Gwmayhem - you can believe it or not. Not my concern. The data speaks for itself. There have been plenty of wide open threes missed. We have missed layups and dunks. You don't have to be a math major just not blind. Same offense right? ... the whole season. Yet some games we shoot 40% or better from floor and 30% or better from 3 ... we have gone 2-2 in those games but when we shoot below 40% from the field and generally below 30% from 3 we are 0-4. Again, same offense. So is it offense or execution? And in the 2 games we lost when we shot over 40% they were relatively close losses ... the difference = offensive rebounding.in one game (MD) and three-point shooting by other team in the other (10-23 Kent State). We shoot over 40% from field and over 30% from 3 most nights we will have a chance - it will be the other things that matter.

jf wrote:

Last year, we opened at 1-6 including losses to traditional basketball powerhouses Navy, Hampton, Coppin State. Delaware and William&Mary.  But this year, we have fought to 2-6 by beating the second best St. Francis in the top 25 hotbed NEC because they missed what would be a winning layup on our home court. Our record was also achieved while playing in one of the worst tournaments an A-10 team can imagine.
    Turnaround or not starting tomorrow through later this year, OOC normally matters as we would, at least before the implosion, like to still be in contention for an at-large NCAA, NIT, CBI or CIT tournament at least through November. 
    We discuss our many failings here, while lesser regarded teams exploit us, sometimes brutally.
 Isn't it the job of the coach that these things don't happen in the first place? 


 

Well if you are going to count St Francis as a near loss you need to count Maryland as a near win since we were a missed Brendan Adams three-pointer from tying. Please explain how we were competitive with a Big Ten and possible NCAA participant. Same coach right? Or perhaps it is more complex than that.

 

Last edited by GWRising (11/30/2021 6:20 pm)

I really hope that this team turns its season around.  And if this should happen, that GWRising gives none of the credit to the coaching staff.  After all, it will be the players executing, right?

Have to agree with others on here that we are playing like the worst team in the A10 right now. I still expect an improvement over the course of the season (much like JC's last two teams) but as of this moment I think the only teams we have a chance against are La Salle and Fordham.

The thing I'm confused about is why we didn't recruit 1-2 reliable shooters this offseason. From last year's team we lost Maceo, Jamison, and Tyler Brelsford who were three of the better shooters on the team. I am not sure why we weren't actively looking to replace some of that shooting at the guard position. Bishop is currently at 26%, Bamisile is at 24%, and Adams is at 23% and those three account for nearly 80% of the three point shots on the season. Coming into the year, all of them were considered streaky shooters at best. Missouri State has multiple guys (Hervey, Mosley, Minnett, etc.) that can make shots from distance reliably and that hurt us. Even Kim English, who earned his first head coaching job this offseason figured out that you need shooters to be successful offensively and brought in Schwartz and Cooper this offseason (both currently around 38% from deep). Teams are going to zone us all year long which will make it tough to find any driving lanes. We badly need spacing on the offensive end.

Taking better (and open) shots will surely help (although there is a ceiling because of the current personnel), as will shooting more in rhythm (Bamisile's two threes late in the Missouri State game were made because they were both open and shot in rhythm). We do pass the ball around sometimes, but that usually doesn't result in an open shot because four guys are standing around on many offensive possessions. The slow starts after halftime can at least be somewhat be attributed to inconsistent ball movement. We need to take timeouts during some of the lulls.

Adams should not be taking more than 1-3 threes a game. He never had a season even shooting 30% from deep at UConn. JC has said he's given Brendan the green light to let it fly based on what he's seen in practice I assume, but Adams rushes his shots and they aren't even close to going in a lot of the time (a lot of them hit the side rim or miss the hoop completely). Part of that may be a mental thing in-game. The times we have found Adams either off a curl or cutting to the hoop he has had a lot more success. He is currently playing 34 minutes a game, but honestly that number should probably be closer to 25 right now. Joe has made his share of mistakes as well, but he's basically a freshman so it's more understandable.

