Exactly.Dooku25 wrote: The CAA has definitely been up for grabs the last few years. There aren't 3-4 perennial superpowers at the top of the standings each year like in the old days. Baltimore was an easier venue to win in than Richmond and honestly North Charleston doesn't really look like a daunting place to win in either. So really there should be no excuses for Hofstra anymore in the CAA. Might as well stay and try to win the damn league one of these years.
These two games underscore even more how awful that second-half defensive "effort" was last night.Dooku25 wrote: Btw, I hope Joe is taking notes on Bill Coen's coaching tonight. He actually shadowed Talley with his best defender all game. What a concept! Talley has 6 points on 2-12 shooting right now and UNCW after scoring 93 last night, has put up 39 in the first 32 minutes tonight. Did they suddenly forget how to score the ball in 24 hours?
I cared. I said it all season as well. FT shooting was the best its been this year in years. I can't knock the team for that. Defense has been gross for Mihalichs tenure here, all of a sudden we're going to work on it and get better finally? Doubt it.Wags wrote:PLAY DEFENSE. WORK ON FTs. But mostly... PLAY. DEFENSE.Hofstra wrote:Than something has to be fixed. What can be done? What do you suggest?
Said it all season, but no one cared because they were winning 88-85. When that same style became a 93-88 loss in the quarters, everyone suddenly got outraged.
NU is up 14 right now. Talley has 6 pts on 2/9 shooting. HU split with NU, winning at NU this year, so is NU that much better?
NU has had a game plan to not allow Talley to go off like last night. HU's plan was to leave him and hope he'd miss.
Everyone knew it, it's self-referential when talking Hofstra Basketball. You could see from the Army game it would be more of the same. The real issue all year was whether our only way to win was by outscoring the opponent.Wags wrote:PLAY DEFENSE. WORK ON FTs. But mostly... PLAY. DEFENSE.Hofstra wrote:Than something has to be fixed. What can be done? What do you suggest?
Said it all season, but no one cared because they were winning 88-85. When that same style became a 93-88 loss in the quarters, everyone suddenly got outraged.
I can. 68.2% (9th in the CAA) this year. Big factor last night.Hofstra wrote: FT shooting was the best its been this year in years. I can't knock the team for that.
Can always improve if you put in the work. Are they going to be a lock down team all of a sudden? Probably not. Could they play enough D that they win big games like last night IF they put in the work? Maybe. Better than doing nothing about it.Hofstra wrote: Defense has been gross for Mihalichs tenure here, all of a sudden we're going to work on it and get better finally? Doubt it.
Don't get gun shy Budman if someone takes exception to your comments this is par for the course here. That blow out of UNCW last night by NE is proof of the pudding that defense translates to offense and that without it it's just an old fashioned shootout as to which team can score the most points. Kind of sounds like some NBA games. How about Talley having a career night?? What a joke! OK two different nights but with someone all over him he wasn't having a field day. Tough to swallow the reversal of fortunes with the game last night and how NE easily handled UNCW. We need big time changes here in coaches maybe but definitely coaching philosophy as it pertains to defense. I hope these posts resonate into the locker room and beyond! Very,very frustrating and totally disappointing!!budman wrote:I posted last summer and after a win vs Drexel about defense and got ripped a new one. Yes is is not new that Joe Mihalich teams do not play defense, but i hope he can change or Hofstra will never win the CAA tournament. I do not blame the players because we have better athletes than most teams in the CAA and it looks like the effort is there on the most part. The team defense is just not there you almost never see them slide as a team. Yes I do not think Gusty is very good on defense but to have him stepping out of the way or not putting his hands up on defense is mind blowing to me. We will miss Gustys rebounding next year. Trueheart has to step it up in that department and his interior defense also. Hopping like the rest of you we get at least 2 more 5's for next year that play better defense than Gusty. It is going to be hard to make up for Gustys rebounding .Gustys offense should not be as hard to make up for because the reasons his field goal percentage was so high was he got so many open lay up. Hunter Sabety shot at higher percentage on field goals that Gustys. The main reason both shot such a high percentage is no one respected them on offense and got wide open lay ups. The teams that win in the CAA like UNCW last year and The College of Charleston this year play the best defense. Defense WINS.
Totally agree. Without looking at stats, I thought this was one of our better FT shooting teams in quite a long time. We did drop off slightly towards the end of they year however, and Gusty's % definitely kills the team's overall average. JWF, Buie, Pemba, Ray.. all very good at the line.triplec2195 wrote: One last thing about our FT shooting and this has been posted before our Achilles heal IS ROK obviously and when you factor out his numbers we shoot FT's at a .747 % which puts us at 3rd place in the conference not 9th with ROK factored in. We're a very good FT shooting team for the most part!!
