Bad loss tonight and a very disappointing game for the Cougars. Their level of play simply wasn’t very good tonight. Too many careless mistakes to even keep it respectable. Even though the Marquette game was a long time ago, Chicago looked much more together then. Same with the Stanford game. This one looked more like an early season game—or maybe just a game when a team hasn’t played for a while like the Cougars haven’t.

In the final minute of the first half, it was an 11 point deficit and Cougar ball. Gonzaga hadn’t hit a field goal in 5 minutes. Not only did the Cougars not score, they gave up a 3 on the other end in the final seconds. Instead of possibly going in with a single digit deficit, it was 14. And that momentum shift set the tone for the entire second half.

17 turnovers (11 in the 2nd half) was the stat that killed them. So many of them were unforced and simply careless ball handling too. That put any hope of being in the game to bed. Free throw shooting wasn’t good, and they weren’t able to get to the line nearly enough. Normally free throw shooting is a strong point for the Cougars. Shooting from the field wasn’t great, but not disastrous either. Rebounding margin was fairly close to even and Chicago had more offensive boards than GU.

Here’s hoping they get some things fixed before the Fresno game.