Cold shooting and turnovers plagued the Bisons in last night’s loss to North Alabama in Florence, 79-68. As if it weren’t already clear that Matt Hall’s performance is tremendously important for the Bisons’ success, last night’s effort proved that for sure. Hall had one of his worst games in a Bisons uniform, shooting 5-of-15 from the field and not making it to the free throw line at all. In addition to his subpar scoring performance, he pulled down only four rebounds and turned the ball over a staggering eight times. The rest of the team had 17 turnovers as a team and otherwise shot just 45%.
Here are the keys:
| HU | UNA | +/- | ||
| Eff | 83.6 | 97.8 | -14.2 | Actual net efficiency |
| TS% | 50.5 | 52.8 | -0.023 | |
| OR% | 27.5% | 22.0% | 0.055 | |
| TR | 23.3 | 14.7 | -0.086 | |
| -14.9 | Predicted net efficiency |
And the individual stats:
| ## | Player Name | MIN | GS | GS/M | TS% | PPR | AR | TR | RR | |
| 24 | Andrepont, Patrick | * | 27 | 7.0 | 0.259 | 63.6 | -12.3 | 6.3 | 25.0 | 14.6% |
| 22 | Barnett, Steven | * | 14 | 3.6 | 0.257 | 102.5 | 2.4 | 36.8 | 18.4 | 0.0% |
| 30 | Hall, Matt | * | 36 | -2.9 | -0.081 | 40.0 | -18.5 | 8.0 | 32.0 | 5.5% |
| 42 | Thies, Jacob | * | 13 | -0.8 | -0.062 | 0.0 | -7.7 | 0.0 | 33.3 | 22.8% |
| 21 | Sims, Brandon | * | 30 | 6.8 | 0.227 | 78.6 | -6.7 | 0.0 | 22.2 | 3.3% |
| 4 | Kee, Cole | – | 16 | 7.1 | 0.444 | 59.7 | -6.3 | 0.0 | 8.4 | 9.3% |
| 12 | Bibb, Reggie | – | 20 | 2.3 | 0.115 | 0.0 | 6.7 | 50.0 | 20.0 | 7.4% |
| 15 | Hamilton, Rick | – | 25 | 5.3 | 0.212 | 43.8 | 0.0 | 23.1 | 15.4 | 7.9% |
| 32 | Morgan, Trent | – | 15 | -1.8 | -0.120 | 20.0 | -4.4 | 22.2 | 22.2 | 3.3% |
| 34 | Bynum, Jesse | – | 2 | 1.3 | 0.650 | 50.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 24.7% |
| 40 | Howard, Brian | – | 2 | 1.6 | 0.800 | 100.0 | -100.0 | 0.0 | 66.7 | 98.8% |
The Bisons actually rebounded well against a physical UNA team, even with a mostly small lineup, but that’s only one of the keys to the game. Poor shooting (at least comparatively) and an inability to hold on to the ball were what sunk them last night.
No single player had a game score over 10, and Hall’s was actually negative. Another telling stat that you’d see from reading the box score is that the Bisons only attempted three free throws. Harding was called for 24 fouls, compared to UNA’s 11. Another intriguing number from the game is this: 34, the number of minutes played by the Barnett/Bibb point guard duo. This begs the question: who played the other six minutes at the point for the Bisons? Trent Morgan or Rick Hamilton?
There look to be several different subplots coming out of this game, with Thies’ playing time still on the decline and Matt Hall clearly not playing his best basketball. Can the Bisons recover and finish this road swing 4-1? We’ll find out on Saturday in Huntsville.
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