What an incredible comeback. Everything possible was going wrong for us in the second half. We were playing poorly and the refs were calling the most lopsided game imaginable. Every touch foul on us was whistled while they were were allowed to mug us. A series of uneven calls carried them to a 13 point lead with under 9 to play. @MattAU05 pointed out that per ESPN's gamecast, SLU had a 96% chance of winning when they were up 60-47. From that point, we went on a 15-4 run to put ourselves in a good position to pull it out with 3:40 left down only 62-64. Just an unreal job by our guys to answer the bell like that with our backs against the wall on the road. With everything going wrong in front of a hostile crowd, it would have been really easy for our guys to pack it in. As @nrmorgan2001 pointed out repeatedly in the game thread, great teams pull out really tough games like this one. Our guys proved tonight that's exactly what they are. This is the kind of grit it's going to take to win games on the road in the SEC. You aren't going to get a lot of calls in road games and you have to be able to play through it. It's also the kind of determination it will take to win tough games in March to make another deep run.
Two guys were equally responsible for pulling this one out of the fire, imo. The first is Walker. When everything was going wrong, he was the calmest guy on the court. He kept grinding and took over the game with 9 points during our comeback run. Just missed the double double overall for the game by 1 board. The 2 man game that Walker and Wendell were running late was a thing of beauty. Let's hope tonight was Walker's breakout game and we will see him take over more games like this in the coming weeks.
Wendell was the other key to our comeback. He had 5 assists after we fell down by 13 and finished with 8 for the game. Zep has been an awesome assists guy, but I am not sure how much longer Wendell can come off the bench putting up numbers like 15/8 as he did tonight. We are extremely fortunate to have 2 PGs who are both good enough for us to play at an extremely high level when either is on the floor. Just so many ridiculous assists tonight for Wendell. Shades of Jared on these insane passes after penetrating the lane....
This was a significant win on a number of levels. To avoid a loss in what may be our last game without Flanny is huge. Bruce said in the pre-game that Flanny could have played tonight if this had been an NCAAT game so I would assume we see him for limited minutes against Murray State and he's ready to contribute against LSU. Building confidence by coming back like this on the road is going to pay big dividends in SEC play. On top of all of that, we avoided a loss that would have been a ding on our resume if we want to be in the running for the a protected seed in March. SLU isn't bad, but they lost to UAB and Belmont already so this is a loss that could have cost us a seed line on selection Sunday. The national media guys were watching and impressed by our grit.
Two guys were equally responsible for pulling this one out of the fire, imo. The first is Walker. When everything was going wrong, he was the calmest guy on the court. He kept grinding and took over the game with 9 points during our comeback run. Just missed the double double overall for the game by 1 board. The 2 man game that Walker and Wendell were running late was a thing of beauty. Let's hope tonight was Walker's breakout game and we will see him take over more games like this in the coming weeks.
Wendell was the other key to our comeback. He had 5 assists after we fell down by 13 and finished with 8 for the game. Zep has been an awesome assists guy, but I am not sure how much longer Wendell can come off the bench putting up numbers like 15/8 as he did tonight. We are extremely fortunate to have 2 PGs who are both good enough for us to play at an extremely high level when either is on the floor. Just so many ridiculous assists tonight for Wendell. Shades of Jared on these insane passes after penetrating the lane....
This was a significant win on a number of levels. To avoid a loss in what may be our last game without Flanny is huge. Bruce said in the pre-game that Flanny could have played tonight if this had been an NCAAT game so I would assume we see him for limited minutes against Murray State and he's ready to contribute against LSU. Building confidence by coming back like this on the road is going to pay big dividends in SEC play. On top of all of that, we avoided a loss that would have been a ding on our resume if we want to be in the running for the a protected seed in March. SLU isn't bad, but they lost to UAB and Belmont already so this is a loss that could have cost us a seed line on selection Sunday. The national media guys were watching and impressed by our grit.
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