Playing to not lose is a kryptonite for Zags.

[Zags11]

Its obviously on the coaching staff. Its been this way for ages. Take the foot off the gas and try to kill clock. Then eventually certain teams will make a push and the team crumbles.

It isn't the players. Its few and company.

I'm not trying to start a fire but why do they do this?

Just kill the snake. Don't keep poking it.

[Zags11]

It really is Few's kryptonite. It is one of his few weaknesses. It doesn't matter as he wins 80+% but when this happens its pretty poor.

Take foot off the pedal, try to burn clock and it costs you.

[JAGzag]

Wonder if it’s team dependent. I don’t remember feeling this last year...but yes, it’s been an issue going back YEARS it seems.

[tyra]

I see it a little differently. I think our implosion was the result of a combination of a ridiculous level of turnovers and the effectiveness of the Texas full court press. The latter initially resulted in two quick turnovers and none thereafter but by then it had completely taken GU out of its game.

[thespywhozaggedme]

Isn't playing to not lose, playing to win? LOL I think you meant playing not to lose.

[Zagcity]

I see it a little differently. I think our implosion was the result of a combination of a ridiculous level of turnovers and the effectiveness of the Texas full court press. The latter initially resulted in two quick turnovers and none thereafter but by then it had completely taken GU out of its game.

May be try JJones as the inbounder, he's the one with height and a quarter backs arm. Just a thought...

[GrizZAG]

It was like: Ok stop playing aggressively now, lets coast and let the other team in the door. That's what makes the elite teams what they are, they play damn hard right till the buzzer. Our history of playing not to lose has cost us many games over the years. And again, why the H### pull Rui late? He was on fire.

[TexasZagFan]

May be try JJones as the inbounder, he's the one with height and a quarter backs arm. Just a thought...

Not a bad idea.

At this stage of the season, the inbounder has yet to surface. What about J3? You don't have to worry about being fouled from that position.

[zagzilla]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

[thespywhozaggedme]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

With a lead and 5 minutes left, we more often not pound the air outta the ball, running down the shot clock, instead of running our normal offense. That's playing not to lose.

[Zag_Dad]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

Agree

[2wiceright]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

BINGO!!!!

[2wiceright]

With a lead and 5 minutes left, we more often not pound the air outta the ball, running down the shot clock, instead of running our normal offense. That's playing not to lose.

I saw it as just under 3 minutes trying to run the clock down, and get into our set at about 10 seconds. That's usually how it's done, minus the turnovers...W/out the turnovers - no overtime... JMO...

[bartruff1]

I don't think there is anything unusual about losing a 20 point lead against a team when there is a single digit spread.

Against a team with a 20 point spread.....it is probably unusual to lose a lead.

I have never seen a statistic on those situations but I suspect Gonzaga is about average or better at winning games after losing a 20 point lead to a team of comparable skill. It is just the law of averages.

In order to have a 20 point lead on a similar team you have to play better than average or they have to play worse, so it is no surprise when averages work out by the end of the game. Gonzaga was favored by 3...so is it a surprise that in the end, the game was close....

[thegloriousgoateeofKP]

Is it possible that we don't actually "take our foot off the gas" any more than any other team?

Could it be that, on average, it's simply that we build more big leads than most teams, and therefore (obviously) blow more?

And could it be that we don't notice/worry about the big leads we DON'T blow ... and that therefore, it's just our perception that we "take our foot off the gas?"

[thespywhozaggedme]

I saw it as just under 3 minutes trying to run the clock down, and get into our set at about 10 seconds. That's usually how it's done, minus the turnovers...W/out the turnovers - no overtime... JMO...

The problem is that when you deviate from your normal offense, it causes turnovers because you're rushing.

[Reborn]

Gozaga was definitely taking the air out of the ball for much longer than 3 minutes. They played without intensity for a long time. Tillie especially played really bad tonight on many plays. Rui, imo and others', should have been in the game at the end. He's also a really good rebounder, and can handle the ball much better than Tillie. My opinions. Tillie did hit a huge three though; so I have to give him credit for that. I also agree that Few has done it a lot during his wonderful career. Best example is GU's loss to UCLA in the NCAA Tournament when Morrison ended up in a fetal position after the game.

[ZagDad84]

With a lead and 5 minutes left, we more often not pound the air outta the ball, running down the shot clock, instead of running our normal offense. That's playing not to lose.

This^^^^^

plus the poor handling of the high pressure press by long athletic players, combined with "stupid" decisions by several players. Add to the fact that the Zags did not want to foul Texas, so they played off of the Longhorns letting the Longhorns make 9 of their last 10 shots.

How many times in the last 7 minutes did we take the air out of the ball to not only get no shot or a very poor shot? The zags made what, one or two shots in the last 5 minutes?

How does allowing Texas to shoot 90% by playing off them on defense, having what 8 turnovers in the last 7 minutes combined with slowing down our offense to shoot something less than 20% in the last 5 minutes playing to win??

This game reminded me of the Lady Zags collapse of a 17 point lead in the last 6 minutes against Tennessee for a spot in the Elite Eight. The men tried their best to have a similar epic collapse only to pull out a victory from the jaws of defeat.

