Oh well, a few missed free throws away from a winning conference record. Small steps.

Bad FT shooting and bad end of game coaching cost us a shot at the game. 

Now to root for UMASS (who is up 11-5 at Mason early).

Assuming Mason wins, we play Fordham at noon Thursday.  If Umass pulls off the upset, we would play UMASS Thursday at 6.

Go Umass!
 

Not aware that Fordham would throw the ball long? A lane violation on the final ft? Didn´t someone call JC a "great situational coach" at one point this season?
Poor shooting cost them the game, and a lack of composure made it worse. Too much "hero ball" and too little ball movement.
Off to the big sports arena downtown, playing like they have the last three games will make that a very short outing.
 

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

Not aware that Fordham would throw the ball long? A lane violation on the final ft? Didn´t someone call JC a "great situational coach" at one point this season?
Poor shooting cost them the game, and a lack of composure made it worse. Too much "hero ball" and too little ball movement.
Off to the big sports arena downtown, playing like they have the last three games will make that a very short outing.
 

I think GW needs to shoot well to look decent. If they shoot poorly their flaws are magnified. They were bad today and lost by 4 on the road. Last year they’d have gotten smoked.
Thin soup I know.

My concern is they will need to increase their talent substantially to be measurably better next year

I guess count me as the guy that is unhappy that Mason blew this game. I don't find there to be any clear difference between playing Fordham and UMass, but I do think Davidson would have been a much better matchup for us than VCU/Dayton (not sure who is the two seed between them) if we are fortunate enough to make it to Friday. 

Thanks Merrick, jf, Free Quebec, and 22ndandF!! It's crazy that another season is already in the books.

We definitely put ourselves in a position to win the game, so it's hard to be too upset with the result. Momentum means a lot this time of year so it would have been big to have come out on top. It seems we still have a ways to go when it comes to late game execution.

Let's see how we did with yesterday's goals:

1) Hold Fordham to fewer than 10 offensive rebounds. They had 8 in our first game against them.
      Fordham finished the game with 9 offensive rebounds, so we met this goal even though they still outrebounded us by 8 for the game.

2) Get to the line 15-20 times and force Ohams off the floor with foul trouble.
      We got to the line 18 times, so again we gave ourselves a chance at the W. I didn't realize that we would shoot so poorly, but I guess it's a law of averages thing. We shot over our average in the previous game against Duquesne, so a game like this felt inevitable at some point. What's crazier is that it looked like every missed FT hit the exact same part of the back rim. I guess this was met about 50% because Ohams finished with 3 fouls for the game and was never really pulled off the floor because of foul trouble.

3) Finish with 12-15 assists as a team.
      The team finished with 14 assists, which was coincidentally the same number of assists we had in our first game against them. There was a bit of isolation ball at the very beginning of the game (and end) but we did a pretty good job otherwise.

4) Have Brendan, Hunter, and Qwanzi combine for six made baskets.
      This goal was incredibly met at halftime thanks to Qwanzi's hot shooting from distance in the first half. Samuels made the open shots that were given to him which was great to see. Despite the missed FTs, I think putting up 66 against Fordham is enough to win given their strong defense. If we can get that kind of contribution from Brendan, Hunter, and Qwanzi consistently it will put significantly less pressure on JB squared. Shoutout to Brendan for another solid game. He kept things from getting completely out of hand in the second half with some timely shots.

5) Finish with more assists than turnovers and cough the ball up fewer than 15 times in the game.
      As mentioned above, we had 14 assists. We only turned the ball over 10 times so this goal was also met. Fordham is one of the better teams in the league at forcing turnovers and I think we did a good job taking care of the ball. There was maybe one section in the second half where we gave Fordham a couple fast break opportunities when they went up 9 but that was pretty much it.

6) Have Ricky play 30 minutes without fouling out. He has fouled out in the past two games.
       I'm counting this goal as only being half met. Ricky finished with three fouls like he did in our first game against them. He picked up two in the first half and was forced to sit for quite some time before halftime. The reason I'm saying the goal was 50% met is because Ricky played just 22 minutes. At this point in the season, that number has to be closer to 30 unless he is still dealing with injury. Lindo was a big reason we were able to erase a 12 point deficit against Fordham in the second half. He was really active on the glass at both ends of the floor. His offensive rebound and putback layup cut the lead to 6. He then found Joe for three, and of course got into the lane and picked off a pass to tie the game at 61. Outside of the missed FTs and failing to close out on Navarro's layup to put Fordham up 3 late, he had a good game.

7) Have Noel see 5-10 minutes of action.
       I guess this was technically met since Noel saw exactly 5 minutes yesterday. The coaching staff obviously doesn't think he can contribute meaningfully right now, but honestly every time Noel is in the game he does a pretty good job defensively and holds his own. At the very least, it's worth trying for stretches because Hunter cannot defend an above average big for too many minutes at a time even though he's obviously the superior offensive player. Dean only played 19 minutes yesterday, but I think having Brendan try and guard someone several inches taller than him is a tough matchup even if he's a good defender.