Yes we shoot it well but went into a funk the last few games including Justin but get rid of ROK's pathetic shooting percentage and it's a whole different story. You left out ST and he shoots it at 73.3% definitely a good FT shooter for a big kid.Dooku25 wrote:Totally agree. Without looking at stats, I thought this was one of our better FT shooting teams in quite a long time. We did drop off slightly towards the end of they year however, and Gusty's % definitely kills the team's overall average. JWF, Buie, Pemba, Ray.. all very good at the line.triplec2195 wrote: One last thing about our FT shooting and this has been posted before our Achilles heal IS ROK obviously and when you factor out his numbers we shoot FT's at a .747 % which puts us at 3rd place in the conference not 9th with ROK factored in. We're a very good FT shooting team for the most part!!
A funny thing would happen if you removed the numbers for the worst FT shooter on every team in the CAA... those teams' overall numbers would improve, too. So, to say that they'd jump from 9th to 3rd is completely misleading.triplec2195 wrote:budman wrote: One last thing about our FT shooting and this has been posted before our Achilles heal IS ROK obviously and when you factor out his numbers we shoot FT's at a .747 % which puts us at 3rd place in the conference not 9th with ROK factored in. We're a very good FT shooting team for the most part!!
Wags there's some truth to this but without going thru everyone's FT shooting stats ROK is the worst FT shooter in the conference. Let's not assume our FT shooting was the reason we lost this let's see the forest from the trees. We know why we lost this game but we also know we shouldn't have lost it.Wags wrote:A funny thing would happen if you removed the numbers for the worst FT shooter on every team in the CAA... those teams' overall numbers would improve, too. So, to say that they'd jump from 9th to 3rd is completely misleading.triplec2195 wrote:budman wrote: One last thing about our FT shooting and this has been posted before our Achilles heal IS ROK obviously and when you factor out his numbers we shoot FT's at a .747 % which puts us at 3rd place in the conference not 9th with ROK factored in. We're a very good FT shooting team for the most part!!
I'm not going to go through that exercise, but I bet Hofstra is lower (maybe still significantly) than 3rd in that case!
Rok (2/5) only accounted for 3 of the 10 misses at the line in a 5-pt game that ended HU's season. So let's not pretend like it was mostly on Rok when it counted the most. Not even close.
Of course. We all blame the (lack of) defense (rightfully so). Been saying it all year. It came to fruition on Sunday night. Clearly the biggest reason they lost.triplec2195 wrote: Wags there's some truth to this but without going thru everyone's FT shooting stats ROK is the worst FT shooter in the conference. Let's not assume our FT shooting was the reason we lost this let's see the forest from the trees. We know why we lost this game but we also know we shouldn't have lost it.
I just don't get your point about the FT shooting. Obviously you need to hit FT to win games, but the last few games were a clear anomaly. For the year, our main shooters were good: JWF was 79.4%, Pemba 76%, Buie 82.6%, Ray 71.4% - which happens to be NCAA average. We would have been over the NCAA average minus Rok.Wags wrote:Of course. We all blame the (lack of) defense (rightfully so). Been saying it all year. It came to fruition on Sunday night. Clearly the biggest reason they lost.triplec2195 wrote: Wags there's some truth to this but without going thru everyone's FT shooting stats ROK is the worst FT shooter in the conference. Let's not assume our FT shooting was the reason we lost this let's see the forest from the trees. We know why we lost this game but we also know we shouldn't have lost it.
But the FT shooting can't be ignored, either. It was atrocious (not even counting Rok) over the final 3 regular season games (they won in spite of, not because of it).
As for Sunday night, losing by 5 after being within 1 with :30 left, going 12/19 (Rok's 2/5 aside) while UNCW goes 21/26, was a major contributing factor as to why they didn't play last night.
Not on the season record (which is why I didn't mention it until the end of they year), but on how the season ended.Flying Dutchmen wrote: Are you saying we didn't practice FT shooting enough down the stretch? I do think we can stand to get a little better, but if your main guys are at 75%+, it's probably a non-factor on the outcome of your season record.
Agree they weren't the norm, but those three games were the start of a disturbing trend that (in part) ended up with costing them the biggest game of the year. I was hoping after those three games, it wouldn't carry over to Charleston, but it did.triplec2195 wrote:I'll stipulate that our FT shooting was off in the last 3 games but for the most part solid for the other 28 games we played and we won games because of our FT shooting at the end of games so I'll conclude those three games were not the norm and next year without ROK we will be one of the best FT shooting teams in the conference. That's my opinion based on what the stats show for the majority of the year. Can we agree on this??
Amen let's move on from this we have bigger fish to reel in sort of speak.Wags wrote:Agree they weren't the norm, but those three games were the start of a disturbing trend that (in part) ended up with costing them the biggest game of the year. I was hoping after those three games, it wouldn't carry over to Charleston, but it did.triplec2195 wrote:I'll stipulate that our FT shooting was off in the last 3 games but for the most part solid for the other 28 games we played and we won games because of our FT shooting at the end of games so I'll conclude those three games were not the norm and next year without ROK we will be one of the best FT shooting teams in the conference. That's my opinion based on what the stats show for the majority of the year. Can we agree on this??
In any case, I'm not too worried about it going forward. The defense, rebounding (without Rok) and a few key guys who each need to take the next steps in their respective development are the main things for next year.