Nice win against a bad team. A few observations/positive thoughts:

1. Hunter Dean had a decent second half. Didn't play outside himself.

2. Though the stats so far this year haven't shown it, this team has the ability to shoot the 3 at a decent clip. I think they should aim to shoot 25+ 3s a game.

3. Maybe I'm the only one, but I think we should go small for our main lineup (unless we're playing a team with a real/dominant big). The lineup of Freeman, Bishop, Bamasile, Adams, Lindo worked great, especially when Freeman was our main ball handler. Park Lindo in the middle/top of the paint and have him shoot the mid-range jumper or provide quick passes to the wings where they can shoot the 3 and then have everyone else crash the boards. 

4. Freeman needs to be the starting PG on this team. When he handled the ball everything just flowed. He's able to drive/kick better than anyone else on the team. He didn't panic under pressure and didn't make many poor decisions. Jamion needs to start him either in the lineup I mentioned above or with Adams or Bishop coming off the bench.

I also think going small seems inevitable, just lacking a frontcourt to really stick a conventional lineup.  Dean, agreed, some of his best play and under control.   

Not so sure about the team wide 3 point ability, today they went down.  Adams and JoeBam career track record though suggests otherwise.  Maybe with Bishop off the ball, who is a good shooter, more clean looks and is Brayon a good 3 shooter? we shall see, hasn't taken many but his stroke looks pure and he canned one tonight.

  Very little shooting in the front court though - that needs to improve in terms of personnel - need the next Battle, ideally 2+ of them.  

Brayon Freeman was great, agreed, I do think you'll see a transition to a GW where he has the ball most of the time.  Thought it was smart to go back to Bishop down the stretch, who helped grow the lead when the game was still in doubt, gotta keep everybody up, Bishop responded well to it all. 

Gee, we sure have a dozen names that only post after the losses, never the wins. Must just be 12 names that are only GW fans when losing, not the wins.  Seems totally normal!  

25 points 10 boards on 11 for 14 shooting, WOW.  JoeBam quite a night.  A10 player of the week watch list with that one.

 

Last edited by The Dude (12/08/2021 10:19 pm)

first half...GW with 5 assists (on 14 made shots) and 7 turnovers, we lead by 2.   For the game, we have 17 assists on 30 made shots, and 11 turnovers.   We win by 13.    First half, our bigs play 15 minutes and combine for 2 points and zero rebounds.   That's right...zero rebounds.   For the game, our bigs combine for 8 points and 8 rebounds in a combined 29 minutes.   So they came alive a bit.  There were 11 minutes in the game in which neither Brown nor Dean were in the game.    Interesting.   (What is it about our centers picking up ticky tac fouls 25 feet from the basket, as in  Brown's 4th?).   In another absolutely incredible statistic, at the 8 minute timeout in the second half (or to put it another way, after 32 minutes of the game), Bishop had a triple zero....as in no points, no assists and no rebounds.   To his credit, he did not force the issue until later on in the second half, when he did so a bit.   From my vantage point, Freeman changed the whole tone of the game.  Not only did he score 10 points, but he had 8 assists to only 1 turnover, and he made several other beautiful passes that resulted in the recipient being fouled, or they just couldn't handle the pass.   But more important, he speeds up the game, which I think is crucial.   When Freeman came in the game late in the first half, we were down 6 and in danger of letting the game slip away.   By the end of the first half, we were up by 2.  He then started in place of Bishop during the second half and by time he sat approximately 8 minutes later, we had a somewhat comfortable lead and were never really challenged for the rest of the game.   The kid needs minutes.   He makes mistakes, but overall good things happen when he is on the court.  One other thing before I end my rambling.    There was one sequence in the first half in which Brandon Adams was beat badly on defense.  He fell for a ball fake and the man he was guarding blew by him for an easy layup.  Then on the offensive end, he threw up an ill advised shot.    After that, Christian pulled him.   Good to see.  All and all, winning, even over a bad team, beats losing.   But this team still has much to work on.

Freeman was awesome tonight. His ability to create shots for himself and his teammates is elite. Based off the postgame press conference it seemed like Jamion is planning on having him continue to come off the bench but I would love to see him start and push Lindo to the 5.

"Brayon was one of the first guys we started recruiting when I got here. You know, I've always loved his enthusiasm, his ability to dominate a game and he can do that on both ends of the floor. A large part for him right now is he's done a great job of learning and accepting his role. And then being able to create more for himself as he learned how to play college basketball. As he's learned how to practice better."

Brayon is outstanding.  Still makes some freshman errors, but he’s emerging as the leader and I think best player on the team. 

