What happened?

[markchal]

We seemed to make clutch plays all season long. We were one of the best teams in the country at shooting free throws. We have a lot of tournament experience. An offense that can score in so many ways. And a rotation of 9 deep that is probably the most talented we've ever had. We also had some key players on a team with a good seed that was upset early, which is something I thought would help us avoid that fate again.

What happened in the last 10 days to this team? I agree that we weren't one of the top four teams, and that we were probably closer to our KP rating (10-15), but we were certainly a lot better than Providence and FSU. Yet we end with two frustrating, confusing losses sandwiched around beating a 16-seed.

I thought the Gonzaga game would be a toss-up, but even the day after, it's still tough making sense of the last 8 days after a historic regular season.

[Cheesehead]

18 turnovers, 63% from the FT line, Tre went MIA, Naji was not healthy, and oh.... the refs sucked too, calling 3 BS fouls on JP.

That's what f-ing happened. Oh and the court sucked too.

But I am not bitter!!!

[Blue Blooded-05]

Throw in Mack coaching with 1 foot out the door an getting out coached by the guy that he made look foolish just 365 days prior.

[Caf]

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming him, but Xavier's dirty secret is that Bluiett could be shadowed by an athletic defender and taken completely out of a game.

We've all seen this happen several times throughout his tenure, and we all knew it could happen in the tournament. It did and that's all there is to it. Everything else can be debated infinitely, but at the end of the day if your top scorer and 3pt threat is nullified the rest of the team has to be perfect. Looking back at games where this has happened against decent teams we have either lost or someone else had a miraculous performance. @Creighton and Providence x2 come to mind.

[THRILLHOUSE]

Played with fire all year long. I think we all knew an event like last night (and Providence) was a possibility, even if we really didn't want to admit it. For whatever reason, Team 96 struggled to put teams away but somehow would find ways to survive, until it caught up with them these past two weekends.

[smileyy]

18 turnovers, 63% from the FT line, Tre went MIA, Naji was not healthy, and oh.... the refs sucked too, calling 3 BS fouls on JP.

That's what f-ing happened.

Exactly this.

[mistabeecee41]

Also, we ended the half up 2 - but why didn't he at least try to get Kanter in when we went 8 freaking minutes without a FG? Obviously is JP/Tre picked up a 3rd in the first half we would have been fucked with Naji unable to play, but Kerem had 2 capable backups in the event he picked up a 3rd.

[THRILLHOUSE]

Also, we ended the half up 2 - but why didn't he at least try to get Kanter in when we went 8 freaking minutes without a FG? Obviously is JP/Tre picked up a 3rd in the first half we would have been fucked with Naji unable to play, but Kerem had 2 capable backups in the event he picked up a 3rd.

Yeah, that was the big coaching decision of Mack's that I didn't agree with last night. I even would've put Tre back out there at some point during that stretch and just trusted that he'd play smart. But I assume his line of thinking was along as FSU didn't pull away that we'd be fine in the 2nd half. And he wasn't really wrong til everything fell apart after JP's 4th "foul".

[Drew]

They were simply more athletic. Florida St's last 3 recruiting classes were ranked 12th, 4th and 11th. That would be the best ranking in the Big East. Like it or not, we had not seen that caliber of athlete all year and it showed.

[MHettel]

I'm blaming this shit squarely on the fouls. Especially the block and Steal by JP. Those were absolutely, undoubtedly not fouls. They directly contributed to points either being given to FSU or taken from us.

And not to mention that JP was absolutely the best player on the floor last night and had to ride the pine because of these fucking horrible calls.

I accept that Tre struggled. I accept Naji getting banged up.

I cant accept a fucking ref missing calls and deciding the outcome.

We could have tolerated any 2 of these 3 events. Not all three.