I agree with your comments but I do wonder about #2. I agree Stephen has not played as well as before but I am surprised. I thought he would be more active on offense because he can run the floor. I haven't seen that and he seems to get in foul trouble which limits his defense.

To a certain extent, I think your old adage of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" applies to every SR on this team.

#4 is on the mark. It's not so much how many TO's we have but the way they happen. We do some of the dumbest things sometimes.

As far as what is missing on the team, I wonder if there is really a leader? I don't see one.

1. Beverly may be suffering from BBall burnout. He has not had any rest in the last 7 months.

2. After watching on TV and in Dallas Stephen Hill is not equiped to play this style. And like the old adage "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" I think this might apply to Hill

3. We still don't look down low as much as we need to. We do have two go to guys in the post, Towns and Thomas. For us to jack up 20 – 30 three's a game is not what we need.

4. Although our turnovers have been lowered the ones we still make still look like Boys Club turnovers.

There just seems to be something missing with this team and I still can't put my finger on it. But I'm still very hopeful that we will continue to have a good season. There is plenty of season left to make the corrections needed. This team still have the potential of being an elite team by the end of the season.

As good as these players are individually I wonder if the problem besides motivation is that Stan didn't actually recruit a team. The pieces don't fit. At least they never play as if the pieces fit. They have been together for 4 years. You know that both Stan and Pelphry must know a few Xs and Os but, when you watch them play it always looks like a pick up game with the starters still in class.

Stan never recruited a guard. He always loved centers and forwards. Beverly and Welsh are good, don't get me wrong, but as role players we just don't seem to have good place yet either.

Maybe it is not any of that and just another reflection of a team with no discipline. Time will tell, I sure can't.

We have got to find a way to not go 0 for … in the last several minutes of the game. We need one of the "good" players (sorry Irvin, you are no Kobe Bryant) to step up and hit big shots down the stretch.

Like you said Tipster, the players are still falling into that same ole Stan Heath self-fullfilling prophecy at the end of games. They seem to turn off the switch with 5 minutes to go and try to coast in. Well guess what guys… that doesn't work in Division I basketball. Any team on any given night can put on a 15-0 run at the end of a game. That pretty much means that no matter what kind of lead you have with 5 minutes to go is usually not safe.

We need to learn how to push on the gas at the end of games and bury the other team. The team needs to keep forcing the action and working the offense. Until we learn to do that, the door will continue to be open and teams like Alabama are going to force us into overtime, even though we (incorrectly) thought we had that game in hand.

To sum it up:

1. Play hard until the clock says 0:00.

2. Find a scorer (I'm open to suggestions … not Irvin) to get the ball to down the stretch.

3. Play to win, not to keep from losing.