I don’t know why I wasted time rewatching the game early this morning, because now I’m depressed and pissed off. I’ve defended Forbes to this point, but he’s got egg on his face after last night. Somewhat inexcusable to lose like that given all factors…
The decision to play Keller and Marsh after going up 11 was one of the worst calls he’s made during his time at WF, IMHO. This spurred a 6-0 run and bled to a 13-2 run over the next four minutes. If we are going to play them together and sit Carr and Reid, you have to go to a zone there. I know our zone D isn’t great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Marsh and Keller trying to play man defense on the blocks together. They missed so many switches, didn’t alter shots, were out of position, etc. It threw everything we had going into a tailspin and it was painfully obvious to see the cracks forming live. Just call a damn TO and regroup. From 9:48 to 6:03 in the second half, we missed every shot we took, including FTs, except for an ugly put back from Cam (after he went 0-4 from the field during the same stretch).
Why we didn’t slow down, switch to a zone and buy ourselves a little time before subbing Carr and Reid back in will haunt us on selection Sunday (hope I’m wrong). State didn’t play Burns, lost their coach before halftime and had no momentum or life when we went up 11. We simply didn’t take advantage of the situation. We pushed the ball, took bad shots early in the shot clock and didn’t do anything to prevent them from getting into the lane. They couldn’t shoot worth shit and we did nothing to counter them during that home stretch (which would have been pretty easy to do with a 1-3-1 given their shooting woes from outside).
Basically, it’s very disappointing and somewhat concerning for our staff not to see it happening. Not only did we opt to save our two TOs, which I’m ok with seeing as though there was still 5-6 mins. remaining after they tied it up, but there were two official TV timeouts and State also called a TO before there was 3 mins remaining. We had a four point lead at each of those intervals, and again, did not change things up. Those six minutes have me questioning a lot of things now. Just an epic collapse that a good coaching staff does not allow to happen and I say that being a big fan and supporter of Forbes. It’s also unsettling because this has happened multiple times in the past and we don’t seem to have learned our lesson.
