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Make no mistake, Tuesday game will be difficult for us. #1) first game back after a month. #2) Dayton just got embarrassed at VCU. #3) Arch Baron 'rivalry.' #4) We are ranked so we will be everyone's Super Bowl. I experct some hiccups comign back; if we avoid them, how good are we then? Let it play out. Yesterday, as noted, Mason beat the Joeys again teice in three or so days. Nothing to note other than what was said above. La Salle beat Richmond which was a surprise although La Salle did also beat Dayton in Dayton earlier. La Salle is a team of ten guys, all ranging between 6 feet and 6'8". All ten play 15+ minutes and Ashley Howard counts on three or four of them to score ten points or more to have any chance to win. Yesterday, they did that to Richmond as six guys all scored 10 or more. The problem for La Salle is that they don't do it that consistently. Richmond was who I say they are ... five guys and prayers. They got 2 points off their bench in 25 minutes of play. Gilyard and Francis were a combined 4-for-16 from three. Gilyard closed with five points, 4 assists, 3 steals and four turnovers. That is a flat tire as far as their being a five-man team is concerned. I've seen enough of La Salle to know that if you punch they hard to start, they stay down. Richmond didn't do that. Look, Dayton is just not good this year. They are basking in the glow of last year and when Crutcher pukes out a game like he did yesterday, Dayton really sucks. Dayton scored 13 points in the first half yesterday. Bones Hyland has 13 by himself for VCU. Dwon 33 to 13, they just folded up sjop and played uninspired ball to get out of Richmond. Their history is such that VCU is a place of horros for them but they just don't have the personnel and what they do have is limited. The great Amzil was shut out --- IMHO he couldn't stay with VCU's athleticism. Tshimanga is a brute --- effectively brtued right back by Douglas and Stockard. Watson is a catch-n-shoot guy --- negated by VCU's overt speed. Dayton's starting four, outside of Tshimnaga, shot 4-for-27 a whopping 14.8%! They were 1-for-13 from three. VCU concentrated on shutting down Crutcher and Watson and it worked like a charm. Davidson didn't do this to Dayton because Davidson doesn't have the athletes. As three-star always tells me ... it's about matchups. Let's remember that VCU was coming off a 14 point half and dismantling at the Bonnies. The second half was basically a trade-baskets-until-the-clock-expires exercise. VCU is still predictable. Hyland ended with 28 of 66 and the rest of the team saw no one score more than 7. And this is two games now where two different announcers proclaimed this VCU team as "Bones' team." Problem is that when Bones ain't hitting, he becomes a more selfish liability. Just like Dayton, shut down the main man and the rest will follow. VCU just has much better talent overall than Dayton right now. I finished my most enjoyable evening with more bad basketball, namely the Bonnies at the Dukes. The best thing I can say about the Dukes is they gave them a game before losing 65 to 61. The Dukes are in shambles. The atmosphere is heated ... between Dambrot going off on the refs and michael Hughes going off on his teammates, it's pretty ugly. Dunn-Martin plays the point because, well, they have no one else. That hurts his shooting from deep. He still launches and went 3-of-6 put it is more needed to stay afloat than as a surprise weapon. Weathers still looks fat and out of shape. Hughes roams the lane looking like an independent contractor in search of blocks. Okani, Baker and Acuff and thin-skinny freshmen going at warp speed until they run out of gym floor. I didn't see their Rhode Island game so hwo they won that I don't know. But it does show they do have some fight in there. The Bonnies are winning with defense and just enough shooting to compliment Lofton. Jaren English-Holmes has cooled down considerably since hsi 38 point outburst against St. Joe's. He's not good enough to lead the A10 in shooting. Jalen Adaway didn't start because of the flu but played and it was a good thing. He ended up with 12 and literally dominated down the stretch with offense and defense. Apparently he's the second leading shooter in the A10 ... dunks do that for you right Obi? Osunniyi didn't play much the first half what with two fouls and a stimulator on his back. Jalen Shaw had a career seven point game in his absence. Dom Welch added a quiet 14 but once again it's all Lofton down the stretch of a close game. Welch made th eonly three threes for the Bonnies on anight they took 13. Lofton is shooting 3-of-29 from deep so far. I'd say this is the one guy you WANT to shoot from three in the A10. Most of the commentary I heard last night was how we are the class of the A10 but we need to start playing again soon. If that was 50% of the comments, I disagreed with the other 50%. No way this is a four or five bid league. No way the Bonnies are really that good. No way Weathers & Hughes are a terrific tandem. No way Richmond's win over Kentucky means anything any more. By the way .... LSU, NC State and Minnesota are all fading some. We need to play and start dominating these guys. Based on what I've seen, it's us, VCU and the Bonnies. Second tier is now Umass, Richmond and Davidson. Third tier that could jump up and bite you is Dayton, Rhode Island, Mason and La Salle. Shame on you if you let that happen. Dead meat are Duquesne, Fordham, Geedubya and the Joeys. Davidson at Umass today at noon.

