Couple of tidbits, in no particular order:
-Like the scrimmage, it was hard to tell too much, based upon the level of competition.   You half full types would be happy with a 93-51 win vs. Hood.  You half empty types would have seen us playing a D-III team that cancelled its last season due to Covid and would have expected more in the nature of a 70 point win (more in the nature of of 110-40) than a 42 point win.   Hood was tiny.  Dean and Brown looked like all Americans playing against a team of dwarfs.  Don't get me wrong, I loved Dean's aggressiveness and Brown confidence on the Court, but I will need to see them do it against players their own size.  There was nobody on Hood who looked like they belonged in D-2, yet alone D-1.  Now in all fairness, it may have been a 70 point win with Basimile and Lindo in the game.
-crowd was larger than I expected, probably helped by the presence of a large number of Hood fans, who made the trip from Frederick and were very vocal in support of their squad..   Still, based upon the sparsity of people at the Colonial Club, it appears that season ticket sales are quite low.  To make matters worse, they didn't even have the buff and blue colored M & Ms at the Colonial Club.  (Maybe they were all given out at Halloween.
-Even against D-III competition, we still looked tentative against the zone, with only Freeman penetrating and attacking, but the others mostly rotating the ball (far too slowly) around the perimeter until someone hoisted a three point shot.  (A fake pass every now and then may help).  Further, our massive height advantage should have led to more easy fast break points than it did.  .  As previously mentioned by Free, Brayon made his share of freshman defensive mistakes (along with some offensive ones, including throwing a cross court pass over a zone which let to an interception and easy basket for Hood), but he definitely looks like a player who can bring immediate help, and his being in the game allowed Bishop to play off the ball more, which resulted in Bishop having a very solid game.  Rotation looked a bit slow on the defensive end also, where weak side help was slow at arriving, as was switching off of picks.   Speaking of Freeman, I think he could be some real help providing a spark off of the bench.   I am upbeat about a second unit that should include Freeman, Qwanzi Samuels (a versatile player who generally set up at the high post who looks like he can give us 7-8 points off the bench), Brendan Adams (who looks like a good player who had a bit of an off game) and even Hunter Dean.
-I was surprised, make that shocked, that former Jewish Day School star Bryan Knapp was in the game earlier and scored more minutes than Nixon, who played most of his minutes with the walk ons.    I see Knapp as your basic 30/30/30 player (meaning he will only be in the game if we are up 30, down 30 or there is 30 seconds left).  
-The roll out of this season could have been handled better by the school.   Tickets were not sent out until about 4-5 hours before tipoff, and then many of us (me included) could not access them and had to have tickets printed once at the game.   Then, to make matters worse, the elevator was broken at the parking garage.   
-I can see a starting lineup of Bishop, Bamisile, Brown, Lindo and Harris, with the aforementioned Freeman, Samuels, Adams and Dean off of the bench, as a rotation that can win some games, provided we stay healthy and end some of the flaws in both of our offensive and defensive schemes.
-Before you say it, yes, I recognize that this a lot of criticism of a team that just won by 42 points, and I can't argue with that.  But that is who I am.

Last edited by Long Suffering Fan (11/02/2021 11:30 am)

You wouldn't think that a team coming off of a 5-12 season has many luxuries, but I think it's important (and a luxury) to not throw Brayon Freeman into the fire too fast.  We have seen freshmen play almost immediately out of necessity and then we've seen talented guys like Mo Rice, Paul Jorgensen and Jordan Roland wait their turn as they played sparingly during their freshman seasons, largely because others could play in front of them.  While I believe that Brayon is THE point guard of the future for this team, he can easily fit into a role where he comes off the bench to play somewhere between 15-25 minutes per game, rather than 30+ every game.  Then again, JC will play him that much if he feels this gives the team the best chance to win.  The point is though that he will have other options.

For two years, we've seen JC play his best players well over 30 minutes per game.  In some cases, 35-38 minutes.  It will be interesting to see if he allocates minutes differently among a team that has more depth than either of his first two seasons at GW. 
 

Steve wrote:

*Brown?

This getting old is not what it is cracked out to be.  I .don't know why I was looking at Brown and thinking Marcus Littles.   I have now edited.  

I may have missed this.  Do we know why Bamisile and Lindo didn't play? 

One quibble with LSF.  I think Harris comes off the bench, rather than start.  He’s so good defensively and he can handle it, but I suspect Adams starts because his shooting opens the floor.  If not Adams, then Freeman as a ball handler, pace pusher,  zone attacker who lets Bishop play off the ball (but I’m guessing Freeman comes off the bench at least at the start of the season. 

Harris can genuinely guard 1-4, and with his length and athleticism could develop into a lockdown defender against perimeter players.  Maybe even guard the PG like Yuta used to do.  But I suspect it’ll be a bench job for him to come in and shut down the hot hand while we get a more offensive minded player in the starting lineup.  Guess we’ll find out next week.

Does anyone have a feel (or has Jamion said) which way they're leaning in going with tempo this year?

Last year came out of the gates flying and then they put on the brakes. Any idea if Jamion would like to speed it up again?

Hard to extrapolate anything from the opposition last night. But from what I can remember of 2019, Harris always seems like he was silky smooth pre-injury (ies). He still seems pretty smooth, if not as mobile. Don't know about his outside shot, but he just seems like a natural player.
   Also hard to tell amongst a team that would be small for a major high school program, but Samuels, at least last night, certainly seemed better/more versatile than one would expect. If this keeps up against real opposition, he could be a sleeper.

Also,I look forward to seeing Jackson Payne during the season. Demonstrated he can shoot the rock.