So then, what beat the Cats in Asheville?
They beat themselves by sending the Cougars to the foul line an excessive amount of times.
As in most of the WCU basketball losses this season, excessive fouls by the Catamounts were their downfall. In last night's game in Asheville, the Cougars put 29 points on the board from the foul line. They had a total of 35 attempts at the charity stripe, courtesy of WCU fouls.
How many free throws did the Cats make you ask? That would be 9. That's 9 out of their 12 attempts.
That's a 20 point advantage to the Cougars, we lost the game by only 8 points.
If the Cats could have controlled their fouling this season, this team would be challenging Davidson for the championship on Monday night, not back at home licking their wounds, and waiting for next season. I don't blame the refs. If the excessive fouling had only occurred in this game, I'd say we had trio of bad refs. But, this level of excessive fouling has occurred game after game this season.
I certainly don't blame the Cougars, all they did was shoot 83% at the free throw line and take advantage of the gifts the Catamounts continued to hand them. Normally, the Cougars are just an average team at the foul line, shooting 67% (10th in the SoCon). But when you send a team to the line for 35 attempts, you take your chances.
The Cats were called for 24 personal fouls, while the Cougars were whistler for only 13.
I place the blame squarely on the coaches shoulders, it's been tolerated all season long, heck it's been tolerated for several seasons in Cullowhee. The one thing an opposing team can count on from the Catamounts, if they take the ball inside, they've got a much better than even shot of being fouled by the Cats.
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1 comment:
One of the dumbest things I have ever seen in print. It is not that the stats are wrong, it is that thos commentary shows a lack of understanding concerning the aggressive style of the Catamounts and how that relates to the amount of fouls produced. In addition, the Catamount offemse ia an outside inside offense that tends to produce fewer fouls, thus leading to a constant detriment when comparing team fouls. This article appears to make the Catamounts look like a gang of hacking thugs when nothing could be further from the truth. This is the problem with statistics in the hands of the average fan.
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