MBB Game 28 vs. Towson on February 21 7:00 P.M.

[Mikey77]

I agree with HU87 that it is time for the coaching staff and bench to step up. The reason we are now struggling with teams we beat by 15 plus points earlier in the year is because we've been scouted and analyzed by the rest of the league and there are some pretty good coaches in the CAA like Coen and Shaver. (Glad the guy from UNCW left.) In my view we are easy to scout as well as there is not much imagination coming from the sideline, of course why should there be when you run off 16 in a row and win 23 of 28. That said, I was glad to see the adjustment last night putting in ST when we were getting beat in the paint and JR when we needed another shooter. In the past, JM either did not make that adjustment or was too slow to make it. We have some depth this year and need to use it. Pressing more and full court would wear down the opponents back court and produce some of the turnovers we've been seeing and we have the depth to create "forty minutes of hell" ala Nolan Richardson's old Arkansas teams.

[Wags]

I agree with HU87 that it is time for the coaching staff and bench to step up. The reason we are now struggling with teams we beat by 15 plus points earlier in the year is because we've been scouted and analyzed by the rest of the league and there are some pretty good coaches in the CAA like Coen and Shaver. (Glad the guy from UNCW left.) In my view we are easy to scout as well as there is not much imagination coming from the sideline, of course why should there be when you run off 16 in a row and win 23 of 28. That said, I was glad to see the adjustment last night putting in ST when we were getting beat in the paint and JR when we needed another shooter. In the past, JM either did not make that adjustment or was too slow to make it. We have some depth this year and need to use it. Pressing more and full court would wear down the opponents back court and produce some of the turnovers we've been seeing and we have the depth to create "forty minutes of hell" ala Nolan Richardson's old Arkansas teams.

Hofstra has some guys who can play that way at specific times, but no matter what combinations are out there, Hofstra doesn't have the quantity of those types of athletes on its roster to play anything like that Arkansas style. They don't even have the personnel to play apply the type of pressure that VCU did on teams when VCU was in the CAA.

I'm also not sure it's about other teams scouting for the second time around against Hofstra. If it were, it would be hard to explain Hofstra getting down 10 and barely hanging on to beat Elon by three the first time before blowing Elon's door's off by 41 the second time. Or pulling away from Charleston to win by 14 the first time before going up 24 on them the second time. I think it's more about what Hofstra does rather than what the other team does. They have the most talent on the floor in any CAA game. For them, it comes down to avoiding complacency and having the necessary level of focus, energy and commitment at both ends of the floor, and fully being prepared to enter the game the right way, and to play the right way for 40 minutes rather then being too overconfident, jacking up too many 3s (just for fun) instead of attacking, being patient and sharing the ball offensively, and digging in on defense, without mental lapses or taking possessions or stretches in games off.

That's not to entirely dismiss your scouting theory though... because NU, UNCW, Towson and (to a degree) W&M all had better games the second time against HU this year. That's why it'll be interesting to see what happens in these last three regular season games, if JMU, Drexel and Delaware are much better the second time after HU beat those teams by 17, 14 and 45 the first time around. If that does happen, that along with what the aforementioned teams did the second time around could be alarming an alarming trend for anyone HU plays in each round for a third time in North Charleston. That's why it's so important for HU to not only win, but to really take care of business and not let these last three regular season games be too competitive before the CAA tourney (even with the last two of those three being on the road).

[Mikey77]

Did not mean to say that HU has Arkansas level talent, just that it has more depth this year and can attack the ball more than it has done in the past. I might add however that the other teams in the CAA also don't have Arkansas (at least the Nolan R teams) talent as well. It wouldn't hurt HU to pressure the ball more in the back court and make the other team work a little harder before it goes into an offensive set.

[Wags]

Did not mean to say that HU has Arkansas level talent, just that it has more depth this year and can attack the ball more than it has done in the past. I might add however that the other teams in the CAA also don't have Arkansas (at least the Nolan R teams) talent as well. It wouldn't hurt HU to pressure the ball more in the back court and make the other team work a little harder before it goes into an offensive set.

I gotchya, but they don't have the kind of personnel or depth to play that way though. They basically played six (only two others, who hardly played), with two starters playing every second of a double OT game last night, with a 2-3 zone. You want them to press and play Richardson's style? They'd be falling on their faces by the start of the second half. Also, you don't try that now, after 28 games, when you haven't built up the conditioning required to play that way over the whole season.

