They just rebounded 2 missed 3s, then made their 3rd 3 point attemt.  That in a nutshell is why we are going to lose this game.

Yep. Moving like slugs out there. Down 13. Bad.

Barring an unlikely comeback it will now be 6 years since our last OOC true road victory.

7 missed free throws by GW

46 points in the paint for Radford.

So, does this ensure Caputo is the only Colonials coach ever to lose all his games against Radford?
A poor performance on both sides of the ball. If you want to teach students of the game what interior defense and rebounding are not, GW has offered the perfect game film. Getting called for 30 seconds might be better than just chucking up shots that don´t fall when there is still time on the shot clock. Oh well, judging by the attendance not many people noticed this one happened.
 

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

This should never happen to a team that consists almost exclusively of upper classmen.  

You say this as if most of those upperclassmen weren’t just “coached” by JC for 2-3 years.

With that said, I will agree that the energy level at which we play shouldn’t be in question with a group of upperclassmen. They all know by now that any team can out hustle you.

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

They just rebounded 2 missed 3s, then made their 3rd 3 point attemt.  That in a nutshell is why we are going to lose this game.

I didn't see too much of the game and not eager to see the replay, but did witness this. Not sure if we can attribute the missed rebound twice to bad bounces off the rim. Didn't have the effort shown against SC, maybe because the shots weren't falling.
 By not just jocking the ball up, but moving it to a very open EJ at one point, we did have a nice 3. But in general, obviously when the shots aren't falling, have to find another way, rather than just missing 3 pointers. That's when our very experienced team can show real maturity. Also, it's a good example for Max, who should be with us after this
season.
     Speaking of which, the bits of the game I saw, had Noel Brown early showing some impact. If Noel is catching the
ball and doing something with it, shouldn't we go inside to him or Hunter, or whoever else is willing to play inside?

Merrick wrote:

Bottom line is that Radford is a deep team with a lot of talented players.  Far from playing "down" to their level, I think we failed to play up.  A few lazy plays at key junctures hurt--but we were beat by a better team today.  

Agree with this. I didn't actually think that we played terribly today. Radford is pretty talented for a team in the Big South. To that person who was wondering why we were complaining about having to play a game at Radford in the schedule thread earlier this offseason, this is precisely why. We got absolutely nothing out of it, except perhaps more film for what not to do. Sadly, this result almost felt predicted/expected.

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

So, does this ensure Caputo is the only Colonials coach ever to lose all his games against Radford?
 

You could blame CC for losing the game, but I would place this loss on JC for scheduling the game to begin with. CC would never have scheduled a game at Radford for obvious reasons.

Offense wasn't a problem. There were probably a few plays here or there where we could have made an extra pass, but we largely took open shots. When it came down to shots rimming around we had terrible luck. Everything that Radford shot rimmed in, while all our shots rimmed out. If you put up 76 points, you should be able to give yourself a chance to win.

As I had said in the preview, this game would come down to our defense and unfortunately we were pretty bad there, especially in the first half. We just cannot afford to dig ourselves into a hole, and Radford should not be able to put up 40+ points in a half. We were too slow with rotating over, especially down low which consistently left one Radford player open down low. Unfortunately, Radford is fairly decent shooting threes as well so CC's hand was somewhat forced there. We simply did not match Radford's energy in the game.

Merrick wrote:

Radford 11 Offensive Rebounds on 26 missed FG (not counting missed FT)
GW Outrebounded 39-25
  

JB and BA are integral to the team, but Ricky is the most important player on the team this year. If he is in foul trouble or injured, we will simply not fare well. I thought CC had made some progress getting him to defend without using his hands, but today was a little bit of a setback in that regard.

We will never win the rebounding battle if Ricky is not in the game. Hunter needs to continue to work on boxing out more consistently. This team will likely always give up a number of offensive rebounds, but we need to continue to work on corralling the ones we have control over.

Max had some nice moments defensively, but showed that he was a freshman on offense. Too many forced shots, including a contested three that was deep and barely drew iron.

Merrick wrote:

Bench Points Radford 44-19 (with Noel Brown with 10--bet no one had that on their betting slips!). 
  