They need to tighten up considerably before they play Nova.

ZagDad

[bballbeachbum]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

agree with this, but would add that while this happened it also did look like Few and co.slowed things down to milk the clock with his tired team (took foot off gas, maybe not with play calling but like this). maybe I'm wrong but it makes sense to me if that's what Few wanted to do, and then run stuff late in the shot clock. But it plays into Shaka's pressing scheme too because UT didn't have to protect the rim with the Zags not looking at the basket once they broke the press, not aggressively at least. Whatever GU ran with 8-10 seconds in their shot clock failed usually and didn't include many trips to the foul line even with the Zags in the bonus when all this was going on. I get not wanting to play out of control with a lead in attack but attack has still got to be in the attack. bet the Zags do it better in this season, hopefully against Nova; attack the press early when it's on and get to the foul line when in the bonus especially 1. when struggling to score, 2. breaking the press finishing hard, and 3. with a lead

totally agree on Nova; hopefully the Zags can attack pressure better in that one

[kitzbuel]

I didn't see any taking foot off gas in the play calling. I saw us struggle vs press and on ball defense which does work vs GU consistently over the years. Hoped we solved it last year beating X, Press Virginia and S Carolina. Guess not.

Expect 'Nova to try us vs pressure too. Gotta coach em up

The play where they final passed out of the press up to an open Silas who started dribbling towards the open hoop, then stopped and picked up his dribble and then passed into a turnover.

He clearly had been told to hold up and use shot clock. He had an open lane to the hoop and stopped.

Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

[CDC84]

For me it's turnovers and not playing super hard and attentively in your halfcourt defense. You kill the snake by playing hard on D (no full court pressure though as it increases possessions) and by taking care of the ball. Just do not give them free possessions.

Gonzaga did neither.

Every coach that I am aware of is going to tell his team with a 20 pt. lead to slow it down and take exceptionally good shots to limit possessions. In a game like today, Texas wants you to take shots 11 seconds into the clock.

[ZagDad84]

For me it's turnovers and not playing super hard and attentively in your halfcourt defense. You kill the snake by playing hard on D (no full court pressure though as it increases possessions) and by taking care of the ball. Just do not give them free possessions.

Gonzaga did neither.

Every coach that I am aware of is going to tell his team with a 20 pt. lead to slow it down and take exceptionally good shots to limit possessions. In a game like today, Texas wants you to take shots 11 seconds into the clock.

I agree with you on the issues of reducing turnovers and playing great "D" there was another major problem today on the other side of the ball you did not note.

The additional problem is that when it came to "to slow it down and take exceptionally good shots to limit possessions" the zags took either no shot or a bad shot. You have to have some resemblance of an offense or you just give your opponent 15 seconds to rest before they have to play defense. If you have a lay-up, you take it. Having Melson stuck in the key with a couple of seconds to go is not the answer.

ZagDad

[TacomaZAG]

For me it's turnovers and not playing super hard and attentively in your halfcourt defense. You kill the snake by playing hard on D (no full court pressure though as it increases possessions) and by taking care of the ball. Just do not give them free possessions.

Gonzaga did neither.

Every coach that I am aware of is going to tell his team with a 20 pt. lead to slow it down and take exceptionally good shots to limit possessions. In a game like today, Texas wants you to take shots 11 seconds into the clock.

Agree CDC, with the exception of several times when we did break the press we had a 2 on 1 or 3 on 1 and chose to kill clock instead of any easy layup or dunk. One example is the Silas thing mentioned a number of times in this thread but there were a number of others as well.

As said earlier in this thread, why the he!! is Josh taking the ball out of bounds during the press. Pick anyone, and I mean anyone, else.

All correctable mistakes, and a lot easier when we ALMOST blew a 21 point lead instead of ACTUALLY blowing a 21 point lead.

Go ZAGS

[2wiceright]

agree with this, but would add that while this happened it also did look like Few and co.slowed things down to milk the clock with his tired team (took foot off gas, maybe not with play calling but like this). maybe I'm wrong but it makes sense to me if that's what Few wanted to do, and then run stuff late in the shot clock. But it plays into Shaka's pressing scheme too because UT didn't have to protect the rim with the Zags not looking at the basket once they broke the press, not aggressively at least. Whatever GU ran with 8-10 seconds in their shot clock failed usually and didn't include many trips to the foul line even with the Zags in the bonus when all this was going on. I get not wanting to play out of control with a lead in attack but attack has still got to be in the attack. bet the Zags do it better in this season, hopefully against Nova; attack the press early when it's on and get to the foul line when in the bonus especially 1. when struggling to score, 2. breaking the press finishing hard, and 3. with a lead

totally agree on Nova; hopefully the Zags can attack pressure better in that one

This! I re-watched the end of the game and for good or bad, it's what did happen. Really need to quickly coach this team up on aggressively breaking presses. Understandably, we forget it's a young team (with two veteran guards who should know better) and 've got a C-note saying we don't see this happening again vs. a press. If I'm wrong I'm broke and dashing anyhopes of a run in March!- LOL...

[Zags11]

Hey look it got 1 starred. Not shocked.