What I saw last night

[dyersburgcatfan]

I'm not a Towle's basher, but I really got frustrated with him last night. In fact, I was frustrated with the whole team. They KNEW going in this is a game we SHOULD win, and win by a decent margin. Yet the whole team, outside of a few players, played with what seemed like a don't care attitude.

BUT in the final 7+ minutes everything changed. Suddenly I saw a determination in Towles to go out and win this game. The whole team caught the attitude and both sides of the ball suddenly looked like the team we know it can be and should be. We were still fortunate to pull this one out, but you could see the complete change in attitude going into those last couple drives.

This is what I saw...that Towles executes better when he plays with intense determination and that the determination seems to dictate how the rest of the team plays. He is a leader that the teams seems to follow. So my hope is that he can get himself prepared to play like that in every game and not just when we are down by a couple scores. He is the field general, and the troops will react to how he is leading. Execution of plays depends not only on preparation, but also on the emotional will to MAKE the plays work...to put determined effort into it on every play.

 

[TNTUK]

So you didn't see intense determination on Towles' roll out, 45 yard pass to Bone in the first half?

My point is that the entire team played flat. Towles' determination is also not responsible for the performance of the defense. That's on the D (mostly senior laden).

 

[dyersburgcatfan]

The whole team was flat. Including Towles. Sure he made some nice throws in the first half and the D rose up early in the first half. It's not like they didn't show up at all. But there was a very different feel to things in that final 7 minutes. The D began to sag when the offense was misfiring...too many 3 and outs when playing a team like Eastern. But when Towles picked it up...the whole team caught fire. Offense & defense feed off each other. With UK, I think that more often than not, it's the D that feeds off the offense.

 

[Levibooty]

I was at the game to the end last night. I do not think Towles played well the first 52 minutes of the game but he played better than the Florida game. He played well from that point on. Last night I saw an entire team play poorly for 52 minutes. I mean there were some like CJ Johnson that played well but performances like that were few and far between. The mood in the stands in the fourth quarter was one of resignation to embarrassing team performance and I was setting next to a lady that was saying she would never come to a Kentucky game again if they lost that game. It was overall UGLY.

I think this game is chalked up to bad preparation because everybody played poor from the opening KO. They played hard just not well.

 

[Aces Fan]

What I saw was a team not respecting their opponent. I remember coaching basketball a few years ago and we were playing a team we should beat by 40 and I heard our PG asking what the assist record was for the school because he wanted that record. We barely won that night because our kids played hard but they played for the individual instead of the team and didn't respect their opponent.

 

[brian.mikeson]

There are two times your team is almost assured to play below its best:

1) When they think there's no way they can win.
2) When they think there's no way they can lose.

 

[gsayers]

How in the hell do you know they didn't respect Eastern?

 

[BlueTick2]

How in the hell do you know they didn't respect Eastern?

Maybe, by the way they played........