Qwanzi and Amir are pretty much just eating minutes right now without doing much on the court. I do like Amir as a change of pace option at the point, but we need to do something to get them more involved in the offense. I am not sure the specific reason Samuels was brought in apart from being just a local guy. Prior to him committing, we had three open scholarships I believe. If we could have spent one on a floor spacer/shooter and one on a guy who can just focus on rebounding I think that would have been the best use of the scholarships, leaving one open for any midyear guy. I hope Qwanzi becomes a productive piece for us, but I am not sure what his role is on the team currently other than giving guys a breather.

This plays into the depth issue. It feels like we only have half a roster of guys who can earn minutes on the court (of course, the Ira injury was unfortunate). It would have been nice to play more guys OOC to keep the main guys fresh for conference play. Knock on wood, the important guys have stayed healthy so far because we cannot afford to have Lindo, Adams, Bamisile, Bishop, or Freeman miss extended time. We also can't hold any players accountable for poor play because there is no one to replace them with from off the bench.

The one partial solution to both the shooting and depth issue is playing Bryan Knapp a bit. Obviously, JC has his reasons for not playing him but I just don't get it. Is he below average defensively? Probably. There have been some lapses defensively the past couple games, and while the defense has been decent overall it cannot hurt to have another veteran on the floor for a bit. This is a guy with three years of experience who started every game his junior year, averaged 7 points a game, and is a career 42% three point shooter. That would definitely be welcome on the team right now, and at the very least add a bit of bench scoring. Bringing him in to be a practice squad player feels like a waste (to me at least).

I hope to see us improve on the fundamentals over the course of the year (while winning more games of course). Can we box out on defense, not lose the ball out of bounds when trying to rebound and gift the opposition extra opportunities, have players off-ball moving constantly on offense, take good shots, and not miss easy layups/dunks? The number of shots Bishop/Bamisile/Adams have taken that are contested midrange shots cannot possibly be considered good shots analytically.

The veterans on this team need to step up. Although our assist average has been low this year, I do at least like that we have spread out the duties so it's not just Bishop. We had some great success playing through Ricky in the Wright State game and he showed good vision. Ricky commands a lot of attention as perhaps the most well-rounded player on the team but teams know when he gets the ball that he is looking to take it to the rim which results in him forcing things. We need Brendan to embrace his role as the glue guy. That might not be taking a lot of shots, but he can be the leading voice in huddles/locker room. Ricky strikes me as more of a reserved guy by nature, so someone needs to play that role and Brendan might be that guy. I'm guessing Ira was supposed to be in that role originally.
 

Here are 4 thoughts:

1. This is a thread for after the season.  What's the point of having it not even half way into the OOC?

2.  GW was picked for 13th for a reason, and that reason is the roster. 

3. 95% of winning and losing in basketball is talent.  The only reason to pretend otherwise is to play armchair QB, amazing how a few GW fans here always know so much better than every GW Coach.

4.  I'm not concerned that a team picked to finish 13th isn't winning a lot of games, I'm concerned that year 3 began with us picked 13th.  As I said in the off-season, there really isn't any clear sign things are trending up. there should be some signs by now.   All I can point to is some of the Power 5 legit transfer talent he's landed, and Brayon Freeman.  I wouldn't really assess how that's gelling until after the season, at the earliest.

 

Last edited by The Dude (11/30/2021 11:44 pm)

Free Quebec wrote:

GWRising wrote:

Everything is not as simple as blame the coach. If it was it would be fixed because there aren't a lot of secrets and most guys who get to coach at a mid-major or higher know what they are doing including JC. We have a multitude of problems probably any one could be fatal in any game against any opponent.

1. Giving up offensive rebounds
2. Foul differential and free throw differential - our opponents have made more free throws thatn we have attempted.
3. Three-point shooting. We are shooting a woeful 28.3% from three.
4. Ball movement - 10 assists per game
5. Paint defense

When this many things are broken at once it's hard to figure out which to fix first. The analytics don't show a lot of "bad" shots just a lot of "missed" shots. The one thing is that many of you don't realize that when we are running down the shot clock it's often because (1) the ball didn't go to the right place or (2) someone turned down a good shot earlier. To me the offense is stymied because we don't have anyone who is a great threat to score because no one is shooting well. For example, if Bishop or Adams starts raining threes watch how it opens it up for Lindo or Bamisile. Blockouts are being focused on in every practice but players have to make that non-negotiable during games. Paint defense is largely a function of help side defense and getting guys not to switch on screens so bigs aren't posting up guards in the paint. All of this is known but for it to be put into practice the players have to buy-in.

