[NU Sports] RE: Not ready for prime-time players

[Tom Maycock]

Shon Morris probably said it best in noting that St John's found and exploited 
NU's weakness in the middle. That weakness, along with overall defensive 
limitations, have been pretty obvious all season, but hadn't cost the Cats until 
last night. 

I'll say it again--we may really miss Kyle Rowley by the time the season is 
over. Even a very mildly improved version of last year's edition would provide 
some interior bulk and rebounding in the very situations/matchups where 
Mirkovic's smaller size and skill set don't work well. 

But he's not here, and neither is Coble, who probably could have added enough 
"make your own shot" scoring punch to overcome St. John's. 

So, as Eanet and Morris noted, we really need the combo of Mirkovic and Curletti 
to put up a double-double between them. Last night, they barely put up a 
single-single combined. Tough to win that way. Is it fixable, or does it mean 
the season is doomed? Dunno. The one constant with Luka is inconsistency. He 
could dominate at times last year, and he could disappear. The Cats really need 
him to be "on" all the time this year. 

The other big factor was that our starting backcourt spent a lot of time on the 
bench, especially Juice who was way below his average minutes. Whether that was 
just due to fouls, or because he's banged up (based on one pre-game comment I 
read), I don't know, but it really hurt. 

And it appears that losing Cobb really hurt our chances as well. I know he came 
back in the first half after going down, but did he play at all in the second 
half? I really hope he's going to be OK. 

I'm not ready to give up on the season yet. All we needed was some better 
shooting in the second half and it's a game down tot he wire. But the Cats will 
need to really tighten down the D to be competitive in the B10.

Tom