[Mikey77]

Fair enough, but HU can certainly play that way in second half or when the situation permits. My comments are especially so against a team like UNCW which from I saw the other night did not have great ball handing skills or W&M as well as NU where pressing the guards would strip 4 or 5 seconds off the possession and perhaps impair the three point shots which have killed us in the past.

[Captain]

We all know the problems we have had over the years with the short bench especially in the CAA tourney. This was the year we thought depth wouldn't be an issue. Radovic struggled, Wormley had issues, Trueheart as well. I am wondering if for the next few games, if Wormley in particular should get some run. He will start the game tomorrow on Senior Day I believe. He might be needed for the potential 3 games in 3 days...why not give him a bit of time these last 3 games for his confidence going into the tourney and to save some legs for the over worked starting group? If he played and saved 5 minutes for Buie, JWF and Coburn it couldn't hurt unless he was a total liability. Fatigue and foul trouble can be real problems come tournament time.
Trueheart is not embarrassing himself on the court so that is big too I think. Keeping the core fresh may be huge come tourney time but if they don't use the peripheral players now, they won't come tourney time.

[Mikey77]

Captain - That's what i'm talkin about!

[Wags]

We all know the problems we have had over the years with the short bench especially in the CAA tourney. This was the year we thought depth wouldn't be an issue. Radovic struggled, Wormley had issues, Trueheart as well. I am wondering if for the next few games, if Wormley in particular should get some run. He will start the game tomorrow on Senior Day I believe. He might be needed for the potential 3 games in 3 days...why not give him a bit of time these last 3 games for his confidence going into the tourney and to save some legs for the over worked starting group? If he played and saved 5 minutes for Buie, JWF and Coburn it couldn't hurt unless he was a total liability. Fatigue and foul trouble can be real problems come tournament time.
Trueheart is not embarrassing himself on the court so that is big too I think. Keeping the core fresh may be huge come tourney time but if they don't use the peripheral players now, they won't come tourney time.

Once they officially lock up the 1 seed, you can possibly give others some extra time. Before then, you can't do it. Too much is at stake. Have to secure the 1 seed first. And realistically, if guts like Wormley were good enough to get those minutes, they'd have been playing all along. I highly doubt with everything on the line in the CAA tourney, Joe and his staff will count on players he's hardly used, fatigue or not. They'll instead roll with who they've been rolling with all along. And that makes sense. Might be tough in a tournament situation, but that still gives them the best chance. You can't just put guys out there for depth if they can't play.

[triplec2195]

I have to give everyone a lot of credit here on really great posts and insight into this program. I specifically thought to myself what FD posted about limping to the finish line. At this time of the year we want to be a finely tuned machine ready to roll over our competition but almost the opposite appears to be true. After watching this last game close to courtside I couldn't help feeling scared of us losing our first home game to a team we were favored by 15 points. A team that has lesser talent but a team that clearly was out playing us at home in front of a good size crowd that was very vocal if not at times hostile. There's no doubt that if we're on the road we lose this game. Nakye Sanders who was a handful and eventual fouled out only played 11 minutes in the first game and had no points. Alex Thomas started that game and only played 8 minutes. Both non factors in the first game. So my feeling is that they didn't try to dominate us in the paint in the first game probably because we jumped out to a substantial lead and we were hitting our outside shots. Instead they went to a four guard lineup. I could be wrong but I feel we play our best games when we play teams with 4 guard offenses and we match up better. If anyone out there thinks we can play the way we did yesterday and beat anyone in Charleston we will all be in for a big disappointment. I know we like to justify everything with statistics so if you have been following statistics CAA only we have been the #1 offensive team and I believe have been for a while. We're up there in every offensive category and 4th in the country in scoring. However while at one time we were one of the best teams in the CAA in defense we have now slipped to 6th giving up 74.3 points a game. We are 7th in rebounding defense and 8th in margin of rebounds. People have made the point that we're regressing and going back to our old ways defensively. All very valid points so how do we win these games when we're out rebounded and outplayed in the paint. We can all point to specific plays etc but really in the overall scheme of things we are hitting three's more then our opponent and taking a lot of them as already has been pointed out. This is how we're pulling out these games along with our FT shooting second in the nation. I'm not so much going to comment on our attitude at the walk thru etc. I imagine that this will be corrected rather quickly. So how does this team correct the error of its ways? Anyone who saw the game yesterday knows we had good open looks beyond the perimeter and just didn't bury them. Coburn and Eli stick out in my mind. My feeling going into this tourney and even before is that we need an answer on how we're going to defend teams that start two guys around 6'9" who will clearly have the height advantage and cause mismatches in the paint. IMO we need to give Stafford more minutes and cut down on the mismatches even if this means we're going to sacrifice scoring because we're not going to win many(any) games where we're being out-rebounded in a lopsided way and outscored in the paint the same way. I hope after we win on Saturday and seal up the #1 seed here that we get Trueheart some serious minutes in the last two games on the road and work on the potential matchups we will see in this tourney. We will have plenty of time and maybe we can get Coburn back on track also which will be a big plus for us.

