We’ve had a 9 day break and we’re playing a team that comes into this matchup 1–11. SURELY we won’t make this a Stress Virginia situation, right? RIGHT??? This is officially our last tune-up game before Big 12 play, so I NEED something to hope for this year.
Sadly for my mental health, we looked like dogshit in the first 10 minutes of the game. It was only a 5 point game, we could not figure out their 2–3 zone for some reason, we turned the ball over 5 times, and we were shooting an ABYSMAL 36% from the floor. They weren’t even really doing anything to us, we just couldn’t do anything against them. Coach Hodge is still trying lineups out but after this early showing, and with us heading in conference play, we may be better off running an 8 or 9 man rotation.
The next ten minutes were better thankfully. You know I’m not a gambler, but the spread on this game was 42.5 and for a while there it looked like we weren’t going to cover. We managed to separate ourselves though finishing the half 42–22. I’m not sure what we can really point to as the cause of our serge other than us just remembering how to play basketball. We rebounded better, we stopped turning the ball over, and we started to hit shots. Who would have thought that if you did those things, you could start winning games?
After we remembered that we’re a Power 5 school the 2nd half became more of a practice than a basketball game. We didn’t technically take our foot off the gas but you could tell that Coach Hodge was trying different things out there that he might have to use later in the year. I still wish that we could just have ONE game where we come out and dominate from the jump. Maybe we can do that next game against Iowa State (he says knowing full well that they might be the best team in the country.)
We got the win 86–51 and our team stats evened out. We shot 54% from the field, 44% from 3 and only committed one turnover since the 5 we had in the first 10 minutes of the game. This was supposed to be a win, so I can’t get too excited about it, but the Big 12 looks like a slog this year so our wins may not be so frequent. We have to celebrate while we can.
The Roundball Big 3 of the Game have some familiar names on it:
Honor Huff: 13 points, 4 3s
Amir Jenkins: 10 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists
Harlan Obioha: 12 points, 10 rebounds
We’ve got another big break until our next game. We play Iowa State next on January 2nd, so hopefully we can have some good takeaways from the non-con schedule before we have to go through the gauntlet. I love you, Dad. I miss you. I’ll see you soon.
Round The Game 
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