I am back. My last report was on Dec 27. That day I did 2 reports . One was an A-10 preconference forecast and another was a spread thread on the upcoming Duq game. A few days earlier on Xmas eve, I put out my Top 25 list. Is it just me or does all that seem like it happened a year ago. The purpose of this post is threefold....1 To look at where we have been.....2 To analyze where we are now and 3 To try and figure out what it means and where we are going. Where we have been. We started the season with high hopes (rightfully so) and lots of uncertainty. A little for the Bills (we knew we were good) and a lot more as to how the season would play out (Covid) College basketball stumbled out of the gate starting 2 weeks late and a lot of teams missing in action on opening day. The Bills looked good to start and better as the season progressed. You could see the team starting to gel. At the end of the OOC we were 7-1...an A rated team... I had us at 23rd in the nation...The AP had not yet rated us on Dec 24. But sure enough, just 11 days after my forecast , we made the AP big time at....23rd in the nation...In the NET we reached as high as 10th in the nation. We were on top of the basketball world poised to climb even higher. And then the train went off the tracks. Where we are Last game played ...KC on Dec 23...If we play Dayton on Tues, it will have been over a month since our last game with only a few practices in the last few days. I have put together a model using data not only from this season but from previous seasons where teams have laid off for long periods of time for various reasons. There are many factors that go into a layoff ...how long ...how many players are affected...how much practice during the layoff...How good was the team before the layoff (good teams tend to come back faster)...What does the schedule look like when you comeback (how many games to be played.... over what time and against who) and what lingering effects does the layoff have (both mental and physical) The data for these layoffs are spotty and vary from situation to situation. Here are some general parameters gleaned from this data.... Layoff time 1 week ....negligible 2 weeks....small 3 weeks....medium 1 month....large What this means, generally, is that whatever time you are off ....you turn the clock back that much time.. In the Bills case, we turn the clock back 34 days from their last game. (Dec 24-Jan 26=34 days) So on Tues when we play Dayton it will be the equivalent of Nov 19 (Nov 19- Dec23=34 days) On Jan 26, we should be at least at the same level we were about a week before we played SIU-e in the first game of the season. Where we are going Now it is time to talk about "rust" or the staleness factor. Rust is the term used to describe how the layoff affected you. This factor includes any lingering affects. As mentioned above when we last played, we were an A team and 23rd in the nation. My estimate now is that we are currently about an A- team and about 38th in the nation. About 1/2 of the deterioration is a result of a number of the "good" teams we have played losing and falling in stature. The other half of our deterioration is rust. The next game will be very important. But we need to look at it through different glasses. Most people look at the spread threads to see who is projected to win and by how much. Both factors to be used as a gauge to see how good we are. After the game, we compare results to the forecast to see how we did...We are better than we thought ...we are worse than we thought or we are on target. The game against Dayton needs to measured in a different way. I will use this game as a measure of rust. After I finish this report, I will do a spread thread on the Dayton game. In the Dayton game, we will be favored by 10 ....that includes some rust I built into the numbers. Here is how the rust factor will affect The Bills. If we win by 8pts or more.....the layoff had little effect...we should be in good shape going forward We win by 1-7 pts...small affect ..we will need 2 or 3 games to get sharp. We lose by 1-7 pts...medium damage....we will need 5 games to be back to form We lose by 8 pts...Heavy damage...we will need most of the rest of the season to get back to where we were. Bottom line....The questions going forward are ...how long to shake off the rust and are there any lingering affects. Something nether I nor the team has an answer to . We will know a lot more after Tues game. One thing I know for sure is, we still have good players... we still have good potential....and we have good depth...so that no matter what happens, we can still put it together and make a nice run.

One fewer place for our games to be televised.

I'm shocked that you apparently don't realize how arrogant you sound. I don't have a problem with someone making a comment about the action, if they're telling me how they feel about it, as opposed to trying to tell me how I should feel about it. If you had said, "I'm disappointed they chose to do that," it would be something I could read without offense. Instead, you essentially attempted to impose your beliefs on the reader by saying, "they chose to embarrass themselves." Really? Who *chooses* to embarrass themselves? No. They didn't embarrass themselves, but they expressed themselves. It's their right to do so, if the coaches allow it. Personally, I don't think standing or not standing for anthem really means anything, but it's tradition. So, if it's a tradition, then bucking that tradition brings attention to the action, giving it meaning it wouldn't usually have. I'm not hypocritical. I don't have a problem with occasional expressions of personal beliefs on here. What I don't like is when threads become full of browbeating and bullying debate trying to make the "opposite" side accept the errors of their ways. It's not going to happen. Liberals aren't going to suddenly become conservative, and Conservatives aren't going to suddenly become liberal. Frankly, I'm neither, but in some things I agree with more liberal ideas, and in others I agree with more conservative ideas. I could be wrong, but in my opinion, the conservative side seems to be more aggressive in trying to convert the other side in this forum. MAN, I miss Billikens basketball!