Wish Jabari West could join us immediately after signing his NLI tomorrow because we are so thin in the front court. We almost had to bring in one of our two walk ons. This team desperately could use a big with old man moves like Steeves. Can’t trust Brown and Dean with the ball in their hands.

Surprised we didn’t see much of Samuels tonight given our foul trouble. Also zero minutes for Nixon.

If we just got out of our own way we could’ve had a second half like the first. Refs feeling themselves added to the issues.

This team showed their athletic potential. JC needs to coach them to play smart. Might need to incorporate some ML micromanagement techniques otherwise we’ll probably see leads slip like this again
 
This is the first time JC has ever won the first game of the season.

Last edited by GW0509 (11/09/2021 10:44 pm)

Yeah, defense in the paint was an issue but they played tough and hung in there, and definitely nice to see two 20 point scorers. Lindo looked great too. Let's hope the good guys can lessen the mistakes.

Happy to get a win, especially in the face of what really felt like some very uneven refereeing. Lindo is a tremendous player - big motor, really passionate. You could see his frustration with getting pulled with 4 fours but his 4th foul was really poor decision making. As maybe our most impactful player, he will need to be smart and keep himself on the court. His end game hustle was magnificent, but it looks like he might have injured (reinjured?) his left knee. Fingers crossed he is just fine.

The other issue is clearly our bigs. We had pretty much no answer for Flagg tonight, and he is not the best big we are going to see this season by a long shot. 17 points 17 rebounds.

Brown actually played some really solid D down the stretch with 4 fouls. He has to keep his hands up before he gets into serious foul trouble. Hunter Dean does not seem to me to be remotely close to an A10 caliber big. Feels like there is a good chance we are going to get exposed down low all season.

All that said, nice, loud house tonight! Great to see adams and bamasile go off too! I’ll always take undefeated :D

I don't typically moan about the refs, but the officiating was atrocious.  For the first 29 minutes, it set much of the tone of the game towards St. Francis.  Ticky-tack calls were going one way against us and not the other--changing our lineup and our defensive aggressiveness. JC rarely gets a T, but when he got one at 10:55, the tide turned.  SF had a series of cheap fouls called against them and I think it was actually 7-1 Sf-GW on foul calls for the remainder of the game after the technical.  That helped us build back the 13-point lead and the refs pretty much ate their whistles the rest of the game.

Can't blame the refs for the final five minutes.  Our offense got stagnant with fewer touches and a series of players trying to do it on their own with shots that didn't fall.  Everything SF put up inside seemed to go in as they took advantage of our foul trouble,

One telling moment occurred when Lindo picked up his fourth battling three SF players underneath as the rest of the GW squad stood and watched.  JC blasted those four in a way I've never seen him get angry before.  I know Bishop was one of the players--but the ire was not necessarily directed at him.

1-0 and on to Maryland.    

Liked the talent I saw last night but the big question mark in my mind is still there: the coaching. Outscored at home by 10 in the second half against a less than stellar opponent. The team under this coach has consistently struggled at the end of games in particular because of a lack of play calling and strategy. That was evident again last night and, had the St. Francis big guy not missed an easy layup in the closing seconds, the final result may very well have been different. 

Also Harris was a disaster when shooting from beyond 8 inches, Samuels looked completely lost and Lindo looks like our only real offensive rebounder.
That StFU missed a layup to win it with 0:03 left after leading by 12 was predictable and leaves me with a bad feeling toward the remainder of the season.

It’s clear from these posts that eyewitness testimony is suspect.I have no idea how the team looked.
Don’t put me in a line-up.I’d be scared shitless.Some of you would swear it was me-others would say
it was the red headed guy second in line.

I don't think we are as bad offensively as we showed for stretches, or as good defensively as SFPA's stats might look.