When I started with the experience issue - sometimes experience is the reason why things that everyone knows to do, don't happen. As Mike Tyson says and probably one the smartest observations ever ... everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Having had experience getting punched in the face helps you maintain the plan or adjust it accordingly.
 

Ok. Time for me to jump back in this excellent thread. A few responses:

1) We aren’t giving up offensive rebounds because we are blocking out. We are giving up offensive rebounds because we can’t stop penetration, which requires someone to help off their man to force the kids, but then they aren’t in position to block out. Sure, sometimes the boxing out isn’t there, but to me this is a perimeter defense/scheme problem. Maybe we are selling out to stop the three and conceding penetration, but it’s not working. We are athletic enough to prevent penetration without conceding threes, so it has to be either a coaching scheme problem or simply poor teaching of defense in practice.

And to go back to the main point, it’s great that we are swarming on shots. I imagine our “first shot” field goal defense is among the best in the A10 if not the nations, because we do so aggressively go after the shot, but if we are just going to give up easy put backs to anyone who can get a shot up to the rim; that doesn’t work. Ultimately, if we stop getting beat off the dribble so much, our defensive rebounding will improve by a lot.


2) If the analyitcs show we are taking good shots, but just not making them, then the analytics are bad. I’m a big believer in analytics, but if a heavily contested wild shot around the basket is coded as a missed layup, then the data input needs to be rethought.

3) I don’t have a problem taking shots late in the shot clock. Some of the best teams are patient (see Virginia). To me, the problem is that so many of our shots are either wild drives in traffic (with no one inside to get the offensive rebound), contested threes off the dribble, or contested pull up jumpers. Those are just not high percentage shots (except maybe a contested mid range Bishop pull up - he’s usually money on those).

To that point, in the first couple years of ML’s tenure, you could see we were consistently generating good shots, but missing them. There was no question that when we brought it better shooters, thst offense would work. But this offense seems totally reliant on players to use their athleticism to create for themselves, rather than passing or movement.

4) I will say that I think fans here often underrate the make or miss aspect, especially when it comes to opponents. Sometimes guys on the other team just get hot or sometimes guys that don’t normally hit threes start hitting them and there’s nothing you can do but credit the other team. But if the coaching staff thinks that the problem with our offense is just guys missing good shots, then we can give up on them fixing it because they won’t.

5) insofar as there is a skill missing, maybe we just have recruited a bunch of guys who can’t pass. I don’t believe that (which is why I think it’s coaching), but it’s possible.

6) JC’s teams have often had a point guard who has dominated the ball and been among the nation’s leaders in usage and assist %. That’s a sign of ball screen offenses that look to their best player to create all the time, not of offenses that share the ball. That’s been our offense the last two years with Potter and Bishop ranking in the nation’s top 50 of both usage and assist%.

This year, we are not doing that, so maybe like our zone early last year, JC wanted to play a certain way but hasn’t been able to teach his team to play that or just isn’t nailing the details needed to play the way he wants.

7) To BGF, I don’t believe the problem is mental. I think it’s scheme and lack of attention to detail.

8) To GW Rising, you say JC didn’t forget how to coach, but even you know that’s a line for stupid people who don’t understand college basketball. Every coach in the A10 (except Mojo. Lol) came in knowing how to coach, and usually having proven to be able to do it at lower levels and yet they don’t all win. His team is competing against some elite head coaches - better than in the NEC or MAAC - and he hasn’t yet proven he can coach at that elite level.

9) To Danjsport, I think blaming the coach for not being able to keep JNJ, Battle, Brelsford is just silly. College basketball has changed and more than half of all players transfer now. Not much the coach can do about a kid like Brelsford deciding to chase playing time or JNJ wanting to play point before he’s ready or Battle wanting to go home. Where I do blame him is for recruiting kids like Lincoln Ball who were clearly not good enough to contribute to a top 100 program (which s what bumped we are aspiring to).

10) I was re-reading GWRising’s defense of our offense and it’s laughable. There’s no way you can tell me that we were getting better shots than UCSD or UMAS:-Lowell. They were finding shooters for wide open threes or throwing to an open guy for ah uncontested dunk, while we were taking contested shots off the dribble with no ball movement, no off-ball movement, and no one underneath to rebound.

