2nd half blues

It has been a consistent shortcoming during the last two years. I'm wondering if its a conditioning concern. LMU outplaying us in the second half only further illustrates the Pilots frustrating play late in the games.

My unprofessional guess would be that its not a conditioning problem but just a result of having a young team. A lot of our players are simply not physically where a senior or junior is at.
Also, Its gotta take freshmen awhile to build up their strength. While surely their high school would have had workout rooms and gyms, they probably weren't up to the caliber of the weight rooms at WCC school's. Plus, if you simply look at our players they are skinny (possibly one of the reasons players like sikma made it to us). I'm sure by next year and surely by their junior year they'll be able to run a lot better.

I don't think Nik and Ito are all that young, and they are getting the majority of the playing time. Ito has not been hitting any open shots, and Nik forces it at crucial times. Coach has to send a message to them at some time or they will look the same the rest of the year.

Well, Nik may not be young per se (I think he's 21 or so), but this is his first year of D1 ball. So he is young in the sense that he hasn't played at this level for very long. And last night, we weren't getting points from anywhere else and pretty much needed him to start forcing it by the end. Still, he clearly had an off night - not hitting shots, turning it over, etc.

As for Ito... clearly his shot is off right now. It seemed like he had turned the corner a bit over the past few games, but last night he didn't shoot well. However, he's also gone through a lot over his first two years at UP - he's missed a lot of games and practices while making several trips back home to Japan. In some ways, what he's going through this year reminds me of what Derek Raivio went through during his junior year - there was a lot going on in his life and his game just never really got on track that year. But then he came back as a senior and won WCC POY honors.

Honestly, I'm not worried about Taishi. He still runs the offense well and is an excellent defender. He's smart and makes good passes, and he's not going to miss open shots forever. His teammates voted him a captain this year, which should speak volumes about how he is respected by the team.

I've nothing against either player and have only seen them play three -four times. Both are talented. It was mentioned how young the players were and out of condition. Nik is almost 22 and Ito just 21 compared to the 18-19 year old freshmen makes a big difference.
We weren't getting points because there was a lot of forced drives and ill advised shots. When they figure out how to play team ball and find the open man and trust the other players to hit shots maybe we can put away the teams they can beat. There were some really ugly attempts put up last night.
If Ito is not hitting as the case last night, Thompson was filling it up and Stohl hit some tough threes. They went quite a long stretch without a basket near the end of the game. Ito has had it tough and has had only a few good games shooting wise. I hope he does turn it around.
Nik hit a couple tres but a lot of his points were give mes at the end of the game.

Just to clarify, I wasn't calling Ito or Ravio out of shape. I was simply stating that some of the schools that we've lost in the second half to are in better shape. The most notable example of this failure in the second half in my mind was the lost to Oregon. I think you'd have to agree that they would have better training program and facilities then Santa Rosa JC (where i believe Ravio was last year).
But to focus on the condition and performance of only Ito and Ravio is missing the point. These two players, while they are talented and I like them a lot, can not carry this team alone (regardless of what physical shape they're in) and this is where the strength of the freshmen comes in. What I was trying to say in my original post was that it is the condition of the whole team makes a difference and many contributing members of our team are less then a year out of high school.

Given comparisons LMU is as young with their prime players. For example Orlando Johnson is a 6' 5" Freshman. He scored 16 points and had 11 boards in 30 minutes. Shawn Deadwiler is a 6' 3" Soph. He scored 16 points and had 5 assists in 32 minutes. Tim Diedericks is a 6' 9" Frosh who had 10 points in 24 minutes. Corey Counts is a 5' 10" junior who had 10 points, 4 assists with 2 to's in 31minutes. So it would seem that a team that was 0-7 at home should not have outscored us by 8 points in the second half. But for the year we have been outscored in the 2nd half by 86 points. In the first half our pilots outscore the opposition by 35 points. Its just a surmise on my part, but it seems to be a constant factor.

I think that the players start to panic when a team goes on a bit of run and start throwing careless passes and missing layups which happened yesterday against LMU. Composure is good in the 1st, but when they lead at half, those 2nd half runs, which are bound to happen after halftime adjustments, seem to throw them off.

I wasn't trying to focus just on Nik and Ito. But they are getting the majority of the playing time and went what 7 for 24? Ouch. 64 minutes.
Shooting wise everyone else looks respectable. Sikma had a tough night scoring but does well in the other factors.

As I have stated before, this team is a young team and teams usually do not win with freshman or sophomores. Many people are expecting too much of them. Physically many of them look like high school kids. It is difficult to match up with bigger/heavier players and expect to do well. They have all ready won more games than I predicted

Beyond that, it's pretty hard to sweep on the road in this conference, unless maybe you are the Zags.
We did it with those two teams in Feb. 2006, but other than that, I think you'd have to go into the '90's to find another instance.

Second half blues.
Could it be that our bench is a little short ?
The only bench players that seem to be able to score to any degree are Smeulders and Stohl and the latter is a little streaky. Until we can get more scoring from the bench I think we will have second half problems. Our starters, who consist of two freshmen and two sophs can be wearing down in the scond half.