UTEP's Horton heard a Coach

Progress in a 21-point loss? Yes.

A tiny bit of agate type  on Friday's El Paso Times "Scoreboard" page shows  UTEP Basketball Coach Tim Floyd has gotten his message across to Randy Culpepper, the reigning Conference USA Player of the year.

As the fabled Horton heard the Who, so did Randy hear the Coach.

The agate line: Culpepper 1-8 1-1 4.

The 1-8 stands out. It means Culpepper made 1 of 8 field goal attempts. It was ice water, not in his veins, but in his shooting fingertips. In the past, Culpepper would have continued to shoot. Not often does the senior take only eight shots. Yes, he's prolific when he's hot, but he's also been known to shoot the Miners out of games, too.

The message from Floyd has been: Take good shots. If your not hitting, STOP shooting, for crying out loud. And don't FORCE shots. And that goes for everybody.

On Thursday, Culpepper was well guarded by BYU, which is a good team and is ranked No. 23 in the nation. BYU plays smart basketball, always has.

Culpepper played smart basketball, too, in Provo, Utah - he not always has.

UTEP was an 89-68 loser to a team that shot 12 for 25 from 3-point range and won the inside bump-around  battle on the backboards, 42-33.

This situation of "Randy not hot tonight" will come up on occasion during C-USA play. It'll come up in a game UTEP can win, if the guys play smart.

It's a positive for the Miners that Randy heard the Coach Thursday.

Comments

[CLEOFITZWITZ]

It could be argued that because Randy is our most talented offensive player, we need to get him more shots. If his shots are not falling, we need to get him in position to get easier shots. BYU didn't throw in the towel when Fredette was struggling early. Stone was doing a great job on him defensively but I'll bet they would not have abandoned running their offense through him.

Randy can score over, under and around people so we need him to take the most shots. It would be ludicrous to attempt to get everyone equal shots just to balance scoring. Randy is a scorer. Let him get shots.

I understand that he has taken some bad shots in his UTEP career, but that is no reason to take the ball out of his hands.

[James]

Hey Joe, never liked losing and never will! But this was a learning experience to take to the bank. Defense baby! Defense! It will be what carries us into the C-USA tourney and gets us to the finals! What happens there is a toss up for me! But I am sure that the NCAA will take at least 2 from C-USA this year.Got to have consistent shooting from the field and excellent free throw percentages. If! And I mean If! We can do that!We will have won enough games to advance to the Big One. Must be deflating to get bombed out of the gym! Great! Needed to happen and happen early to avoid destroying any late season momentum that could be crucial in getting those late season W's! Like coach said, first time he had a team who could not cover the 3-pt line! Something to that effect! So get over it! Lets get back to work! Did anyone think that there wasn't any room for further improvement? I'll put my money on these guy's being there at the end when it counts. Learn from it guy's! Won't get many opportunities against top 25 teams! Keep your Orange ON! No Fair Weather Fans needed! GO MINERS!

[RocketScientist]

UTEP is going to have some problems with UCF and Memphis this year, especially if we continue to play like that. Foul trouble is what hurt is early on, more so than Randy not making all his shots. When Williams had his 3rd foul at 10 minutes into the game we lost a key player. Lots of kinks to work out before we get into conference play and not a lot of time left...

[John Franco]

It sure would have been nice to have Caracter for one more year. These are definitely not Floyd guys. Keep supporting Floyd, Miner fans, like you support "Hot air" Price, Floyd will be successful here, he isn't just here to save up for his retirement.

[Vincent Johnson]

Sometimes coaches are too smart for their own good. They get paid an enormous amount of money and make some of the stupidist decisions.You know you are playing a team that has a great scorer. You put your best defensive player on him, called a box and 1 where the offensive player from the other team is being shadowed by your defensive specialist. Throws other team off and now they can not run their offense. Learned this in the seventh grade and still works if implemented properly. This was 35 years ago. pay me $80,000 a year and I can make tremendous strides by playing old fashion no show boating basketball making players think first and celebrate at the end not during the game.

[Monchis]

Just one question. Why is it that UTEP players never show up to play when facing good competition, like BYU?
This current team showed just how inferior they are!
Getting shellacked like that against BYU, tsk, tsk!