U v. BC

[joshdacane]

JoshdaCane again showing that he is the most knowledgable poster on here. Laughing at we could easily be 12-2 or 13-1. Based on what? Maybe 7-7 or possibly 8-6 at best. As Bill Parcells says your record is your record. Coach L has done a great job with this crew. Swope must be having a blast finally getting an opportunity in his senior year. It will be interesting to see how we perform vs UVA.

Is there a way for me to downvote this post?

 

[Notsince1985]

I stand by what I said, and you know what I meant. In all of those games we were either winning or tied with 5 or so minutes left. To me, that's the definition of "easily could have been...." I never said we were that good of a team, there is a difference, but you can't say we weren't in those games we lost. You can't say that we couldn't have won those games. We get a break or two in those games and we could have won them all. Not saying we deserved to win them all. Never said that. Not saying we're even a good team. Not saying we haven't overachieved this year, we have. But we could easily have won all of those games we lost. Nothing wrong with pointing that out. On the flip side, we also could have easily lost a couple of the games we won. Don't really see the big deal, or what's wrong with what I said.

Perhaps you use the term "easily"...too easily.

My basic issue is this as I said, "easily" implies that there was some sort of bad luck, fate, conspiracy, or otherwise to why we lost seven or eight of the conference games we "easily could have won." Winning close games is a skill. It involves discipline, confidence, basketball ability, coaching ability, and a host of other things. Luck is only a very small component of winning close games.

We're not elite in "winning close games" - hence, we lose the majority of them. We stop scoring down the stretch - even against Notre Dame, a game we won - we watched a 15-point lead diminished to 1 because we had three field goals in the last 11 minutes of a game, and because we made careless turnovers. Are there games that we could have/should have won? Yes, of course - I'd point to the first VT game and the Pitt game as the most egregious examples. The last VT game, where we didn't play well for a single minute of the 40? Or the second Syracuse game, where we had a stretch in the middle of the game where we played well - after being down double digits early, and losing by double digits late? Not so much.

This team is improving, and I'm proud of the effort that has gotten us there.

We're talking semantics here, so I really don't want to go much further, but when I see us tied with 4-5 minutes left, to me that's a game we could have won. Simple as that.