The bottom line: this is his team in its third year and it’s now his handpicked players. If they are too inexperienced to win early in the season, as Rising suggested, then that’s on him for putting together a tesm that can’t win early in the season. If the problem is we can’t make shots, then it’s on him for not running an offense that generates easier shots. If the problem is we aren’t getting defensive rebounds, then he needs to fix the scheme to hide our weakness. If the team is too mentally weak to come out of the half playing well, that’s definitely his fault.

And I’ll add one more thing: misuse or misunderstanding is a dangerous thing. The only thing worse than ignoring analytics is to misunderstand or misuse them because it leads to really bad decisions. Everyone watching can see our opponents are getting better shots hav we are so if he thinks analytics say we don’t need to change anything except get our players to make shots, then he’s going to fail.

''

Great post. I hear you on blaming JC for the transfers out. And I certainly hear the change in the college landscape. Maybe I'd feel differently and would be less angry about it if the team was playing well without those guys.
 

moneybox wrote:

Almost 3 years left of a coach who has a .333 record in 2+ seasons. What an excruciating thought. Why did Battle transfer? Unlike us, he didn't want to be part of a program that is going nowhere! 

So that’s not actually true.  He wanted to go home to Minnesota.  MN had basically their whole team transfer out and brought in a new coach, so there’s almost no way they win in the Big10 this year so if his goal was to go to a winning program, Minnesota would not have been the choice.  His goal was to go home and saying otherwise is unfair and wrong

GW0509, great find regarding Penny and Memphis.  I don't think it's a coincidence that a financially secure and accomplished  individual like Penny can readily make this switch.  He is also the same individual who claimed that his two star freshmen recruited he and Memphis and not the other way around, a notion that had to raise the eyebrows of many college coaches.

So, according to The Dude, the problem is the talent.  Well, here's what he posted 22 days ago:

Thread Title: New Talent Influx: Adams And Bamisile

"We have some major new talent on board.  Bamisile and Adams, along with Bishop, we have a trio of long athletic quick high major caliber guards.  We're also woefully deficient in some other areas, including some of the front court, so this is a major work in progress.  But the influx of quality talent is clear as day." 


Here is what The Dude had to say after Ricky Lindo's first game, posted on 1/13/21:

"Lindo looks like a real asset.  Very pleased to see how talented he looked."

I won't bother to pull out any James Bishop quotes because if you don't know what The Dude thinks about Bishop's game by now, you clearly haven't been paying attention.

By the way, none of this is surprising.  As the board troll, The Dude feels it's his job to be contrarian.  Whether he contradicts his previous views is meaningless to him.

When most of the board criticizes some aspects of James Bishop's game, The Dude becomes JB's press agent.

When most of the board feels that a 13th place finish in the A10 would be highly disappointing, The Dude doubles and triples down on the notion that this is all that should be expected (despite a number of sources predicting finishes from 9th-11th place, and his reliance on two computer models who are forecasting where they should be slotted to start the season rather than where they will necessarily finish).

When much of the board felt ML got a raw deal courtesy of PN, The Dude backed the AD.

When much of the board felt that MoJo wasn't qualified to lead this team, The Dude not only disagreed but attributed this to disgruntled ML fans wanting him back (which of course was known as an impossibility to anyone with half a brain).

And now, when many are upset with the coaching staff and how poor the team has looked, The Dude claims it's not coaching at all, but the problem instead is talent.  This despite GW receiving, to use his words, an influx of talent this season and feeling very pleased with how talented another player looked last season.

Whatever the issue, The Dude's true feelings are irrelevant.  He simply wants to know where the majority stands and then troll away in the other direction.  Beyond predictable by now.

Last year was a total loss. The huge covid pause and protocols meant very little practice, right? Huge roster turnover. Any sense of how other teams that got hammered by covid and transfers are doing?

Given JC's track record I am focused on Conference play. (At least Bonaventure isn't Senior Day :-). Do they improve or do they remain easy to play against and chaotic on offense? AND can he keep most of his players and develop a little depth.

I'd have hope if they played well for some games or parts of games; while getting drilled in spots.
That would be improvement. That would mean the coaching staff understands the strengths of the players and players would be buying in more and more.

