Duel Post: UCSB at CSUF and Recap of Loss at UCI

First, the real Bob Williams has once again revealed himself to all of us in Gaucholand. A nice non-conference record with wins against all the teams we were supposed to beat and losses at the two teams we weren't.

However, once Bob Williams gets into the mediocre Big West, he immediately gets into a two game losing streak. What is the cause? I don't know.

Maybe Bob is too complacent with his job. Maybe he's a smart guy who knows how to "manage expectations." If so, my hat goes off to him because he had everybody fooled this year. You don't want to be a Negative Nellie, but there comes a time when you have to take every win with a grain of salt (which will be done on this site, here on out).

Getting back to the shitty job Bob does in Big West. I really do think he's too complacent to care. He knows that if he never goes to the NCAA Tournament and doesn't have a major fuck-up, he'd probably keep this job as long as he wants (hopefully this changes with the new AD). That way, the people don't expect an NCAA Tournament berth and they know nothing different. This reminds of a summer job that I once had working at a sports camp. Every day for lunch, one of the camp counselors would ride his bike down the street to get his lunch. This guy also proceeded to consume a pitcher at each lunch and then ride back for the second half of the day. I asked him if he ever thought he would get caught by one of the kids, and he gave me a brilliant response. He said that if comes back to work after lunch every day with a buzz, the campers don't know anything else. They'll never suspect that this guy is slightly drunk because he does the same thing every day. They don't know anything different.

This is exactly what Bob Williams is doing. He never goes to the NCAA Tournament, so the people don't know any different. Brilliant? Stupid? I don't know, but we need to hold his feet to the fire.

Now on to the loss at UCI. I felt that UCSB would have a huge come-back game against UCI. I was flat out wrong. I couldn't even believe the scoreboard when I first saw it online in the first half. Seriously, this is a team with a $1 million plus budget losing to a team with a $100,000 budget. That is some serious parity.

Onto the Four Factors:

Shooting %: UCI shot 49.1% compared to our 46%. Anytime this happens, you better be making more threes or getting some turnovers. UCSB did neither. By the way, Nedim Pajevic, stop shooting threes (see below).

Offensive Rebounds: We lost 8 to 13. I don't want to disparage our players, but I can't help myself. What the fuck were our big guys doing? 5 of our rebounds were from our guards. We had a tremendous height advantage here and we stunk the place up. Ridiculous.

FT's: This was basically a tie. We went 7 for 10 and they went 6 for 11.

Turnovers: We had 14 turnovers to 5 steals. Doesn't take a CYO coach to figure it out that that shit just doesn't cut it. UCI had 16 turnovers, but got 10 steals. We must have been sloppy with the ball.

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's been called to my attention that there was an error in my post. I apologize. Bob Williams did go to the NCAA tournament with his recruits. More on that beautiful post to come tonight.

Tonight's game is against CSUF at Fullerton.

Here are the scouting reports -
UCSB: http://www.kenpom.com/sr.php?team=UC%20Santa%20Barbara
CSUF: http://www.kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Cal%20St.%20Fullerton

Four Factors:

1. Shooting %

UCSB: 45.5%
CSUF: 48.1%

2. Offensive Rebounds

UCSB: 9.7
CSUF: 11.4

3. FT%

UCSB: 77.9%
CSUF: 65.5%

4. Turnovers

UCSB: 19.8 turnovers/game opponents, 15.8 turnovers/game
CSUF: 14.6 turnovers/game for CSUF

There will be no prediction today. I don't have a good feeling though. I'll leave it at that.