These two things are both true:
1. That was not our best game. Keaton didn’t play well, especially offensively, and they had a good defensive game plan for him. We didn’t shoot it well. We didn’t rebound well. We looked a little gassed down the stretch. A few weeks of playing a 7 man rotation is likely catching up to us. Nice to have a longer rest this week after the Wisconsin game.
2. The refs didn’t have their best game either. I understand sports are difficult to referee and it takes a special human to endure the level of animosity they receive night in and night out. I respect that. However, there were some truly baffling calls down the stretch. And not flagrant’ing the blatant trip is just awful. They’re gonna get somebody hurt if they don’t start penalizing Fears’ dirty play.
That said, this was one of our worst games of the year, yet we still could have, maybe even should have won on the road against a top 10 team. I’ll take it.
The guys just need to catch up on some rest and get Kylan back. Still poised for a run in March.