No DeMarcus tonight, he's out with back spasms.
Terrible on a number of levels.
1) we need this game, and it was completely winnable
2) Monroe is the rival big man from Cousins class, and this was supposed to be a showdown to see who was better. Lot of interested parties have been circling this game.
3) back spasms can recur, and DeMarcus could be limited all road trip or even longer
4) we have shown very little ability to make up for the absense of one of our Big Three guys.
we've just had a number of these ill-timed events that have just kept us pinned. Overall compared to many teams we're doing fine on injuries etc., but we have exactly the wrong guys hurt/injured at exactly the wrong times, and everytime there looks like there might be a turning point, something happens. This is the sort of injury that could really finish off our hopes of getting back into a playoff race. A string of winnable games coming up, we lose one of our main guys, drop them, and suddenly we are 13 games under .500 and climbing all the way back in a shortened season begins to look impossible.
Reke and Thronton need to step up in a big way here. Shut up the national media, as well as our own 'fans'. Maybe this is the opportunity for Chuck to prove he's not worthless. Start him and have him try to shutdown Monroe and make it a wash, then beat them with our superior backcourt.