Free Quebec wrote:

GWRising wrote:

Everything is not as simple as blame the coach. If it was it would be fixed because there aren't a lot of secrets and most guys who get to coach at a mid-major or higher know what they are doing including JC. We have a multitude of problems probably any one could be fatal in any game against any opponent.

1. Giving up offensive rebounds
2. Foul differential and free throw differential - our opponents have made more free throws thatn we have attempted.
3. Three-point shooting. We are shooting a woeful 28.3% from three.
4. Ball movement - 10 assists per game
5. Paint defense

When this many things are broken at once it's hard to figure out which to fix first. The analytics don't show a lot of "bad" shots just a lot of "missed" shots. The one thing is that many of you don't realize that when we are running down the shot clock it's often because (1) the ball didn't go to the right place or (2) someone turned down a good shot earlier. To me the offense is stymied because we don't have anyone who is a great threat to score because no one is shooting well. For example, if Bishop or Adams starts raining threes watch how it opens it up for Lindo or Bamisile. Blockouts are being focused on in every practice but players have to make that non-negotiable during games. Paint defense is largely a function of help side defense and getting guys not to switch on screens so bigs aren't posting up guards in the paint. All of this is known but for it to be put into practice the players have to buy-in.

When I started with the experience issue - sometimes experience is the reason why things that everyone knows to do, don't happen. As Mike Tyson says and probably one the smartest observations ever ... everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Having had experience getting punched in the face helps you maintain the plan or adjust it accordingly.
 

Ok. Time for me to jump back in this excellent thread. A few responses:

1) We aren’t giving up offensive rebounds because we are blocking out. We are giving up offensive rebounds because we can’t stop penetration, which requires someone to help off their man to force the kids, but then they aren’t in position to block out. Sure, sometimes the boxing out isn’t there, but to me this is a perimeter defense/scheme problem. Maybe we are selling out to stop the three and conceding penetration, but it’s not working. We are athletic enough to prevent penetration without conceding threes, so it has to be either a coaching scheme problem or simply poor teaching of defense in practice.

And to go back to the main point, it’s great that we are swarming on shots. I imagine our “first shot” field goal defense is among the best in the A10 if not the nations, because we do so aggressively go after the shot, but if we are just going to give up easy put backs to anyone who can get a shot up to the rim; that doesn’t work. Ultimately, if we stop getting beat off the dribble so much, our defensive rebounding will improve by a lot.


2) If the analyitcs show we are taking good shots, but just not making them, then the analytics are bad. I’m a big believer in analytics, but if a heavily contested wild shot around the basket is coded as a missed layup, then the data input needs to be rethought.

3) I don’t have a problem taking shots late in the shot clock. Some of the best teams are patient (see Virginia). To me, the problem is that so many of our shots are either wild drives in traffic (with no one inside to get the offensive rebound), contested threes off the dribble, or contested pull up jumpers. Those are just not high percentage shots (except maybe a contested mid range Bishop pull up - he’s usually money on those).

To that point, in the first couple years of ML’s tenure, you could see we were consistently generating good shots, but missing them. There was no question that when we brought it better shooters, thst offense would work. But this offense seems totally reliant on players to use their athleticism to create for themselves, rather than passing or movement.

4) I will say that I think fans here often underrate the make or miss aspect, especially when it comes to opponents. Sometimes guys on the other team just get hot or sometimes guys that don’t normally hit threes start hitting them and there’s nothing you can do but credit the other team. But if the coaching staff thinks that the problem with our offense is just guys missing good shots, then we can give up on them fixing it because they won’t.

5) insofar as there is a skill missing, maybe we just have recruited a bunch of guys who can’t pass. I don’t believe that (which is why I think it’s coaching), but it’s possible.

6) JC’s teams have often had a point guard who has dominated the ball and been among the nation’s leaders in usage and assist %. That’s a sign of ball screen offenses that look to their best player to create all the time, not of offenses that share the ball. That’s been our offense the last two years with Potter and Bishop ranking in the nation’s top 50 of both usage and assist%.

This year, we are not doing that, so maybe like our zone early last year, JC wanted to play a certain way but hasn’t been able to teach his team to play that or just isn’t nailing the details needed to play the way he wants.

