I am going to do some reasearch into how many games we start with a
turnover. I am guessing somewhere around a lot.

I really like the Junior/Laubaue pairing.

The Tech win was nice. We have lost to these yahoos in a lot of sports for a long time and I welcome any reprieve. Starting out on the bad end of an 11-2 run was bad bad, but we won. Sloan and Carter are still completely absent from the offense, going 1-9 and 1-7 from the field, respectively. D-Slo did have 5 assists to 1 turnover and Carter had 10 points (free throws), but we need these guys. BJ is not always going to torch teams from tre.

Considering the announcers slobbered Roberson for the entire game, it's understandable if you left with the impression that we witnessed the second coming. But lets look at his numbers...
The kid had an amazing 8 minutes. After that, our big men stepped out on the screen, DRo stepped it up, and he missed just about everything--- 4 points off 10 shots in the remaining 25 minutes of the game. Oh, and his team lost. I am not sure if the announcers knew that.

11-2 bad guy run and pick and roll defense my middle school coach
would be upset about.

ESPNU is now in HD, thank you RCN. Oh my god, we just traveled again.
I have never never never seen a team travel this much, and not even
driving. As I type this: us two trips down two turnovers, them two
trips down and two buckets.

In a 4-way tie for last place in the Big 12, a win tonight would rocket us up to a 3-way tie for 6th place. My guess is maybe five teams from our conference make the dance and we have serious work to do to get back into those few slots.

The game in Austin was better, "Turgeon wasn't as downcast after this loss as he has been after some of the other", but still a loss. Josh Carter still only had one point in the first half and Bryan Davis still only had five points in the game. Yes Turge, "the elephant in the room is we have trouble scoring." Specifically scoring more than our opponent.

Lost by 9 but we were actually in the whole game. Much improved over
our previous losses where we simply threw away large portions of the
game. Some more boards a a few GD free throws and we would have had a
chance to steal one on the road.

I hate writing about losses, especially like the one on Monday, national audience, Big Monday, bad news, so I usually don't, but I wanted to take a quick look at the numbers before moving on.

Watching the game, it was clear that their double team was too quick and our guys too soft for us to establish any inside game. The stats say we had 18 points in the paint, which is higher than I would have guessed, and they had 30, which is what I expected. We were whipped on the blocks for sure, but we haven't lived or died by our bigs this year. Take a look at the following graph. The x-axis is our margin of victory, and the y-axis is the points in the paint margin.
It's a mess; no correlation.
If we can win without our bigs, what can't we win without? My Internet connection is terrible right now, so the answer will have to wait. My hunch, NO TURNOVERS!

Forgive me if everyone has seen this already:

We just picked up this guy from the University of North Texas:

No, not the guy who broke a tackle and ran 96 yards, we got the guy who threw the 4 yard out. Giovanni Vizza become "disillusioned with the program after the Mean Green suffered 21 losses in 24 games." I am not sure College Station is the kind of place that re-illusions a player right now.

We simply threw away a quarter of the game. In the first 10:32 of the game we only scored six points; had 3 makes, 11 misses, and 5 turnovers. Considering our three offensive boards, we managed 6 points in 16 possessions, that's an efficiency of 37.5. The DI average is 100.2.

By the time got with in two there was only two minus left, we screwed up our next possession by taking the full shot clock and only getting one point, and had to start fouling.

They hit their free throws, we are 1-2 in Big 12.

I am still digesting the loss, no clear thoughts on it yet besides I thought we were going to win and there is better than the last time we played them and I thought we were never going to score again.

I do have thoughts on Turge. After listening to his postgame press conference, it is absolutely clear to me that if KU ever offers him a job he will take it. Please please please Mr. Bill Self, start winning more games.

Denzel Bowles is transferring. Turge said, "Denzel wants to continue his career a little closer to home (Va Beach. He’s a quality young man and we wish him all the best.” If you don't know the name Denzel (because he get almost zero PT), he is the guy that was headed to Wichita State, but lost interest and followed Turge to TAMU

I cannot find the quote, but I seem to remember that Denzel showed up to TAMU way over weight; Turge said something about how he was a completely different player than the one they recruited and needed to rebuild his body. Or maybe that was someone else. Whatever he's gone. One less big is never good (if you click on that link, ignorge the typical Brent Z crap about recruiting ouside of Texas. Way to take issue with a non-issue Brent).

Here is another chart that is similar to my previous recruiting charts. It tracks the NET WEIGHTED SCORE (sum of the guys we won weighted by star minus the sum of the guys we lost weighted by star) by school from 2002--2009. This is a lot of data, and I am not crazy about this layout but here you go.

9-2 run to close out the half. Up by 12 and my vote for most improved
player of the year is Junior. That guy is pure beast.

Stupid working late...

I don't follow recruiting; it annoys me. Paying for premium content, cocky 17 year old guys leading people on just to extend our attention; not my thing. Just like athletes I need an off season. A few months where I don't worry about how bad we stink.

This is not to say I don't think recruits are important, I just choose to ignore it until around signing day, which is very soon. That and I never miss an opportunity to do a little analysis.

So how did we do? Eh. Our class is current 15th at rivals.com, but I find that pretty meaningless. The important question is, are we getting the guys we want? The answer: Yes, unless Texas or LSU want them too.

First we look at how we did in head-to-head match ups, by school, broken down by the recruits' star rating (1-5). For the following graphs, I have looked at the head-to-head match ups where A&M and another school have offered a kid a scholarship. The first graph looks at all of those that match ups we have won, and the second those that we have lost.

To combine these two graphs, I use a simple weighted sum for our recruiting "score": you get one point for a one star guy, two points for a two star guy, and so forth; add those up and you get a score. For each school, there is a lost score and a won score; the weighted sum of the guys who picked us over them, and a weighted sum for the guys that picked them over us.
And for a raw comparison, here is the same chart but without weights.
My hope for the future is that Texas and LSU no longer need good players, an lets h0pe that Nebraska doesnt get better because we target many of the same players.

We lost. Having watched the game ok TV I know what our problem is: we
need to play better offense and defense, and we need to be lore
consistent, and we need to play better defense.

It's one game; this isn't football; it was an away game; all is not
lost.

First bar game watching of the year... Finally.

Conference play is very very close. The Big 12 has some decent representation in the polls: OU is 6, Texas is 7, and Baylor is 23. Rankings are pretty meaningless--- especially in January ---but it shows there is a perception that good teams play in our conference. Our first game is on Saturday v OSU, who is the strangest team. Some how as they seem to be really good and have great players, but just didn't win a ton of games. They shit canned their coach and now we see them in a few days.

Recently, their senior guard Terrel Harris said, “Coach said, a few weeks ago, if we don’t take care of these next three games, A&M is going to be a hell of a game.” Those next three games went like this:

Win: 76-53
Win: 122-73
Win: 83-56

That is a 33 point average margin of victory.

For you logic geeks, I am hoping this is not an iff, if and only if, <=>, situation. Since they took care of those games, A&M will not be a hell of a game. We shall see, on TV too.