Alum '04 wrote:

Just completely hopeless at this point. I honestly thought we had a chance earlier in the season to finish in the top 4. What a pipe dream.

Think I'll start checking out Howard games. They're in the neighborhood.

Next game is Saturday at 2 pm vs NC Central who is currently tied for first place in the MEAC.
Howard is currently tied for 3rd place in the MEAC

Howard features Seth Towns - former Ivy League Player of the Year at Harvard - in his 8th year of college and a PhD student in religion.
Also on the team are the 2 oldest Williams brothers from DC/Sidwell Friends and the oldest is also an Ivy Legue grad. The youngest of the 3 will play for Georgetown in the fall (and he is supposed to be the best player of the 3).

Conference games are doubleheaders with the women playing first.
The band is great, and the cheerleaders and dance team have a different style then what you see at GWU.
Bring $15 and buy the fish dinner.
Everyone who is a fan of the game should experience a MEAC or SWAC game at least once.
Tickets are $30 - $15 if you are 60 and older.

Seeya there
Section 6 Row E Seat 10

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

DC Native wrote:

Way too late, but playing much better now, even some good ball movement. Nice game by Smith.

It is amazing how many open shots are created when the ball is moved around and players without the ball are in motion. Coach might want to make that a part of the offense from the opening tip.

We can talk about the schedule. Right now, not seeming like a brilliant strategy. But one characteristic remains the same: the patsies we played in OCC and A-10 teams all share the ball better--and pass out of more than desperation.
   Very interestingly, the second team, the Zams and Smiths and Treys (a starter next year), etc played a lot better and more motivated. They actually passed the ball. And played with urgency instead of in a lackadaisical "What Me Worry?" manner.
manner.  And their run actually made the score significantly less humiliating than where it was heading.
   That's another thing: we played an unusually short rotation in OOC, especially given our "schedule."
Instead of tightening up the rotation during conference, it was fairly tight early on. 
   We barely saw Smith, even when healthy. He's been playing out of position, as a de facto big man, which he of course isn't, in recent games. Still, he competes and can shoot. Zam would make a 3 or a couple of 3s and be gone. Trey played some early, but got lost in the shuffle at least sometimes. It took awhile to appreciate Jacoi, who is still learning and can have rough games like all GW freshman PG's. Benny's a tougher argument, but he brings (or brought,depending on why he wasn't on the bench) some energy. 
      But there are times when we need bodies either from foul trouble or a need for energy/new blood. Also for next year, as an NCAA tournament bid seems to be out of reach, barring a turnaround for the ages in the A-10 tourney.
     The deeper part of the bench showed us something that the starting 5 could take to heart.
    
 

This has been one horrendous stretch of basketball for GW hoops.  You cannot fully comprehend how just how bad until looking at the results of the last seven games:

@UMass 67-81   14pts
@Richmond 74-82   8pts
LaSalle 70-80   10pts
@Dayton 61-83   22pts
Rhode Island 65-88   23pts
Loyola-Chi 73-81  8pts
@GMU 67-90   23pts

Seven straight losses with an average 15.4 point margin of defeat
 

Last edited by TJT85 (2/14/2024 9:20 am)

Go watch your team play on the road and you come to realize that wins are scarce.  I've seen GW win at Mason (last year and in the past), Duquesne, Richmond, and it's really sweet when they do.  Otherwise, you hope the team plays well and is competitive.

Last night brought me back to 1994 at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  See if this sounds familiar.  GW fell behind by 14 in the first 6 minutes, trailed 40-8 at one point and eventually lost 103-73.  In the first half, Duke shot 65% and 8-13 from 3. They held a 27-12 rebounding advantage.

Mike Jarvis:  "Basically, Duke did whatever they wanted to do."

Antoine Hart: "When you play Duke here, you have to have intensity.  For some reason, we started off like we really weren't ready."

Remind you of anything a bit more recent?  One big difference though.  In 1994, this was Cherokee Parks (career high 29 points), Trajan Langdon and Jeff Capel doing the damage.  Not exactly George Mason, is it?

