A Sea Of Red

McKay Arena will be rocking tonight, sold out, CFAW in town, old, new LU Flames everywhere. It’s Sparky vs Roary the Panther and while Roary might scratch early this one belongs to Sparky. Liberty don’t mess around at McKay Arena. They defend, move the ball, and make shots. FIU continues to want to play fast but can’t keep up with the flames. LUMBB don’t just win they cover the spreed making LONGSHOTS proud.
Final LU 88 - FIU 69. Flames move on to 15-0 conference and 17 straight and keeps McKay Arena a fortress.

Porter is sloppy tonight.

Put me down for not wanting to see FIU in the first round of the tournament.

Tough night for Porter. Metheny continues to come up big in critical moments. Loved seeing some fire from Harper after the ugly contact under the rim.

OREBs 17 to 5 is brutal, though, and indicative of how poor of a match up this lengthy, athletic FIU team is. It's hard to throw stones when the team is on a historic run, but giving up that many second chance opportunities could easily come back to haunt.

Props to the fans in attendance. I don't think I've heard Liberty Arena that loud on TV for a random midweek game.

Funny thing about that one… FIU didn’t guard Liberty the way they usually do. In years past they’ve been content to sit back, switch some stuff, maybe hedge and recover, live with tough shots. Not this time.

They iced every side ball screen, forced everything down the sideline, trapped hard out of it, and then rotated that weak-side defender early to tag the roller. That’s not accidental. That’s a game plan. They were determined to take away the pocket pass and make the Flames play out of short rolls and skip reads.

And all you armchair coaches acting confused like the offense “looked off” — this is why. When you ice and bring weak-side help that aggressively, it changes spacing, timing, and where the shots come from. That’s basketball 101. Should’ve known that by now.

Did I miss the final score? Sure did. But I do know this — the Flames won. Again.

Moving on.