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VCWho from da'MD Couch ....


Taj79

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.... first, a moment of silence for my good friend billiken roy. roy was last seen in his car which was skidding off the rain-slickened Jefferson Barracks Bridge into the icy Mississippi. While no body has yet been found .....wait..... what? He did what? billiken roy? OUR billiken roy? You're sure? On this board? GODDAMMIT ROY THAT IS NOT THE WAY THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM WORKS!!!!! What foul MBM instigated this bit of insanity? And ..... good to see ya'. (P.S.: my wife could never make a layup -- she'd break a nail!)

The game: wonderful yet maddening. The kids are all right and played like champions. It was riveting and exciting and I really thought we were going to steal one and make the season. Alas, it did not happen and we only have one thing to blame ---- our always Achilles heel of free throw shooting. Overall 16-for-23 for a percentage of just about 70%. While the over arching number is somewhat passable, it is more WHEN we decided to miss them as opposed to the overall number. Losing by two when missing seven is obvious, but coming down the stretch, Mo Alie-Cox commits the seventh team foul at 8;54 and Austin Gillmann proceeds to miss the front end of his one-and-one. His only free throw of the game. At the 6 minute mark, Reggie Agbeko, who is some unknown stud in the number 35 jersey this night, goes to the line and clunks his front end one-and-oner. And killer most of all was from the two minute mark on when McBroom missed one and Yacoubou missed two. And if the first two make the front, you get another so in all, that is seven missed points right there. Shoot 50% on those seven and that's three points and we are going nutz today.

Jon Crispin, former Penn State/UCLA guard had the color call on ESPN2 last night. I thought he was pretty good and he pointed out that we essentially derailed HAVOC all night but that HAVOC has a way of taking the jump out of your step and maybe tired legs cause missed free throws down the stretch. I'll buy some of that. Still Yacoubou made two just before his misses and McBroom is like 90% most of the time. Those really hurt because it deflated the momentum some, which a young team does not need. So close .....

The last play: it is standard operating procedure to have the guy you want to have the ball actually inbound the ball because the defense isn't ready to go that route once he enters the court post-inbound. Nice set-up by Shaka. Still I thought Ash was caught completely off guard when Graham essentially zoomed past him. And Graham did this between the circles in his offensive end. Why not wait for him at the arc before you get blown by? And Manning was essentially useless at the rim ---- at the very place many of us believe his only worth to this team lies. Why not really confuse them and go with a zone look then? You are obviously playing for overtime so why not give them a confusing look to begin with? Force any one other than Graham to take and make a shot, much like Burgess did late (and I thought forcing him to take that shot was a good move, he was 0-for-3 at that point). Run the whole nine seconds off the clock? Oh well, hindsight is what it is.

Crews coached his ass off. He really influenced the refs with the delay of game warning on VCU (reaching over the endline on in bounds plays) and got some fouls called our way (per Crispin). he shorten the bench and kept liabilities like Lancona, Jolly and Reynolds far from the action. He also understood he need his senior-most ballhandler running the show and gave McBroom 31 minutes.

It seemed to be a tale of two different games. VCU tried their usual stuff in the first half and ended up with a 34 all tie. In the second half, it was more like a slug fest, and at the 10 minute mark each team had only scored about six points each to that point of the half. It was such a game that when VCU went up by five or six there late, Crispin thought the game was over. Once again, it is such that if you can do what we did and put VCU in a half-court,must-execute kind of game, their skill set to do so is really not that good. Also, i have never really respected Briante Weber's basketball skill game but he did impress me with his two treys and his 7 of 8 from the line. Still, he and the other muggers still do that to you, putting the onus on the refs to r eel them back in.

Chaifetz: the atmosphere looked good. The crowd was into it. The blizzard was better than past years in that more folks seemed in the white than not. And a special shout out to the Von Schuman Family Singers. Willie, momma shoe, kshoe and sshoe made at least two appearances in elongated crowd shots and were cheering their respective arses off in each.

While a moral victory, not much to care about with that aspect.

All the guys did their respective parts last night. I'd trend up arrows to Yarbroguh again,Bartley, Robey, McBroom and Agbeko.

Flat trend arrows to Manning (ain't nothing really coming from there), Gillmann (did make a three and did some good stuff but got abused by Alie-Cox on interior defense and missed that FT), and Yacoubou (can't have your "leader" miss FTs like that downa crucial, game deciding stretch and be a phantom defender on the last play).

Either a down trend or flat trend to Crawford. Just not his kind of game, athletically, hence the five total minutes.

We can use this kind of effort to win a few more this year. The question is do we display this effort in duct-dominated places like Palumbo and Rose Hill or against meh-foes like the Bonnies and Mason? Or is this our "A game" and we only bring it out to show when guys like VCU and Dayton come to town? We shall see. That is another foible of youth.

Great game. Have to work Thursday night so won't be in person at Mason. Working my Fordham trip today.

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To answer one question is this our A game? I say no. While I agree they played all forty minutes and competed, I think they did not shoot that well. The GW game was fun they played well, hit shots, MY was on fire, but it is easy to get up for a good team and play well when things go well, shots fall etc..However in the VCU Game, they played well defensively and did not turn over the ball that much. I take it as a sign of a maturing team that they played well defensively despite shooting only 3-13 from the arc. Now they know what kind of effort is required to play good enough to win, but lose. Match the effort in future games and they will do well..

