MBB Game 27 vs. UNC Wilmington on 2/15/2020 at 4:00 P.M.

[triplec2195]

I've said all along that Kante is a beast...just a matter of time for him to mature and gain confidence...nice to see...as for the tournament, still feel we will need more from our bench our hopefully we get a blowout in one game to rest our starters, although the history of this tournament tells us otherwise.

Kante has improved game after game this year -
he has gotten into better game shape/ learned his role/ become an integral part of this teams success
nice work young man
nice call HUSID74

What's great is that unlike some other good bigs HU has had (like Taylor or Uter), Kante will still be here a while. It'll obviously be very tough to replace guys like Buie and Pemberton, but with Coburn back for another year and Kante only a sophomore, it'll be nice to have a big like that to be a force in the CAA for a couple more years - something that outside of Gustys in recent years, HU was often lacking over a multiple-year period.

I hope this also quells the future knee-jerk reactions and we've learned our lesson after doing this two years in a row. We jumped all over Taylor at first before praising him later and we did the same with Kante. Gotta have patience with these bigs and allow them to get comfortable and develop.

Yes and while you're talking about patience and giving people a chance lets not limit it to just Kante. I'll leave it right there without going into anymore detail.

[fiftiespride]

I share the boards enthusiasm for how we are playing, our improved defense and disappointment in our last 2 crowds. Kantes' development and increasing contribution is a big plus and drawing 13 fouls
is indeed an amazing stat.. Another amazing, frustrating and concerning stat is 18 minutes of bench time in a game we are up by 28 with 10 minutes to go. No rest for Buie, 1 mn. for Pemberton, 2 mn. for Coburn. We have seen this picture consistently through the years, holding our breath over potential injury, cumulative fatigue, the lack of development and confidence in our bench with the prospect of 3 games in 3 days, hopefully, looming in March when it counts. Fatigue can manifest itself in many ways not reflected in the stats, mental reactions such as anticipating where a rebound will go, how to switch, when to take a charge or quickness to the ball or on a close out, etc.. Evan, if you are reading; I wonder where we rank year to year on the % of playing time our bench receives, what our Sat. vs. Thurs. day record is when we are more rested and what our plus/minus is through out the game by the shortest segment of time you are able provide the stat for.

[EvanJ]

I don't have access the bench playing time percentages. Before every game recently, Jerry Beach says we have the lowest percentage of bench minutes in Division I. KenPom has that if you pay, which I don't.

Earlier this season I read that we had a long winning streak on Thursdays, but then two of our three CAA losses including our only blowout loss were on Thursdays. Travel partners makes it so you play an opponent once on Thursday and once on Saturday, so within the CAA your schedule on Thursday and on Saturday should be equal. I'm going to list pairs of games and exclude Northeastern (H means home, A means away, and that's the same for both games in each pair).

2018-2019: Won both in six pairs and won and then lost in two pairs
Delaware and Drexel (H): Won both (the games were Friday and Sunday which is the same amount of rest)
W&M and Elon (A): Won both
UNCW and Charleston (H): Won both
JMU and Towson (A): Won both
Our winning streak ended at Northeastern, who I'm excluding, but I wanted to point out when that was.
Elon and W&M (H): Won both
Charleston and UNCW (A): Won at Charleston and lost at UNCW
Towson and JMU (H): Won hosting Towson and lost hosting JMU
Drexel and Delaware (A): Won both

2019-2020: Won both three times, lost and then won twice, and won and then lost once
JMU and Towson (A): Won both (the games were Saturday and Monday which is the same amount of rest)
W&M and Elon (H): Lost hosting W&M and won hosting Elon
UNCW and Charleston (A): Won at UNCW and lost at Charleston
Delaware and Drexel (H): Lost hosting Delaware and won hosting Drexel
Elon and W&M (A): Won both
Charleston and UNCW (H): Won both

That's a total of fourteen pairs, with nine when we won both, three when we won and then lost, and two when we lost and then won. The pairs we split are a small sample size where having three one way and two the other way doesn't prove anything.

I have no way of finding +/- other than the play-by-play for each game. It would be easy to divide each game into quarters, but I'm not going to spend time doing that. https://gohofstra.com/sports/mens-basketball/schedule and equivalent pages for past seasons have links if you want to do it yourself. Getting to the play-by-play is a two-step process because there isn't a direct link. You have to go to the box score and then to the play-by-play.

I don't want Mihalich to be coach any team would want to go win-win-loss on three consecutive days of a tournament. It's fine for Duke to do that, but not for us.

[fiftiespride]

Thanks Evan. You are amazing with your stats. You should be in analytics if you aren't.