I thought for the most part we took good shots, but execution near the rim was missing for stretches in the game (a few unlucky ones that rolled out, but I think we rushed some for sure). We took more midrange shots than I would have expected today but made enough of them that the fact they were shot can probably be ignored. Loved seeing us push off a missed shot - something we didn't see last year. Shooting doesn't seem to be as big of a concern as anticipated during the offseason. There is still a small concern, but it was good to see Brendan step up with James/Joe not finding the mark from deep consistently. It is likely that at least one (or maybe two) will perhaps perform well enough to offset an off game from the third player. A luxury we certainly didn't have last year.

Defensively, I can definitely say we saw something closer to Mayhem for the first time (maybe second after the UMBC game last year) under JC's watch. Still thought there was a bit too much gambling given our lack of depth. We have seemingly gone from being a team that is more conservative, packs it in, and doesn't foul to one that is overly aggressive and fouls too much. Do I by this as a strategy we will see for the entirety of the season? Probably not. Against better teams I still think we will probably be a bit more conservative because of a lack of depth. Our defensive positioning was also atrocious. As mentioned in the preview, this was the kind of game where either team could get to the hoop with little resistance and that seems to have been the case. That's something that needs to improve - we let Dixon-Conover and other players to get past the initial shell along the perimeter and the frontcourt sans Ricky is not currently capable of holding the fort down.

The positive is that we have more go-to options when Bishop is circled on every scouting report (that was clear last night). The offensive system was more diversified, and we shot decent from the free throw line when we got there (the 69% goes up to 75% without Hunter's two misses).

The negative is that as expected our frontcourt is thin without Ira and there is not much depth on this team. VCU does foul when playing havoc but they also have a long bench which allows them to continue playing that style for 40 minutes. Not filling the 12th scholarship with another frontcourt body feels like a missed opportunity. Hopefully Ricky isn't too banged up for the Maryland game, because this team is not built to survive injuries from key players. There will always be a drop-off in ability to contribute at the end of the roster, but I think ours might be a bit more drastic currently.

I hate complaining about the refs, but there were just so many times where SFPA was initiating the contact yet the foul was called on us. Thought JC was smart to pick up the T and signal to the refs to get their heads out of their asses (he did something similar in the VCU game, and I remember the calls going a bit more our way after that). It was almost like if we were breathing on a player we would get whistled. Bishop barely made contact with another player after he lost the ball and got charged with a foul. Hopefully, incidental contact will not be called as close in future games.

Didn't like the coaching/execution in the last five minutes of the game. As much as I like that we are playing uptempo, we should have been slowing things down at the end, taking care of the ball, and getting good shots. Hopefully that will be improved over the course of the season.

James Bishop had an off game, but took good shots that seemed to rim out. Like others mentioned, I like that he didn't press when shots weren't falling. I also liked that we didn't need to rely on him so much to create shots for others. He tried on defense but will probably never be a plus on that end - he's definitely shown improvement over last year. Not too concerned overall, and the more we can get him off the ball, and create open shots for him, the more success he and the team will have

Ricky Lindo is the heart of the team. He certainly played with a chip on his shoulder last night, and seemed eager to not only make winning plays for the team but showcase to scouts about what he can do at the next level. Some of his transition plays taking it to the hoop were very impressive - he looked like a man against boys at times. When was the last time we had a player with 6 blocks in a game? I'm sure Yuta was able to do that at least once when he was here.

Joe Bamisile was another guy who stuffed the stat sheet - 20 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 3 blocks. He's the kind of player I've not seen since the Hobbs era. Joe is just so athletic, and I really like that he got the audience involved and fed off it. He seems to handle adversity well - he was seen clapping his hands and motivating others when SFPA cut into our lead. Our ability to stay composed and continue playing when SFPA made it a one possession game multiple times is something that we wouldn't have seen last year. Bamisile in general feels like a really good fit at GW and I'm glad we got him - and he's just technically a "freshman"!