Did someone once nickname Brendan Adams Heat Check?  Any time he makes a three, he seems to jack up a couple more quick ones that rarely go in.

Great to see a win.  Although it was against Coppin State, we got a win.

Freeman is the future, no doubt.  It seems when he is in, and playing at a faster pace, there is more ball movement and players are moving.  I saw the opposite when Bishop was handling and doing his James Harden imitation of "pounding the rock and running clock."  Freeman made some unwise decisions to drive against 2 or 3 defenders, but as the saying goes, the best thing about freshman is that they become sophomores.  

Nice shooting, the 3s were falling at an unbelievable pace - seemed better than the 42.9% in the ESPN box score.  Let's hope it give us confidence that can only help moving forward. 

Our big men seem to be ineffective for the most part.  I like the idea by an unrecalled poster that we go small with Freeman running the show. 

 

Interesting game and a good win.

Interesting in that I didn't feel we played badly in the first half, shot 6-8 from 3, and needed a late Bamisile basket to take the lead into the half.  Against presumably one of the worst teams in the country.  Juan Dixon certainly did not have them playing like it.  And sometimes, the close score can mean that we sink to the level of our competition.  However, I did not feel that way at all.  They just made shots, a number of them contested, at a very high level.

At halftime, I felt that we were due for a breakout.  (I predicted to my friend that we'd be winning this game by at least 14, so I was bummed by that late meaningless basket which closed the gap and final score to 13.)  CSU cooled off considerably while we played with great energy.  To JC and staff's credit, guys were not moping around with their heads down low, looking like they'd rather be anywhere else other than a basketball court.  The team seemed genuinely excited to play (not a given at 2-8).

The fact that the game was broken open with James on the bench should not be ignored or overanalyzed.  Yes, the offense runs much better with Brayon running it.  Guys are cutting and moving without the ball, and were often rewarded with easy baskets as a result.  I am not overly concerned about Brayon coming off the bench.  He played 29 minutes last night and his playing time has recently increased after a string of games in which he seemingly played 18 minutes regardless of his production.  

This was all discussed as early as this past summer.  Brayon is a natural point guard whereas James is not.  Brayon played high school and AAU ball against major competition.  While I can appreciate JC's desire to ease him into this, I've always believed that he would be ready whenever the keys were handed to him.  I do think part of the reason for this gradual shift has to do with JC building up James as a point guard with a scorers mentality.  Now, he had to find a way to "untell" this while making sure James was ready and excited to be a prolific shooting guard.  (If Bishop had been James Harden, now he was going to be Bradley Beal.)  To be fair, Brayon does and will continue to make mistakes as any freshman point guard would.  The hope is that we stick to this plan for it represents the team's best hope at having a successful season.

As for James, he had an off night last night.  Hopefully, he saw how Joe in particular (who was fantastic last night) but also Brendan, Ricky and Brayon all were able to shoulder the scoring load.  An observation to perhaps keep an eye on is that while this team has two very prolific scoring options in James and Joe, they have rarely been able to put things together at the same time.  Joe had the tremendous first half against Maryland and then went relatively silent as James carried the scoring load down the stretch.  Last night was all Joe.  There have been several games where it has been all James with very little Joe to speak of.   Needless to say, it would be nice to see both scorers going at it at the same time, making GW that much more a difficult team to defend.

The big question moving forward is whether the fact that we did so many things right last night had more to do with the coaching finally resonating which includes an expanded role for Brayon, or the level of competition allowed us to not only play with more confidence but to also assert ourselves as the more talented team?  I sense and hope it's the former.  I suspect the next two games may go similarly to last night's game.  Then, the question becomes whether this new, improved version of this year's team will be sustainable or not?  Time will tell.

Last edited by Gwmayhem (12/09/2021 9:21 am)

Poog wrote:

LSF: Once Coach Atkins reported back to the team that he feared losing you if their play didn’t improve, the team responded as desired. Gotta get you to a Nats Fanfest Q&A session.

It is important that the Athletic Department know how the fan base is feeling these days and that (I believe) most of us aren't buying the "stay calm, all is well, we are making progress" stuff that they are selling.    I had not planned on saying anything, but when Coach Atkins led with the "Coppin State is a very tough opponent line", he lost all credibility as to anything he said.   As for the Nats,  I felt good about driving Wander Suero out of town.   Now setting my sites on the likes of Voth, Fedde and of course Carter Kieboom.  And ultimately nice guy but inept manager Dave Martinez. 
 

Of course he is only a freshman so there is much to learn about playing at this level, but Brayon is really the only player I see steadily improving from game to game.    Not saying the others are not capable of having an occasional outstanding game, but other than Brayon, do you see anyone else on the team that has improved from game one to game 11?