Report from Charlotte O'Hara

[slu72]

First, reunion with Tarheel Billiken. Good to see him. Met four other alum. They all asked about the shirt. Told 'em we were a secret society start posting.

OK game observations, Tarheel jump in and correct me any time. First ten minutes were awesome. Alas, it didn't hold. Two things you get by watching the Bills in person vs TV, UB's offense gives them a lot of open looks at the basket. Second, their defensive effort is intense.

My player reports. RB...smooth...very smooth. A little cold in the second half. We relied on him way too much in the late going and Charlotte knew it. He has a lot of people to contend with. His D is not great. He had Badsen and he was the knife in our back last night. Overall RB is a real plus, but he can't do it alone.

TF: Man, you got to love this guy. Aggressive, makes mostly good decisions. He does LOOK like he fouls alot both on O and D. He's one of the best bigs to play at SLU in my opinion. Definitely the best Offensive threat we've had inside in quite some time.

IO: Don't get it. On certain plays he makes difficult shots look easy. Great fall away from about 10 feet comes to mind. Why isn't it there all the time? Jeez, do more. His D still needs work.

JF: Solid game, solid player, solid leader. We lose a lot when he's not on the floor. Missed some wide open 3's, but you can't knock him.

CS: Wish he hadn't saved one of his worst games for my viewing, because I like this guy. But he missed wide open 3's, I mean not a guy withing 10'. Had he made these, it would have stopped those two runs that were the difference last night. But guess everyone's entitled to a bad one.

AD: Good, great in your face defender. Pavlch's Dog couldn't get a shot off when he was in there. Also, couple of nice steals. Bad, his shot looks terrible. He's tentative, his elbow flies out, it's like he's thinking mechanics on each effort. Ugly, he made two Randy Pulley type drives into the dark forest that resulted in TO's at very critical times last where a basket would have brought us within one or two. Offensively, he looks lost and lacks confidence.

RV: Enough said. He fills space.

IV: Careful with the ball, made a nice finger roll, but he's got to get those feet under control. Not quick. Send him to that big man school, UB. He had a real bad case of bed hair too.

Got there for the shoot around. Paid particular attention to our new frosh, JJ and DC. Both look like players. DC nice stroke, good handle, evidently he's not getting something. It would be nice to have that stroke out there when RB is getting all the attention.

JJ, this is a first time observation, he was hot dogging it in warmups. They were playing RAP music and he was keeping time to the tunes. You can see he's got athleticism and good looking jumper. I wonder if his lack of playing time isn't a conflict of personalities? I can't judge on one look. But man do we a need a legit PF bad. It would have helped a whole lot last night.

Badsen killed us last night. He was taking the baseline and creating havoc underneath. If you backed off him he hit the jumper. They all seemed to come at times when we needed a stop. Whithers was a quiet force last night. Didn't realize he had that many until you looked at the board. Overall, we should have won but Lutz adjusted his D when he saw how much damage RB could do. If we had a legit second go to last night, and we would have had TF not been hampered with those early fouls, of CS and RB just hit two or three of those open looks in the second half we would have won.

One interesting observation, Iti, the highly touted recruit. Shows the flaws in rating recruits. I don't get it. Would rate him and IV even at this point. That's it from the front lines.

[Taj79]

Nice report and summation. I'll say this now ... let's see what happens when they come to our place. A six-point loss on the road is one thing ... still a loss. One down, two to go. Stil need to steal one on this trip.

[NinerAdvocate]

Very good game Billikens. I was happy to walk out of there with a win against a scrappy team.

The view from the other side of the fence:

First Iti - he shows his potential when he's explosive, and he wasntat all last night. Lutz said he may be gettingw orn down too much in practice. My biggest gripe with him is that his footwork on defense is horrible and he allows smaller guys to push him around. He needs big man camp. He is more athletic than any big man I've seen in CUSA. It's hard to picture, but he made a steal a few games ago and went coast to coast. Even Lutz was shaking his head on that one. He's a work in progress though for sure.

We were playing like we were hungover from the UAB loss for the first 10 minutes or so. Absolutely no energy whatsoever. Just going through the motions. Things started tipping back in our favor when we turned up the intensity several notches.

We made our FTs!!

Crowd was sparse partially due to weather & midweek game, but also probably because we lost our homecoming game to UAB. I am almost certain I saw tarheelbilliken wearing his shirt. Older guy, right?

The Bills execute and pass very well. Once again, I can see why you guys will rarely ever have a bad game. Too fundamnetally sound with a decent amount of talent. This year's team looked as avdertised: not as brusing, but better shooting.

I do have one gripe and you're not gonna like it. It's about Bryant. He is a good player but he really turned me off the way he used his left arm to hurl his defender out of the way. he did that all game long and got calls on a couple of occassions where he threw Butter Johnson to the floor. They finally called it late in the game when SLU could have turned the tide. Maybe he was just frustrated that his outside shots werent falling, but I hope he doesnt get away with that when we play again.

Best of luck guys. I'll be dreading the return trip (we NEVER win there).

[slu72]

Good observation on Bryant. We saw him do it a number of times. I think it's because he get's so much attention. I also saw a couple of niner defenders pulling on his shirt a few times, so I think there's some retaliation involved in this move. You got to admit the crossover move he made about half way through the first half for the layup down the lane was a thing of beauty.

TARHEEL that older guy reference he must have been thinking of you. See you never should have advertised yourself on the back of your shirt. Hey have a safe and good trip to Birmingham. Bring us home a winner.

Ninerfan, I still think the difference last night was us not hitting those wide open jumpers everytime you guys got the lead. I think if we had Charlotte never would have had more than a 2-3 pt lead. I know that sounds obvious, but it wasn't like we were turning the ball over or taking bad shots each time down the court when you went ahead, they were just clear misses.

[slu72]

I am glad SLU and Charlotte stayed together in the A-10. I hope we always play you guys and not just because I can make the game. Charlotte fans are alright by me. Time for new rivalry.

[billiken_roy]

i would question how a skinny 6'2" guard is able to "throw" butter johnson down to the floor? isnt butter like 6'8" and 240lbs? i think you are barking up the wrong tree on that one.

btw, is lutz's hair real? my gosh it looked plastic on tv it was so perfect. i would love to have the hair spray commission.

[davidnark]

I wondered the same thing. His hair looks like the world's largest toup.

[billiken_roy]

1. basden and withers vs sloan and a host of characters....not even close.

2. reggie 0-7 three land

3. frericks and i.o. early foul trouble.

4. free throw disparity. my gosh!

5. ian's benefit defense.

6. drejaj apparent lost offense.

it is a wonder to me that we were within 6 points.

[MusicCityBilliken]

72, excellent report. Watching the 1st 15 minutes I thought the Bills had Charlotte's number.

Let me say the negatives first, both Sloan and AD I believe had uncharacteristic poor games. Now I only seen AD twice (last years away ECU and Char games). He was a man in constant motion, last night he looked lost. Chris missed a lot shots he should have made. Also, they let them score almost 70 pts. What is that, 18 pts over our average.

Postives, Reggie is the real deal. He ate Demon's lunch. Izik looked like he can be a tremendous force in the near future. He had some outstanding moves around the basket and I see he bulked up from last year which made him a force on defense. TF is the best center since Robin Jones. I love his banging underneath and look forward for his return to the Bartow Arena this Saturday. He is one of my favorite players.

Overall, except for the final score it was enjoyable trip to Charlotte. It was great seeing 72 again. Also Steve, the folks seating in back of us could not stop laughing from reading the back of our shirts. They wanted to know where to get one.