There's a big disconnect going on here when CC has this "I've tried everything" tone to his remarks and yet what we seem to be seeing are the same things being tried over and over again.  You can't look at GM, see that they may statistically be one of the lesser three point shooting teams in the conference so the defense will concede open 3's to focus on other things, and then be stunned when the Patriots shoot 7-15 from 3 by halftime.  Every single team in the A10 is capable of doing this.  Sometimes the team is late in picking up the shooter.  Sometimes,  a player is double teaming the guy with the ball only to not force  a turnover, thereby leaving his man wide open for a 3 (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS!!!).  Sometimes, we actually did look like we gave up and never even made the token attempt of closing out the shooter.

On my car ride home, we were having the roster construction discussion.  It seems like we have a roster filled with 2-3 players who all pretty much do the same thing, and too many voids as a result of this.  Let's face it, we were fortunate to land even a single legitimate center on this team when Stretch joined us I believe in June.  Does the team have a banger at power forward?  Jun comes the closest but he's more of a unicorn.  Zam, Garrett, Keegan, Benny, Antoine...all have size, but each one would much prefer to take a three than bang down low for rebounds. 

This gets to the heart of the matter...CC was so desperate to improve the team's three point shooting from last year, particularly with Brendan leaving, that he loaded up on three point shooters and more or less forgot about everything else. 

If the team does have a sports psychologist, can we get Max an appointment?  I am very hard on Max because I believe in his natural talent.  Yet there are so many things that speak to decision-making...shot selection, when to pass and when to shoot, when to go for a steal and when to play straight up D, when to not help and stay with your own man so you're not a step late. 

JB is also a special talent but he can't win games with the ball in his hands while 4 teammates are standing around watching him.  Several have commented on how well the ball moved when JB, Max and Stretch were on the bench during the game's final stages.  On the one hand, it's hard to read too much into this as Mason clearly took its foot off the gas with around 10 minutes remaining.  On the other hand, there's really no reason why the offense can't look more like this with JB and Max out there.

Obviously, Jun's absence meant the world in this one as the team, lacking confidence from the opening tip, became flat out shell shocked literally within minutes.  It was a horrendous performance to watch but after thinking objectively about it, a somewhat understandable one.  How do you go from being so reliant on one player and then not have anyone who can fill this role in his absense?  You can't.  Now, the pity party is over and this team must decide whether it's going to get up from the mat and continue fighting or stay down for the 8-count (or is it a 10-count..haven't watched boxing in years)?  After losing in multiple overtimes to Fordham, absolutely nobody gave them a chance to take down an 0-1 VCU team on the road, but they did.  Richmond is next and this GW team has to begin forgetting about the name on their opponent's uniforms and start to snap out of this by playing as a team.  I'll repeat it because it bears repeating..PLAY AS A TEAM. 
 

Last edited by Gwmayhem (2/14/2024 10:33 am)

One of the announcers accurately pointed out early in the game that GW is a team that gains confidence from the 3 point shot. There you have it!  One airball from 3 and it’s game over?  I guess so.

Last years accolades for JB and Max have become this years curse.  They’ve both regressed.  JB is a half step slower and his legs give out, hence the missed layups that he made 90% of the time last year.  And Max is a man without a position…too slow at guard, undersized at forward even though he loves grabbing boards. 

I appreciate everything JB and Max have done for this team.  Problem is they don’t make anybody else on the floor better, and very little has been done to change that.

Just hope CC doesn’t lose the locker room if it hasn’t already happened. I’d keep either JB or Max from starting one of these games.  Give the effort-guys a start.  What else to do at this point?

Lots of thoughts right now. The last couple games could have been much worse had the opposing coach's not cleared their bench in the last 5 minutes. Unlike some here, I have never been high on Bishop. He is a 6th year senior who has never won. He can go off statistically at times but never in meaningful games or against good teams. Sad to see we are heading to the conference play-in game after a few here were talking "top 4" in conference after our cupcake pre-conference schedule.
CC has the rest of the season to turn this around and the off season to get some new talent (transfers) and develop the young talent we now have, assuming they don't transfer. 
I find it humorous that some posters here are blaming a young team, bad luck and bad officiating as reasons we keep losing. The bad officiating excuse is being used even after our home games and being ridiculed on our opponents boards. When CC starts to use that excuse it will be time for him to go.

I know for a fact they were in the running for a power forward and a center with D1 experience. The price was too high. One is at Georgetown and the other who barely played at Miami, and is a local, went to Penn State.CC should be able to get the players we lack as FOG is stronger this year. College sports has become the wild Wild West. If we can keep the young nucleus let’s hope good things will happen.

