3 weeks ago a friend asked about the team, my answer was "if we are hitting our 3's we can win half of our league games." Otherwise, we are cooked.

Now, with the adjusted, guard starters--realizing that Moss was injured, I thought we we were able to start faster. We are more of a classic GW team of "tweeners" with a higher ceiling on the defense end and improved rebounding and more likely to get to the rim.

I like Moss and Jacoi but have to start hot from the outside-or we sag into a first half pit. they are great in a rotation. It was a dangerous back court to start a game with as they share a tendency their first 2-3 3's and don't score as often at the rim at the beginning of the game.

Also, when Buchanan gets back, I like that he is used at the beginning of a game as a decoy with  Gerald and Autry on the wings. Sort of how we were using Hansen.
 

Suggest new starting line up just so the 2nd quarter of each game has to be dedicated to catching up: Autry, Jones, Jacoi, Jr and Hansen. I don't worry about the center jump as much as the first 5 turnovers. The coach has to get Jacoi to play at 33 1/3 and not 45. He doesn't have to try every lob or long pass. It is ok to turn the offense over, or run out the clock to get an open shot.
Hint to Gerald and Moss, you will make more layups, if you learn the James Bishop trick, use the other side  of the rim. The change gets you fouled if you don't make it.
 

Positives after watching 2 games. He can defend 5 positions. He can pull boards at a good rate. He can bring the ball up the court. Better, he can run a break from the middle. He has a good Eurostep around the rim, also can hit a teardrop or a sort pull up.

The swiss change on all picks. Nessah has a good feel for an inside pass  and work either side of a two-man game.

So far, he doesn't seem to take every 3 that presents it's self. I like his shot. He has more of a pro arc and not a ton of arc as mentions above. My person concern is arc heavy shots tend to introduce lower percentages and shooting that falls off as the legs tire--like Max.

Schroder was un-coachable in the course of a single season.with no summer. Poog's Garino reference is a good vector to consider. A player who grows and brings a high level skills to a larger size..

This team is going to have to raise the tempo in games. I know that is a bit away from our coaches comfort zone. We have 15 fouls to give with the 5's.  We should press hard with 4 players. Bevin may surprise us. Autry may key a number of decisions. Can he pickup some point minutes? He may do it if on the floor with Dayan Nessah and Buchanan, Bevin and either Castro or Hansen.

And then there is Moss... could be a good crew!!!
 

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

Appears Yuta is close to signing with a team...

https://basketnews.com/news-207436-yuta-watanabe-close-to-joining-chiba-jets.html

Lets get this straight, I just invested in 25 seconds of Googling and note that he is closing in on 30 and has a wonderful bride in Japan.... This move makes sense.

jf wrote:

Believe I successfully cancelled, but saw something about a class action lawsuit.
My dream is that one day, we will play in a tournament not covered by FloHoops.

As I suggest, I even keep notes that I cancelled and the time. Keep an eye on it.
 

Gwmayhem wrote:

Not an either/or folks.  You can feel completely wronged by the officials and yet still do enough things poorly to lose a game on your own.  There was nothing on the Fordham scouting report to suggest that they would set a school record for 3's in a game against GW.  But the fact is that they did, and in the majority of these cases, we did little to contest.  Teams have gone 24-72 (33%) from 3 against GW ever since so apparently and hopefully, lesson learned.

To quote a since departed noted GWU Stat Prof. Charles Mann, "Unlike some people, I don't mind telling someone, I told you."

As more time is spent by bigs and most college players invest more time to work on their long range shooting, every team will have guys shooting 3's at a clip that starts to look more like Pros. I, mention that hot shooting nights by opponents will have to be dealt with.

As for the Mason game, I was struck by two very positive takeaways, first, Mr. Akingbola's ability to both menace shots in the paint and still set to maintain an active positioning for pulling  a defensive rebound.  I have been a critic up to this game, but against Mason, Babakunda delivered a master class.

Second, the "maturing of this rotation" to sense the game state of the game, when to hit the gas after a stop or when to slow it down and make safe passes. CC doesn't have to call time outs. Sometimes this TOs allow the opponent to see that they about to roll you.  GW as a team was reacting by working for a down hill drive to the rim and sometimes getting a hoop and a harm which immediate the possibility of a game changing rally into what was becoming a dumpster fire.

