott and Tyler Nicolai had multiple looks from beyond the arch and made I think two between the both of them. Stevens Point's top three of Beamish, Rortvedt, and El-Amin combined for 4 points and 1-18 shooting; all scored by Beamish. And you can't tell me that El-Amin was held in check by Tommie defense, he easily blew by his defender any time he had the ball. Point being, great defense played by both teams PLUS rancid shooting from both teams led to a very Big Ten like score. Love the blog Brett, please keep it up!