if you've been following the bruins the last few weeks, you probably know about our weekend struggles, as they are beginning to get plenty of attention. the evidence is that we are now 5-1 in our last 6 thursday games, but 0-5 in weekend games following a thursday game. The proposed causes of this trend include fatigue and being too young to come back with intensity so soon after a good thursday performance. Perhaps this second theory has some merit, but let's look at the games a little closer. the 0-5 stretch includes two losses to arizona, one at Washington, one at Stanford, and a home game versus cal. Clearly the Cal game is a huge red flag, but that was over a month ago. Those other losses were all against teams higher than us in the standings, with only one game being at Pauley, so losing those games isn't that surprising. i think what is a bit of a concern, however, is that we haven't even been close in our most recent losses.

on the other hand, perhaps the trend we should be looking at is our recent Thursday wins. our last three have been by 21, 15, and 19 points. yes our opponents in those games were nothing special, but we were struggling to beat those types of teams early in the year. overall, we most certainly are improving, and there is no doubt that these tremendous performances make our poor showings in the weekend games even more noticeable. what we need to do now is take the next step and put together 40 minutes of solid basketball on the road against a quality opponent. we need to avoid the devastating 19-0 types of runs against us that we've been experiencing. if our perimeter jumpers are not falling, we need to figure out other ways to score. whether accomplishing this will translate to a win on Sunday, I don't know. but it would be nice for us to at least give ourselves a chance to win in the final minutes. more on the notre dame game to follow.