GDT Billikens VS the state of Chicago practice game

[Taj79]

Yarbrough and Reynolds hit the road pretty fast I recall.  They were both so fast, it seemed to indicate to me that the coaching situation ..... neither the fire nor the hire....had any play in their decisions.  Jolly I think was forced out, which as far as I'm concerned was decision #1a behind #1 fire Crews.  Bartley I believe went through the whole summer before  he hit the road but I recall that being him being indecisive to the very end.  

So far, I'll give Mike and Reggie passes since they are seniors.  Nothing they do will right this ship.  And we need bodies.  Everyone else, except Johnson, is a Crews blunder and no matter what Ford does, you can't fix low talent.  Many talk about god-given talent too .... so if you're low, you're low.  Not much more one can say.  Maybe if Crawford isn't hurt, he hits more treys and the middle opens up for Agbeko.  But even so, that was not going to save anything this season.  Bishop might be our best two guard.  But he is also our only one guard.  He is not talented enough to be a Russell Westbrook type.  Not too many are.  

I'm still okay with Welmer, Johnson, Moore and Bishop fighting for mop up minutes next year.   Roby is back in the downward spiral can.  Neufeld and Gillmann can't play against Chicago State???????  Looks like three, maybe four open scholarships for the spring signing period.  

About the funniest thing I saw was standing around waiting to be declared victors.  Over Chicago State.  Chicago State!!!!!  If Crawford is hurt with the head bang, then now I'm worried about some guys quitting on Ford.  I've seen kids punch coaches. And kids walk off the court in the middle of a game.  I've seen two, five-win seasons.  I was at the 20-point game.  We should be in the Big East.  I'm sure the Wiz can tell us the imaginary spreads if we imaginarily played games at Nova, Butler, Xavier and Creighton this year.

[The Wiz]

22 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

  We should be in the Big East.  I'm sure the Wiz can tell us the imaginary spreads if we imaginarily played games at Nova, Butler, Xavier and Creighton this year.

You don't want to know

[SluSignGuy]

1 hour ago, billiken_roy said:

No we haven't.   this is the worst of billiken basketball in my 40 years of being a billiken fan 

This season will likely be the worst in my lifetime, but today's game was not.  We actually won.

[Soderball]

1 minute ago, SluSignGuy said:

This season will likely be the worst in my lifetime, but today's game was not.  We actually won.

This game was indefensibly pathetic.

[hsmith19]

25 minutes ago, The Wiz said:

You don't want to know

Couldn't be too much worse than the spreads for Dayton, Rhode Island, and VCU. 40 points instead of 32?

[The Wiz]

11 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

Couldn't be too much worse than the spreads for Dayton, Rhode Island, and VCU. 40 points instead of 32?

Nova by 33....Dayton by 24

[Old guy]

One observation about this game, our kids were playing cautiously like they were afraid of blowing it up, like they almost did. No one seemed to be enjoying the act of playing, there was no exuberance or enthusiasm in them. They appeared flat. Remember last year when Reynolds would get full of himself and bend over to hit the court's flooring with his hands. Nothing at all even remotely like that.

[WestCoastBilliken]

12 minutes ago, Old guy said:

One observation about this game, our kids were playing cautiously like they were afraid of blowing it up, like they almost did. No one seemed to be enjoying the act of playing, there was no exuberance or enthusiasm in them. They appeared flat. Remember last year when Reynolds would get full of himself and bend over to hit the court's flooring with his hands. Nothing at all even remotely like that.

Would you be excited to be out there? Lets be honest... these guys know they suck. They know that they are all being replaced soon. 

[wgstl]

 not sure if this has been mentioned yet but I think Bishop also sprained his ankle

[majerus mojo]

5 hours ago, bonwich said:

Et tu, Roy? What about a loss to McKendree? (Yes, kiddies, that happened, back in days of yore.) Or losing to UMSL and SIUE in the same season? 

It may not have been worse, but it's certainly been as bad. And nobody punched the coach at practice last year.  

I'm relieved to hear we've already lost to SIUE 

[Soderball]

my SIUE Cougars may have a shot? That's disturbing.

[Old guy]

8 hours ago, WestCoastBilliken said:

Would you be excited to be out there? Lets be honest... these guys know they suck. They know that they are all being replaced soon. 

I think they could be, they are basketball players after all, they should enjoy playing not only winning. Maybe I am being naive about this. 

[Taj79]

Wiz ---- yes.  Yes I do.  While I am 100% certain the Big East had no ClearVu crystal balls and said .. who, can't take them they have Jim Crews ---- can you imagine as I shudder to think what the Big East would be doing to us right now, night in and night out?  Josh Hart closely guarded by Aaron Hines.  Kelan Martin boxed in by Matt Neufeld.  Austin Gillmann schooling JP Macura.  Although St. John's lost to LIU-Brooklyn yesterday .......

[Box and Won]

7 hours ago, Soderball said:

my SIUE Cougars may have a shot? That's disturbing.

They just lost to DII Missourah Western in Edwardsville.  Should be a real barn burner.

[JettFlight5]

McKendree beat SIUE this year too. 

[Pistol]

I'm looking at the stats now. I don't think I realized just how bad this was. I watched in a bit of a daze, also while trying to get some stuff done around the house.

Roby was dreadful again. For those keeping track of his streak, he has not scored since the 11:45 mark of the second half vs. K-State. He has gone 0-15 from the field since then.

