Back to the losing ways

The Jackets lose an uninspired road against against Maryland 79-70 tonight. Here's the quick summary - no time for more:


1. Rebounding - not great. Outrebounded 48-39. Luke grabs 10 boards, but they let Travis Garrison grab 15 boards for MD.


2. Defense - not great. MD shoots 45% from the floor and 33% from 3pt range, but once again, they had a lot of open shots. For some reason Nick Caner-Medley had a bunch of open shots to start the game..... and he hits them. A lot of defensive breakdowns all game. Just not a typical Jacket defensive game.


3. Offense - not great. Jackets shoot 35% from the floor and 20% from 3pt range. Terrible execution in crunch time at the end of the game when we actually had a chance to tie up the game. Shooting from the outside was terrible. Bynum goes 3-12, Jack 3-14, Morrow 1-7, Isma'il 4-17 (and many were from the outside). By the way - shooting inside was poor also. How many lay-ups can one team miss. Just another in a long line of poor shooting in road games.


4. Road Woes - Well, we have still only managed 1 road win - a 1-pt squeeker to UIC. After that nothing but losses.


5. Assists. The team has 9 assists on the night with 26 field goals - terrible. In our 6 losses, Jarrett Jack has a total of 18 assists. That's 3 per game.


6. I'll give you a bright side. For 2 games in a row the Jackets have shot free throws well. Tonight 15-18 from the stripe. Isma'il was 7-7. Think about that - he was better at the line tonight than he was from the floor by far.


Combine poor rebounding, poor defense, poor offense, poor ball distribution and I actually wonder how we kept this game to 9 points. So now the road monkey gets bigger for the Jackets. I will remind fans that we are never as bad as you might think we are, and we never as good as you think we are. Don't let your emotions drop into the tanks. GT has a VERY legit shot at winning 4 of the next 5 games. Of course we better start winning soon.....