I'm too dumbfounded to even be angry yet. That was easily the worst loss of the Pikiell era immediately after the best win of the Pikiell era, as we followed up that amazing 19 pt deficit win on the road at PSU the other night with the most dreadful loss imaginable at the buzzer at MN, by far the worst B1G team, after being up by 10 with 1:15 to go and 8 with 54 seconds left.
A comedy of errors at the end including 3 bad plays by Paul (the OOB play, failing to box out, and the horrific cross court pass that was stolen), but IMO the biggest gaffe was Hyatt not taking the ball in the pic below into the front court with 20 sec left. He passed it back when if he had just taken it across half court, with 4 MN guys deep in our end and only one guy back, he would've at least wasted 3-4 seconds and probably been fouled or maybe could've wasted more time in the front court, so we would've probably been shooting 2 FTs up 3 with 16 seconds left and if he just makes 1 we very likely win.
Instead they steal, score, Caleb misses a FT and then the 2 other inexplicable decisions: first, how do we not call a TO after the FT to set up our defense and second, how do we not press after the made FT with 5.8 seconds left and up 2. By not doing those things we allowed MN to have time for a wide open three to win. Terrible coaching and execution and now we might have to win our final game Sunday or 1 in the B1G tourney to make the NCAAs. We all know we were locked if we won tonight.
A comedy of errors at the end including 3 bad plays by Paul (the OOB play, failing to box out, and the horrific cross court pass that was stolen), but IMO the biggest gaffe was Hyatt not taking the ball in the pic below into the front court with 20 sec left. He passed it back when if he had just taken it across half court, with 4 MN guys deep in our end and only one guy back, he would've at least wasted 3-4 seconds and probably been fouled or maybe could've wasted more time in the front court, so we would've probably been shooting 2 FTs up 3 with 16 seconds left and if he just makes 1 we very likely win.
Instead they steal, score, Caleb misses a FT and then the 2 other inexplicable decisions: first, how do we not call a TO after the FT to set up our defense and second, how do we not press after the made FT with 5.8 seconds left and up 2. By not doing those things we allowed MN to have time for a wide open three to win. Terrible coaching and execution and now we might have to win our final game Sunday or 1 in the B1G tourney to make the NCAAs. We all know we were locked if we won tonight.
