The Hollins Era Began with a loss

To be honest, the result of last night's game wasn't a surprise to many. Just because we changed coaches, doesn't mean the losing is going to stop. It will take time for Lionel Hollins to get the team on the track that he is guiding them. I did notice that in the 1'st Quarter, the Grizzlies came out with a different philosophy than they have been playing with. On the very 1'st possession, O.J. Mayo brought the ball down court. Then we were playing full court defense and creating turnovers. At the end of the 1'st quarter, we had a lead. I believe this will help them realize, that his system can work.

In the 2'nd quarter, the game started to slip away from us. We lost the quarter by 10. The officiating last night was horrible. I am NOT saying this cost us the win, but it made the game so miserable to watch. There was no flow for the players to get into. O.J. Mayo came into the game and it took him 2 seconds to get a foul called on him so he had to go sit down again. All the foul calls also made the game go very late. The game didn't end until 9:41. That was with it being a 15 point loss so there wasn't all the timeouts and fouls at the end of the game. Normally that game should have ended around 9:20. 61 personal fouls and 2 technical fouls. The refs needed to let them play ball.

The Grizzlies kept fighting and made it close in the 4'th quarter. We got down by only 4 but couldn't finish the comeback. Hollins in his post game press conference said that the players aren't in shape. I believe this is a big cause of the 4'th quarter collapses that keep occurring. Hopefully he can correct this soon and in the 2'nd half of the season we can see some improvement.

Darius Miles provided some great bench points last night. I hope that the Grizzlies will sign him to a contract for the remainder of the season. I believe he has proven worthy of it. We need some scoring off the bench more than just Hak and Lowry.

Hopefully, Hollins can get his first win tonight.