Agbeko's regression continues. 6 and 6 in 17 minutes. 3 turnovers, foul trouble, bad misses. He has 20 points in the last 4 games; he had 64 in the first 5 games. Rebounding production has also fallen off. He had 10+ rebounds in 5 of the first 6 games. He's grabbed 7, 4, and 6 in the last 3.

Bishop looked bad again but at least managed 7 assists and 3 steals, with 3 turnovers.

I don't know what to say about everyone else. I'd still like to think that Moore, Johnson, Welmer, and possibly Bishop could be productive on a good team, but it's getting harder and harder to picture when everyone is playing this poorly right now. It's both an individual and team problem. We're not getting production anywhere. These guys look demoralized out there.

We need this season to be over.

[billikenfan05]

15 minutes ago, Pistol said:

I'm looking at the stats now. I don't think I realized just how bad this was. I watched in a bit of a daze, also while trying to get some stuff done around the house.

Roby was dreadful again. For those keeping track of his streak, he has not scored since the 11:45 mark of the second half vs. K-State. He has gone 0-15 from the field since then.

Agbeko's regression continues. 6 and 6 in 17 minutes. 3 turnovers, foul trouble, bad misses. He has 20 points in the last 4 games; he had 64 in the first 5 games. Rebounding production has also fallen off. He had 10+ rebounds in 5 of the first 6 games. He's grabbed 7, 4, and 6 in the last 3.

Bishop looked bad again but at least managed 7 assists and 3 steals, with 3 turnovers.

I don't know what to say about everyone else. I'd still like to think that Moore, Johnson, Welmer, and possibly Bishop could be productive on a good team, but it's getting harder and harder to picture when everyone is playing this poorly right now. It's both an individual and team problem. We're not getting production anywhere. These guys look demoralized out there.

We need this season to be over.

Bishops turnovers were cringeworthy. They should have counted as 2 each 

[HoosierPal]

1 hour ago, Pistol said:

I'm looking at the stats now. I don't think I realized just how bad this was. I watched in a bit of a daze, also while trying to get some stuff done around the house.

Roby was dreadful again. For those keeping track of his streak, he has not scored since the 11:45 mark of the second half vs. K-State. He has gone 0-15 from the field since then.

Agbeko's regression continues. 6 and 6 in 17 minutes. 3 turnovers, foul trouble, bad misses. He has 20 points in the last 4 games; he had 64 in the first 5 games. Rebounding production has also fallen off. He had 10+ rebounds in 5 of the first 6 games. He's grabbed 7, 4, and 6 in the last 3.

Bishop looked bad again but at least managed 7 assists and 3 steals, with 3 turnovers.

I don't know what to say about everyone else. I'd still like to think that Moore, Johnson, Welmer, and possibly Bishop could be productive on a good team, but it's getting harder and harder to picture when everyone is playing this poorly right now. It's both an individual and team problem. We're not getting production anywhere. These guys look demoralized out there.

Coming into this season, Reggie was a 57% career FG shooter.  He is 52% this year to date.  Bishop was 41% FG last year, and 36% this year.  Crawford, career FG 44%, this year 33%, and Roby, FG 38% career v 37% this year, or not much difference.  Did Reggie, Jermaine, and Michael all forget how to shoot?  No.

Reggie has been injured throughout his career, same with Crawford and Roby.

Bishop's last three games have given us 19 assists to 10 turnovers.  Last year only Hines had a A/TO ratio above 2.0.  Bishop ended at 1.9.

[Cowboy]

56 minutes ago, Pistol said:

I'd still like to think that Moore, Johnson, Welmer, and possibly Bishop could be productive on a good team, but it's getting harder and harder to picture

-on a good team these players would not have to play extended minutes so I think/hope it is still possible

-it will be interesting to hear how MC is after hitting his head, if he is out for an extended period we might actually get worse, which is somewhat difficult to imagine

[RUBillsFan]

1 hour ago, billikenfan05 said:

Bishops turnovers were cringeworthy. They should have counted as 2 each 

I was just about to type this out.  Frankly, I was amazed looking at the box score and seeing only 3 turnovers.  I believe he dribbled it off his leg out of bounds once when he wasn't under much defensive pressure and then there was the turnover at the end of the game.  Incredible that he only had 1 other during the game when those were so bad.

I don't want to single him out because our entire team sucked, but I'd guess there were several other cringeworthy plays by Bishop such as firing off ill advised 3 pointers early in the shot clock or not attempting to work it inside against the zone that do not show up in the box score.

[hsmith19]

1 hour ago, Cowboy said:

-it will be interesting to hear how MC is after hitting his head, if he is out for an extended period we might actually get worse, which is somewhat difficult to imagine

No way could whoever takes Crawford's minutes do worse than 32% from the field and 15% from 3P. Even Psimitis would have his work cut out to do worse than that.

[AnkielBreakers]

12 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

No way could whoever takes Crawford's minutes do worse than 32% from the field and 15% from 3P. Even Psimitis would have his work cut out to do worse than that.

Don't tempt fate with this team.

[Old guy]

I went over the stats for the Chicago St. game. The only two players in our team that were involved in significant numbers of assists were Roby and Bishop. I know a lot has been written about these two, however they are the only involved in assists as a regular part of their playing style. 

[JMM28]

An assist is a pretty poor statistic. 

[hsmith19]

If there was a statistic for "no-look pass which results in a missed FGA," Roby would probably be doing better at it than anything else.