Huskies home loss unacceptable according to Romar
Dec 18, 2011, 3:51 PM
By Shannon Drayer
A game that was supposed to be a tune-up for conference play may have turned into a setback for the Huskies instead.
“If we are playing like this Thursday we then we to go back to the drawing board and maybe change a lot of things but we will see where we are at Thursday,” said Lorenzo Romar after witnessing his team fall 92-73 to South Dakota State.
“Is there time time panic? If we are doing this again, Northridge (Thursday)? Time to panic. But right now we will have a few days to try to be much better than we were today.”
North Dakota State took control of the game from the get go getting out to a 23-7 lead on 85% shooting and hitting 8 of 11 three point shots to go into the locker room with a 51-33 halftime lead. Romar was disturbed with the lack of energy he saw from his team and to that end took his first timeout just over a minute into the game.
“I had a concern before the game began that we potentially might lack energy,” said Romar who noted that he first noticed this at the team’s 8:30 pregame meal. “After the very emotional New York trip, flying back and then not having a day off trying to prepare for finals week and all that. We got an adrenaline win, I think, against Santa Barbara. I spoke, before the game to our team concerning our lack of energy and said we better be ready to go.”
He also acknowledged that his team may have been overlooking their opponent.
“I don’t think they have ever seen highlights on Sportscenter of South Dakota State. Subconsciously, consciously, sometimes that can have an effect. We tried to help our team understand how good a basketball player Nate Wolters is. Bottom line, energy or no energy, this is unacceptable. It should not happen.”
Just how good was Wolters?
“I haven’t seen a performance like that since Jason Kidd was in the Pac 10,” said Romar. “The guy played the entire game without a turnover. Seven assists, 34 pts, that’s a heck of a game. I thought it was an awesome performance. One of the best performances by a point guard I have ever seen at this level.”
Wolters performance aside the Huskies should have some big concerns coming out of this game. Romar saw the lack of energy early, talked to his players about it. Implored them not to look past SD State and in return they turned in a performance at home that ended a 32 game win streak against non conference opponents.
Despite their performance against UCSB two days ago it would be impossible to say that this team should be overlooking anyone. Tony Wroten agreed, after the fact.
“You have got to know everybody is coming to play,” said Wroten. “They ain’t going to take us lightly. Even though we have to wake up early we still got to play. Some guys were tired some guys didn’t play like they usually do but we are still supposed to find a way to dig down and win.”
One more game and then conference play begins. The Huskies have done nothing so far to help themselves toward post season play. Romar says figuring out what it will take to get into the post season is never a focus of his this time of the year. I certainly can’t be now.
“We just played a very, very poor game today,” he said. “Before we start figuring out what our RPI is, we better get better or those questions are irrelevant. We need to do one thing. We need to get better.”