7) To BGF, I don’t believe the problem is mental. I think it’s scheme and lack of attention to detail.

8) To GW Rising, you say JC didn’t forget how to coach, but even you know that’s a line for stupid people who don’t understand college basketball. Every coach in the A10 (except Mojo. Lol) came in knowing how to coach, and usually having proven to be able to do it at lower levels and yet they don’t all win. His team is competing against some elite head coaches - better than in the NEC or MAAC - and he hasn’t yet proven he can coach at that elite level.

9) To Danjsport, I think blaming the coach for not being able to keep JNJ, Battle, Brelsford is just silly. College basketball has changed and more than half of all players transfer now. Not much the coach can do about a kid like Brelsford deciding to chase playing time or JNJ wanting to play point before he’s ready or Battle wanting to go home. Where I do blame him is for recruiting kids like Lincoln Ball who were clearly not good enough to contribute to a top 100 program (which s what bumped we are aspiring to).

10) I was re-reading GWRising’s defense of our offense and it’s laughable. There’s no way you can tell me that we were getting better shots than UCSD or UMAS:-Lowell. They were finding shooters for wide open threes or throwing to an open guy for ah uncontested dunk, while we were taking contested shots off the dribble with no ball movement, no off-ball movement, and no one underneath to rebound.

The bottom line: this is his team in its third year and it’s now his handpicked players. If they are too inexperienced to win early in the season, as Rising suggested, then that’s on him for putting together a tesm that can’t win early in the season. If the problem is we can’t make shots, then it’s on him for not running an offense that generates easier shots. If the problem is we aren’t getting defensive rebounds, then he needs to fix the scheme to hide our weakness. If the team is too mentally weak to come out of the half playing well, that’s definitely his fault.

And I’ll add one more thing: misuse or misunderstanding is a dangerous thing. The only thing worse than ignoring analytics is to misunderstand or misuse them because it leads to really bad decisions. Everyone watching can see our opponents are getting better shots hav we are so if he thinks analytics say we don’t need to change anything except get our players to make shots, then he’s going to fail.

Free Quebec you make some valid points but many of them are at the expense of things I didn't say. Here are some examples:

1. I did not say block outs were the ONLY reason we are a bad rebounding team. I said block outs were being worked on. It is is hard to do much other than that when you work on rebounding specifically. The other issues are being worked on as well. But block outs are definitely part of the problem - a significant issue. If you watch film you will see that  all it takes is one guy not doing his job. The guards do not make a lot of early contact and neither do the posts other than Hunter. We over rely on our athleticism instead of positioning. Part of the problem also is that we fumble the ball - don't have great hands. Part of the problem also is that our guards don't always see it as their job to defensive rebound. Part of the problem as you say is being out of position due to defensive breakdowns. It is is usually never one thing when it comes to rebounding which is why it is hard to fix without tremendous reps and mentality. And as you likely know offensive rebounds are killers in the possession game as well as the much higher shooting percentage on second chance shots..

2. There is a difference as you say between coaching in college and coaching at an elite level - very few guys are elite. But some of the comments here (not yours) seem to suggest that JC is incapable of coaching at even a rudimentary college level or perhaps below. Hence, my flippant comment was what those comments deserve and yes, JC still needs to prove he can coach not at an elite level but at the A-10 level. 

3. No one said our offense is perfect or good right now. What I consistently said was that if you can't make shots that you should make at a higher clip you will be in trouble regardless of what offense you run. I never suggested that the analytics showed that we never take bad shots - every team has them. I said the analytics show that we aren't making the shots that we should make at a higher percentage. I also said that some of the bad shots were the result of winding down the shot clock. You use Virginia as an example. Virginia is a pack-line team that tries to dictate a very slow tempo - not in any way similar to what JC is attempting to do. I also never said that the coaching staff believes we don't need to improve the offense, improve our shot selection or our shooting efficiency. All of those things must improve - they understand that. Toward that end, I think you will see some different things starting tonight designed to try and help all of the above. But at the end of the day, guys like Adams, Bishop and Bamisile can't take as many shots as they do and shoot at the percentages that they do. That must improve regardless of the offense. And as I have said does the offense look bad because we miss shots or is it the cause of why we miss shots? Think the jury is still out on that one.