[HUSID74]

We all know the problems we have had over the years with the short bench especially in the CAA tourney. This was the year we thought depth wouldn't be an issue. Radovic struggled, Wormley had issues, Trueheart as well. I am wondering if for the next few games, if Wormley in particular should get some run. He will start the game tomorrow on Senior Day I believe. He might be needed for the potential 3 games in 3 days...why not give him a bit of time these last 3 games for his confidence going into the tourney and to save some legs for the over worked starting group? If he played and saved 5 minutes for Buie, JWF and Coburn it couldn't hurt unless he was a total liability. Fatigue and foul trouble can be real problems come tournament time.
Trueheart is not embarrassing himself on the court so that is big too I think. Keeping the core fresh may be huge come tourney time but if they don't use the peripheral players now, they won't come tourney time.

Once they officially lock up the 1 seed, you can possibly give others some extra time. Before then, you can't do it. Too much is at stake. Have to secure the 1 seed first. And realistically, if guts like Wormley were good enough to get those minutes, they'd have been playing all along. I highly doubt with everything on the line in the CAA tourney, Joe and his staff will count on players he's hardly used, fatigue or not. They'll instead roll with who they've been rolling with all along. And that makes sense. Might be tough in a tournament situation, but that still gives them the best chance. You can't just put guys out there for depth if they can't play.

Wags the voice of reason and KNOWLEDGE...You saved my fingers the effort!

[EvanJ]

The Baltimore Sun wants the award for true but misleading. Their couple of lines said Towson forced both overtimes. While Towson did that in terms of having the last score of regulation and the first overtime, it didn't give either team's largest lead or say that Towson led for over 28 minutes.

[HU76]

You want to rest your starters then blow out the 8/9 team in the quarterfinals. If you’re the 1 seed and regular season champ and are good enough to win it all then take care of business in the first game regardless of who it is.

Changing the rotation and going deeper into your bench now is nuts.

[Flying Dutchmen]

You want to rest your starters then blow out the 8/9 team in the quarterfinals. If you’re the 1 seed and regular season champ and are good enough to win it all then take care of business in the first game regardless of who it is.

Changing the rotation and going deeper into your bench now is nuts.

Exactly, there was a time and place for that, it was December against Monmouth, Siena, and Rider. We have to roll with the 8 man rotation now, and just hope our 3 man bench can step up and give productive minutes if need be.

[EvanJ]

When we played Charleston last week, their Game Notes said that Riller, Brantley, and Marquise Pointer made them one of 12 teams to have three active players with at least 4,000 points combined. Yesterday the sum of JWF, Pemberton, and Buie reached 4,031.

[Flying Dutchmen]

So how does this team correct the error of its ways? Anyone who saw the game yesterday knows we had good open looks beyond the perimeter and just didn't bury them. Coburn and Eli stick out in my mind. My feeling going into this tourney and even before is that we need an answer on how we're going to defend teams that start two guys around 6'9" who will clearly have the height advantage and cause mismatches in the paint. IMO we need to give Stafford more minutes and cut down on the mismatches even if this means we're going to sacrifice scoring because we're not going to win many(any) games where we're being out-rebounded in a lopsided way and outscored in the paint the same way. I hope after we win on Saturday and seal up the #1 seed here that we get Trueheart some serious minutes in the last two games on the road and work on the potential matchups we will see in this tourney. We will have plenty of time and maybe we can get Coburn back on track also which will be a big plus for us.

We have to make teams want to shoot the 3 more often. We've struggled to do that in our last 6 games because we haven't been able to get early leads on our opponents, other than Elon. We are a really good front-running team this year, you can't trade fouls for buckets against us, like in the past. But we have to hit our shots. Towson just dared us to shoot the 3 all day, they did a poor job on the perimeter, we just missed open shots, and it turned into a 2OT game. Once our 3pt shooting percentage normalized, we outscored Towson by 19 in the last 18 minutes. If we would have shot 39% from 3 in the first half, like we have all year, we probably win that one in regulation by 20, even with a poor defensive effort.

