moneybox wrote:

How many times will this school get in a situation where it hires a coach long term and can't afford to fire him?  I guess the sky is the limit!

Can’t say I’m surprised this team is so disorganized there wasn’t a team to join with all the turnover. That said we shouldn’t be this bad. Reminds me of Scotty Bowman with the Sabres. He won before and after and it could be the same way for JC.

GW0509 wrote:

Who on this team can give a Mike Hall UNCW type speech to wake this team up?

Well, Mike Hall was available....

First in person game in quite a long time, and while an enjoyable experience, being from Boston, never thought we'd lose to the "Mill" team. 

Few thoughts and observations. We lack focus and discipline. I would call it professionalism. And that comes from floor and coaching leadership. Someone here said we lack a floor general - could not agree more. Carl Elliot wouldn't be yucking it up at half time, throwing down dunks and random shots. On a side note, I do wonder if the lack of focus is a generational thing and/or transfer thing? No one has roots therefore no one is a leader. Lindo is trying, but being limited to getting the ball on the block and backing his man down is a poor way to get our best player the ball. 

I can only surmise that Jamion is a "players" coach, their friend. Which is great for recruiting, but terrible for execution. In some ways the opposite of Lonergan. 

Things I did like:
Freeman. Great body control and energy. Dribbles with his head up. 
Bamisile's athleticism. Guy can jump out of the gym. No freaking discipline, just wild. Coaching would do him well. 
 

Point guards are the glue that makes a successful team function and succeed. The two “small” point guards that Umass/Lowell had were far more effective than anyone GW had. I would bet that they were lightly recruited. They controlled tempo, passed well and rarely turned the ball over. I like Freemans work ethic and believe he will be a jewel for this team. Bishop is a turnover machine, dribbles too high and makes a low percentage of shots. JCs success is tied to him. Unfortunately, failure is around the corner for both.

LSF-My sentiments—EXACTLY.-Thank you.

BM wrote:

dmv, I don’t think the problem is that the pieces don’t fit well together.  I just don’t think the staff has the tools to do the fitting.  I’m sure that any of our coaches in recent memory would’ve been able to get more out of this team (yes all of them).  Literally every game they start with some rudimentary system, but then give it up and devolve into hero ball.  There doesn’t seem to be any consequence for poor play for some players.

Well said.  We have the players, but the staff isn’t coaching them to he a winning team. 

Btw, does anyone else know what that set was we used multiple times with two guys standing still at edge of paint (one near the elbow, one on low block on opposite side), one guy dribbling at the top of the key, and only the other two moving to get open, but with a clogged lane limiting options?   Have we been running that a lot, and I just never noticed until the second half yesterday?

I am getting older, and my wife likes to remind me that I forget things, but did't we have a national search and quickly came up with JC?  I also recall some of us stating how could a national search be done so quickly....almost like it was not nationally based.

But what do I know?

Mike K wrote:

I am getting older, and my wife likes to remind me that I forget things, but did't we have a national search and quickly came up with JC?  I also recall some of us stating how could a national search be done so quickly....almost like it was not nationally based.

But what do I know?

Mike, I seriously doubt there was a genuine national search. After the embarrassment to the school my guess is that Vogel et al. wanted to put the matter to rest quickly. Due diligence received short shrift. Jackie Kvancz was plugged in and never would have hired someone like JC. That's my guess.

BM wrote:

dmv, I don’t think the problem is that the pieces don’t fit well together. I just don’t think the staff has the tools to do the fitting. I’m sure that any of our coaches in recent memory would’ve been able to get more out of this team (yes all of them). Literally every game they start with some rudimentary system, but then give it up and devolve into hero ball. There doesn’t seem to be any consequence for poor play for some players.

BM, I think we are more or less on the same page. At the end of the day, the lack of fit falls on the coaches. You definitely won't see me disagree that the coaching the guys we have to play as a team is the biggest problem right now. JC does not have control of the team right now - you can give players the freedom to make the right reads, but right now he's giving them the freedom to do whatever they want and that includes taking bad shots and playing in isolation.

I think when it comes to fit, I was more or less referring to the fact that 1) we lack an effective floor spacer which cramps space offensively, 2) it appears that JC recruits based on talent and tries to shape his system around whatever he has instead of recruiting for a set philosophy and 3) the roster is top-heavy this season - something I didn't feel the previous couple of years.

The streaky shooting was a concern going into the year, and five games into the season those fears were definitely warranted. We are shooting 29% from 3 as a team. Coaching here to get us open shots would help (many shots have been contested so far), but Bishop, Bamisile, and Adams are all streaky at best which (in my opinion) caps the ceiling of this team regardless of coach. Adams in particular already had several seasons shooting under 30% from distance at UConn so it was somewhat wishful thinking on my part that his numbers would change significantly in year 4. I also almost feel like JC hates recruiting bigs or something. Whether Ira played or not, Hunter/Noel would have had to play at least some minutes on the floor and both clearly need more time to develop. JC has mentioned neither has played basketball full-time for that many years and it shows at times. I understand finding polished bigs is tough to do, but we have two open scholarships to use - even someone who can just rebound the ball down low would help. In the MAAC/NEC guards run the show so I'm not surprised that JC arrived at GW with that mindset.

#2 is the biggest issue I have with fit. Other coaches would have more success coaching these players in part because they already have a set system. JC is willing to adjust his system based on who he has on the team. I think that's great, but in a previous post I mentioned that the institutional success of a Davidson or VCU comes from the fact that they have a specific identity and those coaches go out and look for talent that matches that. JC effectively does the opposite. He talks a lot about mayhem but that "system" has not been played for significant stretches since he has arrived. The interesting thing about VCU (since mayhem is supposed to relate to havoc in a way) is that their biggest weakness has been playing in the halfcourt which has hurt their offensive efficiency the past several years. However, even their team at least plays together and generates enough steals/turnovers per game to make the style effective - the pressure scheme gives them an identity. When we have tried going uptempo this season we have been burned on the boards (JC has always said offensive rebounds is not a priority but we have been bad on the defensive side too), fouled a lot (concerning for a team with little depth), and been poor in transition defense (running back on defense theoretically should make us better in transition defense, but we have been bad in that category as well playing team after team that plays uptempo so far).

We definitely have perhaps five guys that are definitely capable of playing at a high level, but the dropoff after that on this roster is something I don't think I've seen at GW in some time. The balance is just off - perhaps we want Adams, Bamisile, Bishop, and Lindo to take the majority of the shots, but outside of Brayon pretty much every other player appears rattled when they receive the ball and other teams realize this. Guys like Qwanzi, Noel, and Hunter have to at least be comfortable taking shots when their number is called. I said in the offseason that Knapp's defensive numbers were bad (which they were at Cornell) but they weren't nearly as bad as Seymour's. Knapp at least has a track record of taking and making threes, and averaging 7 points at the D1 level is nothing to scoff at. Get him out there for stretches - he can at least put another scorer on the floor and stretch the floor, something this team could use right now. It cannot be understated how important Battle was stretching the defense in the ball screen offense. We actually checked out I believe with the 5th or 6th best offense during conference play last year. COVID made the schedule imbalanced, but right now we are missing some glue guy who can spot up and make shots on the team. After Brayon, we have Amir who is still clearly working his way back from injury, Hunter/Noel (very much a work in progress), Qwanzi (barely played at FGCU last year), and Daniel (still transitioning to the college game). We have already been hit with the injury to Hunter, but any injury to a starter could make things get ugly fast because there are few provens on the roster currently.