This team continues to improve, and while I still do not see any postseason this year, I do see think it is likely next year. VCU is a NCAA team this year, the team on the floor last night was 4 freshman, two sophomores, and two juniors, and almost beat the NCAA caliber team. Experience, weight training, Neufeld will all make this team better and I am excited about that.

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What I liked the most about this game was the use of the line up of Bartley, McBroom, Ash, Malik, and Gillman. I think this should be our core lineup substituting in Roby and Crawford at the 1 - 3, and then Manning, Reggie, and Jolley at the 4 - 5. McBroom was very good last night, but the offense seems to work much better when Bartley is on the floor. Also, if Reggie can do what he did last night every night - it will help this team a lot.

I have given Crews a hard time (as fans who sit around me can attest) but I think he did a good job last night. I think the Gillman-Manning substitutions at the end of the game were smart. I am willing to be patient (and hopefully Jayson Tatum is too). I just want to see progress, and I think a large part of that is settling on some lineups.

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We played a solid game, it was well coached, the players are learning their roles, some are clearly emerging as Crews took the rotation down to 9.

The Billikens are on the upswing.

Not just the 6 freshmen we talk about but we have an entire squad of mostly inexperienced players, and they are finally jelling.

Of note: many here had given up on Agbeko but he definitely contributed... and he still has 2 1/2 seasons to develop. And much maligned McBroom was needed against the press and he handled the ball very well.

We played excellent defense and there were other bright spots, too, I am pleased with the recent progress as our very young squad improves. Stick with Crews, he will get it done for us in a difficult rebuilding year.

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With the way Reggie and Milik were having their way in the post I was thinking maybe we go a bit small and play Reggie at the 5. Not sure if this would've worked but I thought crews might try it.

I wondered about that same thing this morning. Could be a very interesting lineup mix. Let's see it... 9 man rotation speaks volumes also.

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It was an exciting game to watch from the stands but a loss is still a loss. If we can actually build off of this performance then it was a great development but we had similar experience at GW and we then fell flat on our face at Davidson. We have to follow this up with another good perfomance.

We did lose the game because of FTs - yes I know we missed some front ends and only hit 3-6 at the end but what difference really does it make when you miss a FT - the score is the same at the end - yes I know one of the misses could have given us the lead at the end but the bottom line is that we shot 70% and that is our avg. so you can not complain to much. Now why did we lose the game because of FTs - we lost because VCU shot almost 20% above their avg. They shoot their avg and we win this game - period. I was impressed with the guard play for us - MB and AM handled the ball very well. Now one thing that we learned from this game is that JM still is capable of dropping a handshake - those two mishandles of the inbound passes were terrible. Actually we shot over 40% from the field and if we can do that every game then we win plenty more.

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It was an exciting game to watch from the stands but a loss is still a loss. If we can actually build off of this performance then it was a great development but we had similar experience at GW and we then fell flat on our face at Davidson. We have to follow this up with another good perfomance.

We did lose the game because of FTs - yes I know we missed some front ends and only hit 3-6 at the end but what difference really does it make when you miss a FT - the score is the same at the end - yes I know one of the misses could have given us the lead at the end but the bottom line is that we shot 70% and that is our avg. so you can not complain to much. Now why did we lose the game because of FTs - we lost because VCU shot almost 20% above their avg. They shoot their avg and we win this game - period. I was impressed with the guard play for us - MB and AM handled the ball very well. Now one thing that we learned from this game is that JM still is capable of dropping a handshake - those two mishandles of the inbound passes were terrible. Actually we shot over 40% from the field and if we can do that every game then we win plenty more.

VCU shot 37%.

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I have no idea what you are referring to. Cheeseman was talking about what beat us was VCU shooting FTs 20% over their season average and you reply that VCU shot 37%??? Actually VCU shot 74 % at the FT line.

I missed read that, but they didn't shoot 20% above their ft% either.

I thought was talking about fg%.

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Let win the whole ###### thing in Brooklyn and go back to the tourney

If last night's play was a realistic indication of this team's progress, then an upset or two in Brooklyn is entirely possible. The next few games will be telling as we get away from the league's elite and get the middle of the roaders and the bottom tier. Time to pick up some Ws, boys.

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Now one thing that we learned from this game is that JM still is capable of dropping a handshake - those two mishandles of the inbound passes were terrible.

The first inbounds pass where he looked like he tried to catch the ball with a set of oars was clearly his fault, but that second inbounds pass was all on Ash. His pass to John was horrible.

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The first inbounds pass where he looked like he tried to catch the ball with a set of oars was clearly his fault, but that second inbounds pass was all on Ash. His pass to John was horrible.

You are correct that the second one was not a great inbounds pass but he does have some part of the failure given that he did not try to get open.

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You are correct that the second one was not a great inbounds pass but he does have some part of the failure given that he did not try to get open.

I thought on the second one that there was hesitation on the thrower's part due to the utter failure on the previous attempt. That delay allowed a defender time to get there and disrupt it.

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