Athletic Department and coaching staff needs to kiss and makeup with Mike Hall ASAP.
His input would be valuable.

I'll address "the plan is working" in a few minutes.  Yesterday's loss was representative of the entire season, even if there were plausible reasons.  Outside of a dominant win against the conference's worst team and a dominant loss against arguably its best, the theme of this season can be boiled down to lack of consistency.  We played stretches of good basketball in most every game this season while also crapping the bed in these same games.  We can look at the past few games including yesterday's and point to Covid as being a major factor why some players began games fatigued and most others ended them that way.  Even if you were fortunate enough to avoid the disease, as a player, you still endured a 35 day pause from basketball, you still played on a severely short staffed team down the stretch, and you still played with teammates who had to feel exhausted at times.  I am not one to lightly dole out excuses but in this strangest of seasons in which we were fortunate to get through it, excuses seem OK to use this season.

So is this an acceptable reason for a team to lose focus?  Before the game, we had hoped for a concerted effort on the defensive boards and that's exactly what we saw throughout the first half.  Then in the second half, it's as if JC told them at halftime, "OK guys.  Let's not worry anymore about defensive rebounding" (which he obviously didn't say).  Mason repeatedly scored off of offensive rebounds in the second half which, along with a few timely outside shots, helped catapult their comeback.  Did GW lose its focus by forgetting about what was clearly a point of emphasis in the game plan?  Or, were they just too tired to pull down rebounds?  Either or both are entirely possible.

Beyond yesterday's game, there have been problems which plagued this team throughout the season, problems which are hard to point to Covid as being an acceptable excuse.  Make no mistake about the fact that James Bishop gave an outstanding individual effort yesterday.  His point production was about the only thing that kept GW in this game for as long as it did.  Ricky was clearly fatigued, Jamison was well guarded, Chase again should not have been playing nearly as much as he did due to his health, and nobody else really stepped up offensively (though Tyler did make a few nice plays/shots).  While James may have been fully justified in taking 24 shots yesterday, the fact is that there were too many games this season where James attempted to do way too much on his own while playing with a perfectly fine supporting cast.  To me, this season was a bit of a throwback to SirValient Brown's freshman year (Brown and Monroe vs. Bishop and Battle).  SirVal was a talent, nobody could dispute this, and he was often a marvel to watch.  However, that team, coming off of an NCAA appearance, fell quite a bit largely because that team became the SirValient show.  He played the point and often struggled at times at getting his teammates involved.  Similarly, it appeared as if many of James's teammates grew frustrated by watching James take on defenses by himself.

It is one thing to be able to recruit talent and if this was the sole criteria for success, we should all applaud JC's efforts.  However, we all know that assembling talent is only the beginning.  Good coaching means devising ways to maximize strengths while minimizing weaknesses.  While I thought James's decision-making improved over time, the goal ought to be for this team to play cohesively over a full game.  Not for only a half.  Not for stretches within a half.  Make no mistake about the fact that playing cohesively is not the same as playing perfectly.  Shots will always be missed.  Turnovers will always be committed.  Yet on a cohesively run team, one where four guys are not standing around wondering what the 5th guy is going to do with the ball, the missed shots are often good looks and the turnovers are often the result of good defense by the opponent.  

Defensively, I can't say I feel very good about this group.  Others have correctly pointed out there does not seem to be a lot of heart on this team when it comes to playing defense.  Ball, Lindo and Moyer appeared to be the exceptions.  The others lacked something....bulk, foot speed, desire, knowhow, courage, maybe some or all of the above.  

This segues nicely into that JC inspired plan.  Bear with me for the plan may have changed, perhaps even more than once.  I believe the original plan was to bring mayhem to Foggy Bottom, mayhem being another way of saying VCU's havoc.  It took very little time to see that the personnel in place was not equipped to play this style nor did the team have the required depth to play it.  Then after about 10 games or so of Season 1, we were one of the best teams in the country at 3 point fg % defense, so mayhem became that, running opponents off of the three point line.  Well, considering that we finished 13th out of 14 A10 schools at that statistic in 2020-21, let's assume that this is no longer part of the plan.

The plan should have everything to do with a word that I have not heard too much lately, analytics.  We do things because the analytics tell us to do so.  For example, the plan had this team taking a ton of three point shots.  Joining Maceo Jack and Jamison Battle this season were Sloan Seymour, James Bishop and Tyler Brelsford, all three point shooters ranging from capable to absolutely great.  If I remember correctly, the goal was to take in the vicinity of 48% of our field goal attempts from 3.  It turned out that this figure was 33.5%.  Even our opponents took a hair under 36% of their field goal attempts from 3 and that includes not having played La Salle, St. Joe's, UMASS or Davidson, teams that were among the most reliant on three point shooting within the conference.  So I guess the notion of taking a ton of 3's is no longer the plan either.

But rest assured, the plan is working.  Even if the plan right now is nothing more than assembling talented players, there is still a big job ahead of JC, namely, how to make the pieces of this puzzle fit properly.

Last edited by Gwmayhem (3/05/2021 9:42 am)

Was pleased with our effort in the season finale. While the game mirrored our performance exactly one week before where we ran out of gas, we genuinely played with more energy than the Fordham game which was encouraging (we dove for a loose ball at the end of the game!). Our two best defensive halves were both against Mason this year. I have no idea why Paulsen didn't tell them to drive the ball more than they did before halftime (and push the pace), but they adjusted after halftime and just had more depth than us. Polite had a career game which was unfortunate because he has been a non-factor all season and likely wasn't anywhere on the scouting report (although I will say we lost him a few too many times after halftime).

