@ St. Olaf 1/12/11

Yesterday we took on the Oles (another terrible one)from St. Olaf down in Northfield. We were expecting a pretty good game. This was our first of three straight games where we play teams that have a "bye" before playing us. It is a distinct disadvantage to have to deal with that not only once but in three consecutive games. We've looked it up and several teams in our league never have to play teams after a bye (Macalester and Bethel) while we have the most with St. Thomas and St. John's slightly behind us. There is my rant for the day and now onto the game.

We got off to a decent start with a couple of 3's by Noah and a layup from Carl. We attacked several more times and were either tripped (automatic foul call according to the rules) or hit that forced turnovers. We couldn't get a rhythm offensively because we want to attack and our guys became tentative for some reason. We ended up settling for 3's and shot a decent percentage (6-13) for the half but that isn't our game. Carl got into foul trouble as well which certainly didn't help our cause (one of the fouls was a brutal call). We did not defend at all in the first. It seemed like every time Olaf shot the ball it went in. I guessed at halftime that they were shooting in the high 60s or low 70s. They ended shooting only 55% but they were 6-12 from 3. Halftime score, 48-36 in favor of the Oles.

In the second half we decided that we needed to increase the tempo and give ourselves more opportunities to score. We ramped up the pressure the tempo increased greatly throughout the half. Biggest issue is that we couldn't get enough stops to cut into the gap enough. They had their lead up to as many as 17 with just under ten minutes to play.

Carl essentially dominated the second half and Andy played really tough down low as well. We are going to try to get them on the floor a little more together as the season progresses. Both of them are playing well right now especially when they rebound. We finally played with some urgency in the last couple of minutes and actually got the lead down to four with eight seconds left but couldn't get another turnover to really put a scare into them. Final score in this true defensive battle, 102-96. We score 60 points in the second half and play about as good as you can offensively throughout the half and can't win the game. Not sure if we could've covered my 91 year old grandfather last night. We were definitely disappointed in our defensive effort.

Carl finished with 24 and 10 in 23 minutes of play. Just imagine if he played a complete game like he did at Gustavus. Mike finished with 14 with most of them coming late. Noah and Sam Gullickson finished with 12 as Sam was 4-5 from 3. We have to find him more minutes even though he's a Duke fan. We are now 6-6 overall and 4-3 in the conference.

We have a huge three game homestand coming up on Saturday vs. St. Mary's, next Monday vs. St. Thomas, and next Wednesday vs. Carleton.