We have to get Staff and Coburn to the rack more often. I don't know what's happened to that position, but both guys have just been chucking 3's when they're in. Ray subs in and plays nearly the exact same offensive role as the bigger guys. We have to get some more ball screens to ST/TC... Let's utilize their size. Maybe let's just save that for the CAAT at this point though.

28 games into the year, I'm going to say that the only reason our defense is better than the previous two years is because JT is in the middle instead of Rok. We're a bad defensive team. Honestly some of that is design. Joe said it on the air with Francesa, we don't press to save legs, and it may ultimately cost us. Who knows though, we're top 20 in offensive efficiency, maybe we're just maximizing the talent we have on the roster, and that's what gets us over the top.

I appreciate that the coaching staff simplified the zone because we've given up fewer uncontested shots this year. The problem is we still have a bunch of bad defenders, JWF being one of the main culprits. I'll accept that trade-off though.

Hofstra fixes their defensive problems by scoring more. That's what we are for better or worse, even at 23-5. Luckily, we score so much this year that we can largely erase mediocre to poor defensive efforts, and pull games out of the fire like against Northeastern, W&M, and last night.

As for effort, I haven't seen any problems with this team. This is one of the most focused teams we've had 20 years. We were down 10 with 8:30 left, down 6 in OT, and we found a way to win. I don't give a shit if we had a lackadaisical walkthrough, the only reason the Towson game was close was because we missed open shots. We need to stay healthy beyond everything at this point, and if we hit our open shots, we'll still win against the likes of JMU, UD, and Drexel. They suck. I bet their fans would tell you that too.

Hopefully we score blowouts in the final three games just to let people know, but we have our eyes on the bigger picture now. We just have to stay healthy until the CAAT, then ramp up the intensity, we don't have any more to prove to the CAA. I normally don't feel like that, but we're generally not sitting at 13-2 at this point, with multiple 40+ point wins on our resume. If they want to coast a little until the CAAT to stay healthy, I can accept that. JWF gets banged up a lot more than he lets on, if they're giving him open perimeter shots all night, he's got the green light, stay healthy for the 3 game tournament.

[triplec2195]

[quote="Flying Dutchmen"][quote="triplec2195"]So how does this team correct the error of its ways? Anyone who saw the game yesterday knows we had good open looks beyond the perimeter and just didn't bury them. Coburn and Eli stick out in my mind. My feeling going into this tourney and even before is that we need an answer on how we're going to defend teams that start two guys around 6'9" who will clearly have the height advantage and cause mismatches in the paint. IMO we need to give Stafford more minutes and cut down on the mismatches even if this means we're going to sacrifice scoring because we're not going to win many(any) games where we're being out-rebounded in a lopsided way and outscored in the paint the same way. I hope after we win on Saturday and seal up the #1 seed here that we get Trueheart some serious minutes in the last two games on the road and work on the potential matchups we will see in this tourney. We will have plenty of time and maybe we can get Coburn back on track also which will be a big plus for us.[/quote]

We have to make teams want to shoot the 3 more often. We've struggled to do that in our last 6 games because we haven't been able to get early leads on our opponents, other than Elon. We are a really good front-running team this year, you can't trade fouls for buckets against us, like in the past. But we have to hit our shots. Towson just dared us to shoot the 3 all day, they did a poor job on the perimeter, we just missed open shots, and it turned into a 2OT game. Once our 3pt shooting percentage normalized, we outscored Towson by 19 in the last 18 minutes. If we would have shot 39% from 3 in the first half, like we have all year, we probably win that one in regulation by 20, even with a poor defensive effort.

We have to get Staff and Coburn to the rack more often. I don't know what's happened to that position, but both guys have just been chucking 3's when they're in. Ray subs in and plays nearly the exact same offensive role as the bigger guys. We have to get some more ball screens to ST/TC... Let's utilize their size. Maybe let's just save that for the CAAT at this point though.

28 games into the year, I'm going to say that the only reason our defense is better than the previous two years is because JT is in the middle instead of Rok. We're a bad defensive team. Honestly some of that is design. Joe said it on the air with Francesa, we don't press to save legs, and it may ultimately cost us. Who knows though, we're top 20 in offensive efficiency, maybe we're just maximizing the talent we have on the roster, and that's what gets us over the top.

