Baylor Survives a Free-Throw Shooting Contest Against South Carolina

This game was brutal to watch, unless you just really love free throws and turnovers. I'm going to start doing the post-game wrap up as bullets and then put together something more cohesive later.

• Without Brady Heslip, this team would not have an outside threat. Chery has shown an ability to hit the three, but he doesn't keep a defense honest the same way Heslip does.
• I think a lot of people are going to put this lackluster performance on Drew - but free throws and hustle plays are not entirely on his head. This team kept looking at each other like, "Are you going to make a play, cause I'm not." We looked timid and unsure and some of the out-of-place issues are so obvious that not even Scott Drew is missing them.
• The new rules are making college basketball difficult to watch/understand. I really hope that eventually the players adjust to the rules and that games go more smoothly, but for now the number of fouls is brutal.
• Ish Wainright running the point in place of Chery is turnover central. Wainright has yet to show the fans what he apparently has been showing the coaches in practice. Rough start to his freshman year.
• I'm just not sure that man to man defense is going to work for this team with the new rules. Scratch that, I don't know how defense is going to work with the new rules, period.
  
• I know it seems like I'm over-reacting to an early season game, but I'm sure those of you who watched the game would agree, it just looked like putrid basketball.
• How do you shoot this poorly from the free throw line? 53.7% isn't going to work. Especially when the number of fouls called in games this year almost require you to be able to make them to win games.
• Rico Gathers was the only player rebounding worth anything. Well, Prince too, but Rico's seemed to come when we desperately needed them.
  
• Brady Heslip was our best transition defense player. Brady Heslip.
• Kenny Chery is actually really good offensively but still makes some poor decisions defensively. I think he, Heslip and Rico were our bright spots today.
• Isaiah Austin looked good in spurts, and then would just inexplicably get killed on the glass. I know it ultimately isn't his game to make a ton of plays in the post, but at 7'1" he just has to be better at pulling down rebounds.
• The game ended about how you would expect a game like this to end. There was a foul called with 0.0 left on the clock. Not even kidding - basically the same time the clock expired the ref blew the whistle. Ultimately they decided the foul occurred after the game was over and South Carolina wasn't afforded an opportunity to shoot two free throws to try and send the game to overtime.
• Royce O'Neale had zero turnovers in the first game, but four today for the most of any player in the game. We had 15 turnovers to South Carolina's 8.
  
• Taurean Prince once again somehow grabbed 12 rebounds and scored 8 points in very little playing time. I love the way he plays and don't know why he isn't playing more. Four fouls today didn't help though.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts, but I'll dump them down in the comments when they come. What do you think? Agree/Disagree?

I know one thing you can't disagree with me on: this was ugly.