Last edited by 2twooed (2/14/2024 3:16 pm)

2twooed wrote:

I know for a fact they were in the running for a power forward and a center with D1 experience. The price was too high. One is at Georgetown and the other who barely played at Miami, and is a local, went to Penn State.CC should be able to get the players we lack as FOG is stronger this year. College sports has become the wild Wild West. If we can keep the young nucleus let’s hope good things will happen.

Too bad for Aire as he is getting barely any PT at PSU.  Massoud is at least getting PT at Georgetown although they're not much better than we are.

In both cases, like you say, they are getting $$ so those PT or winning woes probably aren't as big of a deal.

Mike K wrote:

I missed what happened to Jun. What happened?

Groin injury against Loyola. Hope is he'll be back Saturday but we'll see. Also not sure if anyone's mentioned it but Garrett is dealing with a hip issue that's limiting his mobility a bit. Related to his previous issues there but more to do with playing a full season of basketball for the first time in a few years than a flare up or another tumor

Gwmayhem wrote:

creeksandzeeks wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

 On my car ride home, we were having the roster construction discussion.  It seems like we have a roster filled with 2-3 players who all pretty much do the same thing, and too many voids as a result of this.  Let's face it, we were fortunate to land even a single legitimate center on this team when Stretch joined us I believe in June.  Does the team have a banger at power forward?  Jun comes the closest but he's more of a unicorn.  Zam, Garrett, Keegan, Benny, Antoine...all have size, but each one would much prefer to take a three than bang down low for rebounds. 

This gets to the heart of the matter...CC was so desperate to improve the team's three point shooting from last year, particularly with Brendan leaving, that he loaded up on three point shooters and more or less forgot about everything else.  

Just because that's where this roster landed does NOT necessarily mean it's what the plan was going into the 2023 summer recruiting season. These coaches are working on dozens of prospects. A large swath of them are going to tell the staff that they won't take a visit without a certain amount of money promised in NIL. Another swath are going to choose other schools, and CC and his team are forced to take what they can get, and in some cases commit to a kid who would be below someone else on their depth chart because if they wait too long, they risk losing out on both.

We can argue that the staff ought to win these battles more (and I'm not sure I'm ready to do that with the state of college hoops), but I wouldn't say with any certainty that this is how they drew it up in April. 
 

Agree CreeksandZeeks that the job is hard.  Things rarely go to plan for most coaches.  But we should be able to agree that upgrading the team's three point shooting was the top priority.  CC pretty much said so during the offseason.  My sense is that the feeling was to bring in mostly shooters with the hope that some would be better players than others.  The better ones will play regularly while the lesser ones may be groomed (such as  a freshman like Zam) or would likely leave after running out of eligibility (Antoine) or playing less than they anticipated.

What would be difficult to convince me of is that the team could not land a single legitimate rebounding power forward anywhere.  Perhaps they didn't because they set their sights too high.  But if this was the case, then they needed to aim lower.  There certainly must have been a power forward playing in a lower ranked D1 conference right now who could have joined GW had they been offered.  It stands to reason that he would not have been a 15+ point per game scorer but he would not have needed to be.  Someone who could have played 15-20 minutes, grab rebounds, play some defense, and perhaps spare Stretch the indignity of being in foul trouble so often, would have been more than sufficient.

  We could use a blue collar Bill Brigham type (did he have a son?) or Antxon Iturbe. Anyone who could join Max in grabbing rebounds. Frankly, I would take a Patrick Steeves, John Kopriva (both of whom also made us very proud academically) or even though he was not appreciated here, even a sophomore Javier Langarica.
    Stretch who is a rim protector, though on and off to be honest, for some odd reason is not a reliable rebounder. Looked up at the scoreboard one half and Stretch had like 1 rebound.  Though one game he something like 14 or 15.
The only GW player who diligently hits the boards is Max, and right now, that is a great value he brings, despite some
temporary challenges otherwise.
    We could use an experienced guard, as suggested, but we have plenty of guards, assuming everyone stays.
Last year's lack of landing a big or someone who plays big, was very frustrating, but somewhat understandable. Next year it won't be understandable.
 Priorities 1 through 3 for next year needs to be someone who can play or seem to play at least PF if not C, preferably having some impact on both sides of the ball.