Bishop had his best game of the season, and it wasn't because he finished the year with a career high in points (the URI game was his best offensive performance). The fact that he battled down low for a rebound just before halftime (and got fouled just before the whistle sounded), actually picked the pocket of a couple Mason players during the game, and even drew a charge in the game definitely feels like a step in the right direction. I don't know if Atkins has helped here since he arrived in Foggy. I thought Bishop played poorly the past several games before Mason, and that was because of just a lack of energy and focus, not as much whether he was making shots or not. He was single handedly willing the team in the second half while we were still in it. Ricky was clearly tired and Jamison was bottled up as mentioned above.

The reality is that by the end of the season, we were down five scholarship players (JNJ, Maceo, Sloan, Matt, and Amir) and of the remaining eight players on scholarship (not including Brandon who received his midseason) seven of the players were underclassmen (including three bigs who are always going to be low usage players in JC's system). Based on that, I'm fine with Bishop taking 24 shots, but I am hoping that next season we can have his usage come down just a bit as we have more to work with. Roster continuity is really going to be critical next season.

The team missed preseason practices because of COVID, but I was hoping that the Bishop-Paar and Bishop-Brelsford connections from those guys playing together prior to GW would have helped more than it did this season. What was encouraging early in the Mason game was Bishop finding Chase for three early on and then Chase returning the favor, passing to James later on with that reverse layup. There was just not a whole lot of that connection all season which was strange to me (COVID could play a role here as well).

I get angry when people compare Chase to Goss/Cimino because that's pretty unfair. For a stretch of last year's A10 season, Chase had the best field goal percentage in the league. The guy was finishing consistently down low, and through traffic. The latter two struggled to stay on the floor at GW. I do agree that Chase needs someone to help him progress his development though. He tends to get the ball stripped from him and not catch passes properly which needs improvement, but there are parts of his game to like. I still think he is a solid rotational big in the league. His conditioning was clearly not there after the team returned from pause, but truthfully I think he got better looks last year playing with Armel. That feels crazy to me given he has played with Bishop before. Now part of this is that Bishop wasn't a PG prior to college, and perhaps he is still going through some pains playing the point. I do wonder what JC's pitch to Bishop was when he came to GW, because we rarely had Bishop play off the ball all season. I would have liked to see Tyler or Lincoln play stretches at point guard and have Bishop use his natural ability to make shots getting open. Perhaps the condition was that Bishop would come if he got the chance to play point to improve his development. That's fine, but I can't help but feel like the process could have been more gradual than letting him fully take over right away. It hurt the team for stretches, but I guess if there was ever a season to do it, this season was best. Next season, we cannot afford to not have a backup PG, or at least get James off the ball for stretches of a game. Maybe that guy will be Amir, or perhaps Brayon. 

Hunter had some nice moments with the dunk and foul in the game and keeping a couple possessions alive, but he is too passive at times on the offensive end. He is a decent defender, but tends to run into foul trouble. Noel backing down on Wilson and finishing was definitely nice to see, and hopefully he builds on that next season because earlier on he didn't always go up with the shot strongly. He has shown decent defensive instincts, but isn't quite yet a shot altering presence yet. There is a lot of potential here, but none of these guys is a finished product yet. We either need any of these three bigs to take a big step forward next season or bring in a more experienced guy who can lead (which will not be easy as bigs are always in demand). Additionally, on the offensive side we need to run at least a few more roll plays for the bigs otherwise I feel like we are going to remain stagnant for stretches next season as well. None of these guys need to be high usage by any means, but give them some kind of a role apart from just screening. We also need to work on the pass exchange from big to guard. Too often it looks like the defender will strip the exchange when Chase/Hunter were trying to get the ball to Bishop. We need to be a lot less predictable and make actual passes from other players instead of asking Bishop to handle all of that.

I thought Tyler had a successful freshman campaign, and hopefully he can become another point option for us next season. Lincoln showed good energy defensively and had some moments, but needs to develop into more of a factor offensively. Jamison showed off a much more versatile offensive game and I think has all-A10 potential next season, but he needs to work on his ball handling. His dribble is too loose and lost the ball a bit too often given his role in the system. Ricky also has the ability to make all-defensive team next year. Defenses played off him at times though, daring him to shoot the three. If he can make those with a bit more consistency, he will be impossible to guard. He has great driving instincts and finishes well down low.

Most importantly, This team needs a consistent identity on both sides of the ball. We went from talking about launching consistently from three preseason to hardly doing to during the season. We showed a press for a grand total of one half the entire year (minus some possessions here and there). To me, it feels like we are recruiting skill without an understanding of how they will fit in the system. You can adjust a system to account for the players on the team, but changing full philosophies leads to an identity crisis (for example, how Sloan fit into this team when we weren't shooting that many threes, and since we weren't we couldn't have him play much because he was the team's worst defender). I am hopeful JC will figure it out, but next season the win total will start to matter.

Long Suffering Fan wrote:

Now...while we are talking about Brown, I cannot believe that there is room on this team for Brown, Dean and Paar.   Although each of them bring something to the table, none of them were really close to looking like an impact player.   I would be surprised if all 3 are back with the team next season.

Not only that but I really don't see how all three supposedly fit into JC's system. With the exception of the last game, we rarely had a lineup with two bigs on the court at the same time so there will probably not be enough minutes to go around for 3 guys who pretty much do the same thing.