The Cajuns Men’s hoops team is off to a tremendous start in the 2016-2017 season, going 10-3 in the pre-conference schedule. In the process, winning 10 games before Christmas for the first time since ’90-’91 season as well as winning three true road games for the first time since before 1980.
The conference schedule began with Arkansas State this past Saturday and Little Rock, Monday night. Be very clear, winning on the road in college basketball is very difficult. Just ask Duke, UNC and even UCLA. By no means was this a game the Cajuns should have won. As it played it out, it was a game they could have won.
Missed FT’s in the first half contributed to falling behind by 10 early in the second. But as been the case with the Cajuns this season, they tend to go on runs. In just about three minutes the Cajuns went from trailing 43-33 to leading 48-46. From there, the game basically went back and forth, although the Red Wolves always seem to have a bucket or two lead.
Eventually, down 73-71 the Cajuns missed a pair of front ends of 1 & 1’s in the last two minutes and came up short 74-71. Fell behind, made a run, but suffered a tough conference road loss.
Statistically, the Cajuns didn’t shoot very well from the floor (40%) and missed their share of FT’s (10-19). But the stat that stood out to me was Arkansas State shooting 55.8% from the floor. Making more than one of every two shots seems to be an issue. However, listening to Cajuns Director of Operations, Mike Murphy, on SportsChat Monday morning, he contends it was the Louisiana offense instead of the defense.
You can listen to the entire interview our skip to 2:15 mark the part where he says ‘We will win games with offense’. Outside of Paul Westhead from Loyola Marymount, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a coach admit offense wins game compared to defense. While I agree with Coach Murphy scoring is important, defense wins championships is a cliche for good reason.
Cajuns appear to have a team that can contend for the Sun Belt Tournament title, but unless that defense improves, even just slightly, they will have a difficult time knocking off the better teams in the Sun Belt.