Brendan Adams made some really big shots for us to quell any momentum that the Red Flash had for stretches of the game. Like the roster as a whole, I like that he's so versatile - he played the point for stretches and was quarterback on several transition plays in the game. In general, it's good to see more than one player have more assists than turnovers in a game. Bishop's high usage at the point of attack as the only guy who could create for others made us predictable but we now at least 4 guys (maybe 5) who can lead the offense.

It was good to see Noel Brown start. He had a "freshman mistake" on one of his fouls where Flagg was posting up and he failed to keep his hands straight but I still think down the line as he gets more court time he will be at the very least a serviceable player on the court. He quietly did a good job battling for rebounds down low - that's something we really need and it can't just be Ricky doing it.

It was great to see Amir Harris back - he is never flashy but just gets it done with his calmness. He was another guy who did it all - 3 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals. I will say the angles of some of his close proximity shots are somewhat strange - something about that seems to hurt his overall efficiency near the hoop but I chalk that up to just continuing to get back to what he was pre-injury. He won't be shooting much from distance but it was good to see his lone attempt go in. I feel confident when he is making the decisions and he can play so many positions on the floor.

Brayon Freeman was a true warrior - he had a big cut on his face and was bleeding but continued to fight. All things considered, I thought he had a decent debut. His two turnovers weren't terrible - one was a charge with him taking it to the hoop (liked his aggressiveness) and the other was stepping on the sideline - knowing how far to go along the edge will be something he will learn (and honestly I think more players get away with toeing the line than they should). Had a nice finish play in transition. He was a fairly high usage player in HS so the biggest thing is I'm glad he wasn't forcing things - that bodes well for his overall development.

Hunter Dean was not the same guy that played during the exhibition. Even in most games last year he seemed a bit tentative when on the court. He gets the ball easily knocked from his hands and just needed a play to get his confidence going. There were a few times where he was open from the top of the key - I wouldn't be opposed to seeing him take 1-2 of those shots every game. When he puts the ball on the floor, he tends to drive into traffic and lose the ball. Bishop missed him on an alley-oop out of a timeout. If the pass was executed a bit better that would have really been big for Hunter's confidence.

Qwanzi Samuels looks like he may need to put on a bit of weight before he can contribute more. He did look a bit lost, but any minutes he can provide is a big boost for this team. The same with Daniel Nixon - I hope he'll get some non-garbage minute action before OOC play ends.

I would assume we aren't as aggressive against Maryland, especially after we saw how the foul situation played out. Some good things for sure moving forward but also things that need to be cleaned up. 1-0 is certainly better than 0-1 regardless of the margin of victory! All of this is to say, despite all the critiques it was just the first game of the season with a brand new team and there is a lot of basketball still to be played.
 

Mentz, i really dont see Joe as having played out of control. He was aggressive and energetic, and clearly feeling the crowd. Maybe that revved him up more than you would like, but I think we can excuse first game excitement (if we even have to). In addition to scoring critical buckets all game, he was also consistently making defensive plays. I wouldn't want to see much different from him than we got this game!

A few thoughts, I have not posted in a long time but we actually have basketball to talk about.

Front court deficiencies have been well documented, I walked away from this game even more disappointed that we don't get to see Ira Lee this year. This team has talent, but that is a glaring weakness. I actually think we may have had a shot to be a top 8 A10 team if he was healthy and as advertised. 

This team appears to actually enjoy playing together. I have been to almost every home game over the last 20 years and it has been a long time since I can remember seeing that.

Really like Bishop off the ball, shot was not falling tonight but he was clearly the focus of the defense.
 
Joe Bamisile is my new favorite player. Joy was a great word to describe his game! The form on his shot is a little different but I think he can knock down the mid-range with consistently. As athletic a player as we have had since the Hobbs days, and super charismatic. Gave a great interview after the game. I can't believe we are knocking him for getting the crowd going! Fans have not had much to cheer for in a LONG time.

Can the staff coach-em up? This is the most talent we have had since ML, we should not finish 13th in the A10 if our coaching staff can actually coach.