In one of the wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth threads following the loss to USC, there was some disagreement as to how many "shoulda made" inside shots the Cats missed during that game.  I promised Tru that, if I had time, I would go back through the game slowly and get a number.  I did that this morning.  In summary, I found six and one-half crip shots that UK should have made. 

In fairness, I omitted all the inside shots on which the UK player was fouled, but, in truth, I felt some of them should have been made despite the foul.  Putting them into the count, however, gets really messy, since then you have to count the free throws made following the foul, and so forth.

Following the jump is a list of the ones I felt should have been made:

First Half

18:50-Wall missed a "drag" shot on the left side that had moderate defense.  This one was 50-50, so I count a half.

15:25-Cuz-great fake, poor follow, defense completely off balance.  One 1/2

14:45-Wall-great drive down lane to the right; passed both defenders at last second; poor finish.  Two 1/2

Second Half

16:15-Wall drove baseline left; under basket; poor finish (Orton also missed a fairly easy tip on this one and the non-existent goaltending was called on UK, but real goaltending missed on USC.  Three 1/2

9:18-Bledsoe-great drive to the left, totally unguarded; undecided between bank and dunk.  Four 1/2

7:47-Wall-ankle-breaking crossover to left down lane; backhanded a RH layup and missed instead of using his left hand.  Five 1/2

5:34-The infamous Dodson steal/missed dunk.  Six 1/2

In retrospect, after watching almost nothing except our offensive possessions, it initially seemed like a lot more missed crips because we forced so many that were blocked or altered because of heavy defense.  I omitted those.  On that point, Tru was spot on.  They defended the drive pretty well, but the instances above were (mostly) just lack of focus/finish.

Also other observations: Downey wasn't the only one drawing multiple defenders resulting in USC put-backs.  Cuz played an even better game than I thought at first.  At 6:57 of the second half, after being fouled, reading his lips yielded this, "GIMME THE BALL; I WANT . .) interrupted by a commercial.  What a kid.  PPAT was open several times with his defender blocked out, or "on his hip" as we used to say.  Nobody got him the ball. 

I think Tru was closer to the real number of missed crips than the rest of us.  I think he said six; most of us said eight or so.  Still, it was too many.

On to the Rebel game.