Radford has more depth in year 2 under Nichols, and I would expect us to have more depth next season when Caputo brings more of his guys in. The truth is the average team will likely outscore our bench this year. The bigger problem was conceding 44 points rather than only scoring 19.

I actually thought the bench mostly played well today.

Noel in particular should have played more than 12 minutes today. While I always worry greatly that he will be called for a travel whenever he gets the ball, he gave the team a boost offensively (great to see!) and played decently on both ends. I thought he was more effective than Hunter today for stretches, although Hunter provides an extra passing element to help ball movement that Noel doesn't have.

EJ made good decisions offensively - taking good open shots from 3 that he was able to knock down but defensively he struggled to consistently hang with Radford's speedier guards. Liked CC's offense for defense substitution with EJ for Amir late in the game. While Amir may not be able to contribute a ton offensively, he still has value as a defender with great length.

Qwanzi had a nice block on defense, but truthfully isn't a player that would be getting minutes if the team had better depth. I'm sorry to single him out, because he's had a rough start to the season for the most part outside of a few plays here and there. He doesn't have the strength to contribute consistently as a defender, so when his shots aren't falling we are at a disadvantage. He did have his moments late last year as a glue guy that could do a bit of everything, so maybe he's still adjusting to CC's system. There was clear frustration just before a media timeout where he airballed a shot that was VERY forced.

Next up is a local home matchup against American, another team that falls in the "pesky" 200-250 range in KenPom. Given we have roughly a week to prepare, the matchup is a local one, and we are coming off a loss the team will play more energy and be ready to go from the start.

The checklist for this team going into a game will be:
1) Is the team playing with energy from the get-go?
2) Are Ricky and Hunter avoiding picking up unnecessary fouls?
3) Are we rotating + recovering well on defense?
4) Is the bench giving us four made field goals?
5) Are we boxing out on defense to get the rebounds we have control over?

We need pretty much all of these to be checked in order to get a win. Hope to see us put together a full 40 minutes against American on Saturday.
 

If we are trying to define who we really are, I would say that two things stand out.  One can be changed and the other can not (at least for this season).

What can be changed is the alarming rate in which we take three point shots.  Did I miss the memo that said we've all of a sudden become Davidson?  Keeping in mind that we are not a particularly good three point shooting team, we are attempting over 24 threes per game.  This represents 43.8% of all shot attempts.  James is 16-52 from 3, a 30.8% mark.  This works out to shooting 2 for 6.5 per game.  Ricky is shooting 5-19, a much smaller sample size but a 26.3% success rate nevertheless.    Against Radford, the team desperately tried to get back into the game by shooting 3's and ended up converting 9-27.  This is feeding right into your opponents hands.

What makes this point even worse is how effective we've been taking two point shots.  We are shooting 60.9% from 2 this season.  And before you conclude that this is because Hunter Dean has hardly missed this season, let's go back to James.  James is shooting an astounding 58.7% from the floor on his two point shots so far this season.  He is an exceptional midrange shooter but he just isn't an exceptional three point shooter.  And in case you think I'm basing this on 8 games, James shot 31.7% from 3 last year, 33.8% from three the year before, and 30.4% in his lone limited season at LSU.

While relying less on three point shooting is within this team's control, the inability to defend in the paint, guard the rim, etc. is not.  Ricky is the closest thing this team has to a rim protector and frankly, you saw just how bad things can get when he plays 11 minutes due to foul trouble.  Hunter Dean and Noel Brown are pieces to a puzzle but nether is a solution on the defensive end.  Each provides a certain level of value but unfortunately, not where this team desperately needs it.  

It's nice to have three high quality recruits coming in next season but none of the three even begins to hide the elephant in the room.  What this team needs is Zeke Armwood even if that meant a version without any real scoring capabilities.  Someone who will alter shots and secure rebounds.  Take any description of Ira Lee that you've ever read and that's what is needed.  Noel may possess the size and body but lacks the defensive skills and tenacity.  Hunter may possess the instincts but lacks the strength and ruggedness that's required.  

They are who we have for now and like I said, both players give us some positive things.  But neither represents what is truly needed.  There's the transfer portal and there's more high school players to recruit.  For a coach who frequently mentions how he has very few guards but a ton of big men, if I were CC, I'd be hanging out in as many big and tall shops as I could find.