It’s still a bad loss and will go down as a bad loss. Just like had we won, it wouldn’t have counted as a good win. We can candy coat that game if we want but putting tinsel on a turd still doesn’t change that it’s a turd.
Sure it’s a bad loss. It will bite us in March, in the unlikely event that we're NCAA-eligible. But I prefer to look at it in a positive light.
We didn’t lose to LMU because they were so good. We blew that game because we sucked. But the last two games have been very different. As the color-man,
Bollwinkel (J. Moose) noted last night, that’s the best defense the Rebels have played in years. Last year's D was non-existent.
Pacific may be 3-1 (now 3-2), but they have zero length. Okay, they had that one 7-footer, who couldn’t jump an inch, and managed to foul out early, despite playing limited minutes. We may not face a shorter team all season.
But Oakland was a better test. On the heels of the Loyola loss, I fully expected to lose that game too. They’ve played several quality teams close over the last few years. That was the first game where the defense was very good.
In recent years the script went like this: Rip through the early, non-conference games. Giving false hope that perhaps this season would be the one where we could turn around the sinking ship that has been Rebels basketball. Then reality would set in and we’d reach a level of mediocrity in conference play that tested the strength of their most loyal fans.
Maybe things will be a bit different this year. Perhaps we’ll actually improve as the year goes on instead of going the other way. Or maybe I’m just clutching at straws…again. Remember how excited we all were after the destruction of Utah last year? We were on our way to the Elite 8 at a minimum. So, I’ll temper my enthusiasm a bit, but I still believe that Menzies will make us a tournament team, if the school has the patience to let him develop the program.
GO REBELS!!!