I like Tony Skinn as a coach. he isn't a coaching fraud, like so many. Reading between the lines in has post-game, he was saying that he had been out-coached and he was taking it personally. Much of the the credit must go to James and Max as they share the game with the newcomers at GWU.

Class 'o 70 wrote:

At one point, when Bamisile was getting in position to shoot a foul shot, JBIV was standing nearby and you could see a (rare) smile on James's face as he bantered with Bamisile. so, it appeared that they might still be on good terms.

That was right after Bam got a friendly bounce on a free throw off the top of the backboard. Class, I had the two of them laughing after that and I will share.


 

LA Colonial wrote:

Agree with Yegor/Shawta, but for us old folks there was Pat Tallent and Keith Morris in the backcourt along with Haviland Harper and Clyde Burwell up front.   (Bob Shanta was also in that class).   The problem was that as Freshmen, they had to play on the Freshman team and could not play varsity.  The Freshman team went 17-1 splitting with Maryland for the only loss. This included a 100+ point victory margin over Kirkland Hall.  The Freshman team routinely routed the varsity in practice...

Finally. yes, for the younger crowd, Pat and Keith were the bomb. Pat was a scorer and Keith, though not small was lighting fast. He could use his first step to open up a pass and his passes were all catch-able. Pat was a great outside shooter like Bob, but with his size and his knack to bump defenders and fake them out could score within 10 feet.

Bob Shanta, if memory serves, was from the Pittsburgh area and was the size of a modern day tight end. Thinking of the Alcorn game, Bob was the human solution to weak side defensive rebounding issues. Haviland was the Yegor of the group one of the speed boys out of Philly. Clyde would reject everything.

LA Colonial, the coolest thing about the team was that both Clyde and Haviland were in my.upper level Math classes. they were scholars and both took advantage of their GW degrees.

I look at that team as the launch of modern GW basketball. Bob Tallent's teams would (1) run breaks like surgeons (* banking easy points); (2) contest for offensive rebounds; (3) and find the open shooter and match up advantage.

I would say that CC is a good coach. He has to teach his players to read the gamescape and deliver what is need at the moment. With Pat and Keith, Bob Tallent had that the second they stepped on campus. Alcorn was a film session gift. Chris has to work through tendencies with every player.

 

GWRising wrote:

If you look at the game, you will see we pulled off a rare feat. We won despite giving up 20 offensive rebounds, making 18 turnovers, shooting 54.5% from the line and giving up 20 points off turnovers and another 20 off second chances. If you told me those stats beforehand I would tell you we would lose 99 out of 100 times. Why did we win? We erased 15 shot attempts. Huge in a game where the other team had nearly 20 more attempts. That is truly rare.

To raise the ghost of Bobby Knight and many of his assistants, do you see a connection between all the blocked shots and the number of the offensive boards and associated with the points in the paint? Just asking.
 

Alum1, I know that you are a solid observer of the game and are appreciated by me for your thoughts, but I am in the camp of AT Hiker. As I said pre-season in response to a pile of negative post on the site, I basically every wimps for whining. I may have the advantage over you having watched all of Germany's games in Europe this summer along with the England games.

In that post I added much of this season will hinge on how long it some our young players take to find out what they can get away with at this level. I mentioned Schroder, first on that. After one bad game for Germany, their coach had Benny play pont-forward and he pretty much ran what offense his team could muster, One of Schroder's TOs was a past that Jacoi would admit to dropped that should have been a simple layup. Schroder blocked a lot of shots to go with rebounds. Neither of us know what Benny is showing in practice.

Jacoi had a below par game and we won. Every time that happens, we get better down the line. The ability to go short is a testimony to the training progress. . I prefer 5-0 and seeing 8 players this season at this point and 3-2 and seeing 11 players. CC will salt the floor with subs in the first half when we go up by 10 - 12 in the first half. As they say, CC is coaching to the "gamescape." Otherwise, you have to be in it to win it.

Your wish may come true today as our team may not have any legs for tonight's game. I may have to buy a new bottle of Rum for the 7 pm tipoff. I am hoping to see UIC perform like the game that W&M after they played us. My guess is that we will see a lot of Trey in this one. They may leave him open after what they did in their first game--they seemed to sag defenders into the paint to stop drivers. My wild guess we will see Keegan or Zam early in the first half, just to get our starters minutes of rest and get them into the second half ready to win the game.