After a fairly lackluster home win Wednesday night more memorable for not being the Rebel debut of Jelan Kendrick, the Rebs dropped a close one on the road to a pretty good USM team. I said before the game that I thought we’d win and even having watched it, I think we should’ve won, but some lazy transition D and some questionable shot selection did us in down the stretch. It was also the first game that Nick Williams was a complete non-factor in. While he may not be the most talented guard on the team, he’s been the steadiest YTD. We cannot afford for him to pull these disappearing acts like he did in conference season last season.

On to the numbers…

These games serve as a perfect example of the flaws of using +/- for a 1-game look at a player. Here are Buckner’s stat lines from the 2 games of the past week…

ULaLa: 2 points, 0 rebounds, 0 blocks

USM: 10 points, 16 rebounds, 4 blocks

… yet, he was +17 against the Ragin’ Cajuns and -7 against the Golden Eagles, so go figure. In fact, our three key players against USM all had bad +/- numbers.

YTD, Nick still has a commanding lead, which reemphasizes why we need him to take a leadership role in close games.