Interestingly enough,
Turgeon believes and his
09 aTm squad should give us a bit of hope.
Granted, its easy to sit here (especially after K-State has played a stretch of basketball reminscent of the Altburidge era) and have no hope. But I generally believe a couple things; you are never as bad as your worst stretch and eventually things usually even out over time. Its not like it will take a fantastic stretch of basketball for this team to get to .500 in the league, but it will take good, solid basketball. Frank Martin's tenure has shown us that eventually his teams will go on a good run of games (though they generally also go on a bad run). Hopefully that bad run is gone and a good run is coming.
Breaking down the rest of the schedule, the Cats likely have to go 5-1 at home and 2-3 on the road to finish the season, plus probably win at least one in the Big 12 Tournament. The home games are BU, NU, KU, OU, MU, and ISU. Even as bad as we've played, you'd have to expect some evening out (especially with Kelly) and its not unreasonable to expect 5-1 in those games. Then the road gives us KU, ISU, CU, NU, and UT. The bookends of that stretch are likely losses, but its the three middle games against the North that you have to win a pair in, and again, this isn't some monumental task. Now all this is thrown out the window if this team quits on the season, but I don't think that has happened yet. A couple more losses and it could; we'll see.
That leads us to tonight, this is pretty much a must win in this scenario, and I believe its a winnable game. Baylor is a talented team, but not playing great. IMO its a good match-up with us, despite a lot of their solid kenpom numbers. Baylor would seem to be a team we can dictate a lot in the game with physical play IF we play like we are capable of. Now, we will still give up some runs and Baylor will hit some 3s, but we must contain Jones, Acy, and Dunn.
Here's hoping the Cats can sustain what little _FAN optimism I have left.