I appreciate that the coaching staff simplified the zone because we've given up fewer uncontested shots this year. The problem is we still have a bunch of bad defenders, JWF being one of the main culprits. I'll accept that trade-off though.

Hofstra fixes their defensive problems by scoring more. That's what we are for better or worse, even at 23-5. Luckily, we score so much this year that we can largely erase mediocre to poor defensive efforts, and pull games out of the fire like against Northeastern, W&M, and last night.

As for effort, I haven't seen any problems with this team. This is one of the most focused teams we've had 20 years. We were down 10 with 8:30 left, down 6 in OT, and we found a way to win. I don't give a shit if we had a lackadaisical walkthrough, the only reason the Towson game was close was because we missed open shots. We need to stay healthy beyond everything at this point, and if we hit our open shots, we'll still win against the likes of JMU, UD, and Drexel. They suck. I bet their fans would tell you that too.

Hopefully we score blowouts in the final three games just to let people know, but we have our eyes on the bigger picture now. We just have to stay healthy until the CAAT, then ramp up the intensity, we don't have any more to prove to the CAA. I normally don't feel like that, but we're generally not sitting at 13-2 at this point, with multiple 40+ point wins on our resume. If they want to coast a little until the CAAT to stay healthy, I can accept that. JWF gets banged up a lot more than he lets on, if they're giving him open perimeter shots all night, he's got the green light, stay healthy for the 3 game tournament.[/quote]

I do like Coburn going to the rack more often and if he doesn't score he could wind up on the FT line where he shoots FT's well. He seems like he's been called for quite a few travels this year so he needs to clean that up. I don't ever remember Trueheart putting it on the floor that much and we know he likes to shoot the three. He does have a 10 foot jumper that he uses on the baseline. I don't know if we can count on him to take it to the rack. I do know that he can rebound and block shots. He's big and and can help slow down all these points being scored in the paint. I like Stafford on the floor with Taylor. It gives us a respectable presence down low. As far as Drexel, JMU and Delaware sucking it doesn't so much matter because we have seen if you don't bring your A game and play 40 minutes you can lose to anyone. Delaware is an improved team and when we play them on the last day of the regular season we won't be beating them by 40 points.

JT in the middle has been huge and we see more and more his game evolve. We no longer have a liability on the FT line. He rebounds and block shots but he can't stop everyone. We need height on the floor against some teams that we don't matchup well against. That's why Stafford has to get minutes. If height isn't a factor then we should go with the team that has been starting most of the year. IDK why you knock Justin on defense he's quick and can jump and he works his butt off.

[fiftiespride]

Like a number of you I am anxious about what I am seeing late in the season. We have some wonderfully gifted offensive guards in JWF, EP + DB and kids that can spark but are inconsistent in JR + TC. Taylor has been a great addition who appears to be getting steadily better and gives us some defense and at least token resistance in the paint. However when faced with 2 or more solid bigs we are simply too small and over matched. I can think of 6 or 8 teams that will be in the tournament that are apt to be able to score at will against us should we get there. It is frustrating to see the lack of development and playing of the bench year after year. Mid majors recruit, not select so I understand there are going to be 2 or 3 kids on a roster that aren't D1 caliber but not 4 or 5 which is what being afraid to play more than 6 or 7 implies. They don't even have to be complete players; rebounding and defense are largely effort and proper positioning. Between ST, MR + KS you would think we could get meaningful minutes from at least 2 of them when match ups require more size. I view this as a coaching failure. It is obviously late in the year for any meaningful changes to occur so we are back to out scoring teams. Every one likes our coaches including the team. They play hard for them without a lot of fouling. We take care of the ball and Buie is a terrific PG and we drill our fouls, particularly under pressure. Let's hope for favorable match-ups, good shooting and continued good health. GO PRIDE!

[EvanJ]

Between ST, MR + KS you would think we could get meaningful minutes from at least 2 of them when match ups require more size.

I wasn't thinking about MR as a good rebounder because he didn't play much either season. Last season he averaged 1.8. It's unusual for a guy to have 82 percent of his attempts be threes and average 5.4 rebounds per 30 minutes. To compare, Bernardi had 71 percent of his attempts be three and averaged 2.1 rebounds per 30 minutes. Sestokas had 86 of his attempts be threes and averaged 2.8 rebounds per 30 minutes.