Or like the coach is gonna be like "wow, you're right, I need to take a long hard look in the mirror and think about that."

Wilcher plays 10 minutes a game. He played 14 against MSU. There really are rotations and schemes for all these games. I'm unsure why that's hard to understand.

CapCityAg89 said:

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Wilcher plays 10 minutes a game. He played 14 against MSU. There really are rotations and schemes for all these games. I'm unsure why that's hard to understand.

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It's hard to understand which Wilcher didn't play in the second half of the msu game. It's hard to understand why Manny didn't play in the second half of the tu game. Yes there are rotations. Yes they're working for the most part. Any rotation with Hefner and Carter in makes less sense than sitting your best scorer in the first half for most or all of the second half.

Wilcher played 14. Carter played 9. What're you saying? He should've gotten 20? 30?

Well, he had a good first half and the second half wasn't going great, so maybe you change it up and give him some more time? Who knows.

CapCityAg89 said:

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Wilcher played 14. Carter played 9. What're you saying? He should've gotten 20? 30?

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Beep boop.

I'm saying put him in to turn things around when we score 3 points in 9 minutes.

Guys; it's the turnovers! Yeah no ***** But momentum can change if he comes in and knocks down two threes. At some point you had not much to lose since nothing was working.

Yeah I don't know how anybody is defending Wilcher not playing more when he was obviously one of our very few offensive sparks.

Having said that, that's what you get with Buzz. He is gonna stick with some weird math no matter what. Bob theorized that maybe when Buzz was a younger coach he stuck with the hot hand way too much or something so he went straight analytics at some point and this is what we get now.

And lol Goodine is a great example. Can you imagine how we would've felt if he had barely even played in the 2nd half? Would've assumed injury.

Yeah, like I'd have liked Wilcher to play some more, but I'm not surprised he didn't.

He came in about the same time he normally does in the second half, but then State scored to go up 10 into the under 12 media and it's like we decided "okay we're down 10, that means we initiate protocol C" or something and whatever protocol C is didn't involve Wilcher because he was only in for like 45 seconds on that stretch and didn't do anything noticably bad.

But yeah, it is what it is, we don't ride the hot hand, we seem to always stick with whatever gameplan we came in with. Also, to be clear, I don't think it's like one gameplan, I think it's like game plan scenarios. Here's our plan A, if we're ahead in the second half we add in protocol B, if we're a little behind we're gonna do Plan B, etc. etc.

Carter is the real mystery to me. How was he was a scorer in the MO Valley... Comes here and forgets how to shoot? Like awful at shooting.. such that he can't make free throws..I don't get it

bobinator said:

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Yeah, like I'd have liked Wilcher to play some more, but I'm not surprised he didn't.

He came in about the same time he normally does in the second half, but then State scored to go up 10 into the under 12 media and it's like we decided "okay we're down 10, that means we initiate protocol C" or something and whatever protocol C is didn't involve Wilcher because he was only in for like 45 seconds on that stretch and didn't do anything noticably bad.

But yeah, it is what it is, we don't ride the hot hand, we seem to always stick with whatever gameplan we came in with. Also, to be clear, I don't think it's like one gameplan, I think it's like game plan scenarios. Here's our plan A, if we're ahead in the second half we add in protocol B, if we're a little behind we're gonna do Plan B, etc. etc.

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Yeah I'm sure you're correct.

I think we have a pretty complicated system when it comes to game plan scenarios to be honest that adjusts during the game depending on a myriad of factors and it seems it doesn't have much to do with who happens to have made 3 or 4 straight 3s for us in a half.

Aston04 said:

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Carter is the real mystery to me. How was he was a scorer in the MO Valley... Comes here and forgets how to shoot? Like awful at shooting.. such that he can't make free throws..I don't get it

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I mean it's a huge step up in competition for one but it probably has a ton to do with our defensive system and how long it took Jace to learn it. I seem to remember when he transferred in he worked extra hard to learn Buzz's defense.

I remember those first few weeks we all assumed his shot would start falling because his form looked good. It just never did for whatever reason and then it got in his head.

The entirety of the second half was so bizarre, especially when you read through the play-by-play ... just a comedy of errors, missed shots and turnovers.

I do think, from a "game storylines" perspective, the two legitimate questions in the game involve Wilcher and Payne.

Wilcher plays 10 minutes in the first half (probably more than hes ever played in a half for us this season in a meaningful game) and is the leading scorer. Then he plays 1 minute and 15 seconds in the second half (and as you mentioned, doesn't get in the game until the 12-min mark) and takes one shot. He then comes back in at the 3:39 mark for the rest of the game but doesn't take a shot until 29 seconds left.

Payne picks up his 3rd foul with 18:39 left in the game and comes out. Comes back in at 12:43, and plays a couple more 3-4 minute stretches. He doesn't take a shot in the second half until 3 minutes left in the game, and takes only 2 total shots for the entire game (maybe 3 shots, he was fouled on one in the 1st half).

From a reporting point of view, getting Buzz's thoughts on Wilcher (and Payne) lack of involvement offensively in the second half would be interesting. I highly doubt he would answer that in the post game (he might not even have an answer at that point), but I agree it probably had to do with the score to start the half and the plan defensively (especially as it pertains to Wilcher).

As a fan watching, the fact that we didn't do anything different in that middle third of the 2nd half to try to slow things down or get an easy bucket with Payne or an open look for Wilcher (or Hefner or anyone) was wildly frustrating. Its a bad tendency of the Buzz Williams era, the inability to stem the momentum of the other team with our offensive scheme ... we have nothing reliable to go to, schematically, when we really need a basket.

I dunno, I'd probably argue we did try to go to our "reliable" things, but either they were terrible or Mississippi State just had us locked down. Payne played ten minutes in the second half and was only able to get one shot up. He was pretty bad in this game.

But again, we can really get into the weeds but it's also really simple, we're not going to beat anybody in this conference if Taylor and Phelps turn it over 8 times in a half.

Points off turnovers in the second half were 20-0. That's a full system breakdown. Just have to hope it was a one game anomaly.

Payne finally had someone able to push back. He hadn't seen that in a long while. Good learning experience I think.

I think we out rebounded them simply because we had so many turnovers - they didn't have opportunities for defensive boards. They turned us over. They shot free throws and (surprisingly) at a good rate. In short - they out Aggie-d us. Again. Good learning experience.