8) Let Amir get a few minutes in the game if either JB needs a breather.
       This wasn't necessarily a goal that needed to be met but I threw in there because Bishop looked gassed last game and we were coming off a 3 OT contest. JB squared seemed okay conditioning wise this game so it didn't really matter. Amir did enter the game late, but otherwise didn't have much of an impact. 

In the grand scheme of things, pretty much all the goals were met so it's tough that the result was not in our favor.

A couple other things:

1) This isn't to pick on Hunter, because he had a couple really good moments coming out of inbounds plays offensively, but this was another game where his lack of aggressiveness and ability to post up hurt down low. Fordham pressed us basically the very first play of the game and we broke it. We found Hunter down low where he had a pretty good look at a layup. He hesitated just a bit, and that forced us to pull the ball back out where Brayon ended up missing a floater in the lane. In a close game, a play like that ends up making a difference.

It seems like all of our post guys in general get their shots blocked when they try to finish down low more often than not. I don't know if we need to do an extra pump fake or what but that certainly doesn't help when the post gets largely ignored offensively otherwise.

The other point which has been mentioned on here by others is the way we defended Ohams yesterday. I have no idea why our forwards were tightly guarding him when he caught the ball at the top of the key pretty much every time on offense. Fordham for whatever reason did not have him simply post up down low and back down our bigs. Since Ohams is pretty mobile, he would just drive past us and finish. When he collects the ball, you can afford to sag off him a bit. Force him to shoot a jumper or pass it to another guy. I think Ohams took like one jump shot all game which he missed.

Our defense wasn't the best yesterday, giving up 70 points to a team thats ranked 300th on offense. We weren't the best rotating over in the first half which allowed Fordham to knock down multiple threes from the corner. Given Charlton played 32 minutes, I think you have to force him to take more shots and work to shut down Quisenberry/Rose/Navarro instead. I'm not sure we did that enough.

2) Our play after the final media timeout. This unfortunately has to be mentioned again. It's like we learned absolutely nothing from the Mason game. We get down 3 after we leave Navarro along the sidelines open for a layup. Our next two possessions are missed threes by Bishop and Bamisile, basically the same exact sequence as the GMU game. I believe the shot clock had run low a bit on Bishop's missed three, but Joe simply has to make better decisions late in games. This has to be the third time at least where he's launched a three early in the shot clock late in a game. There were still 2 minutes left in the game at this point. As others mentioned in the last game, that's definitely panic. You do not need a three when you are down three. I repeat you do not need a three when you are down three. I can't tell whether it's simply poor execution or whether JC is actually calling for a 3 in that situation (I don't think he is) but the fact we don't go for 2 there shows we are still somewhat of a bad team honestly. It's great when it goes in, and I'm not even saying it's always a bad thing to attempt a 3, but Joe's shot was an insanely bad shot like in the Mason game and that can't be happening late. Despite that, we were making a few FTs away from winning which is crazy. I don't think that alone should dismiss the two possessions in the second to last minute of the game.

3) Brayon has been our most consistent player this year. I don't think that's a hot take, and if it is it shouldn't be. Minus the bad pass to Bishop that was picked off late that gave Fordham the 2 point lead and the missed FTs, Brayon was great yesterday and helped offset an off game from both James and Joe. Now don't get me wrong, Brayon sees less attention from defenses as the #3 option on offense, but he's done a really good job in his first year of taking advantage of it. This is why going back to point #2 I would like to see the ball in Brayon's hands more in the final minutes of a close game. I trust that he will find James or Joe if they are open, but must importantly he actually makes a concerted effort to get to the hoop (when we only need 2) and has a quick first step. He even showed that in the final 10 seconds, making a layup to cut the lead to 2 in within 4 seconds. Brayon has quietly become our best three point shooter by percentage at 43%.

4) Despite missing several minutes of the game due to technical difficulties (why does it feel like that only happens at Fordham and La Salle??) I thought Fordham's broadcasting crew was pretty good and the best that I've heard in any away game this season. The Hunter/Ricky statistics have been mentioned on the board here previously but I appreciated the extra research they did. They supported the home team without going over board.

Next up is the A10 tournament. We get UMass on Thursday at 6. It seems like a favorable matchup on paper since they don't have a dominant post player, but a few missed rotations and open three point shots for them could make things tough for us despite us being good at defending the 3. Of course, we follow one of the better matchups with probably the worst matchup in Dayton. I think at this point I would even rather play VCU over them which is crazy to say. Dayton's only real weakness is youth, which might not even be a weakness given the way they play. The goal of course is to make it to Friday. It's definitely a tough ask to expect anything beyond that but hopefully playing in DC helps!
 

And perhaps wrong, but wasn't one of them Amir?
  If so,not Noel Brown or any of the available normal or even the medium bigs. Amir is a big guard who plays bigger than he is,but not real springy. You would want more height,one would think.
Of course,since it had once been a policy to essentially concede rebounds on free throws, good we had anybody there.