Lets be a little realistic here. This is after all GW. We have a history of making poor decisions which in turn impact our school in all areas, including athletics. 

GW was very lucky with Jarvis, Hobbs and Lonergan.  We are not and will never be Gtown, MD, UVA, VTech or even VCU. However, we did find 3 coaches over our 100+ year basketball history who could coach, recruit and win. After the debacles during the Hobbs era, we were only able to get ML because he wanted to come home and moving up conferences to the A-10 was beneficial to his career. I'm sure he did his due diligence and knew all the incompetence that surrounded the GW Admin. Didn't matter to a guy who learned under Gary Williams and Jack Bruen, ran a clean program and graduated players, was great at the X's and O's, could recruit and most importantly WON everywhere he was.

After the Nero scandal and how GW handled it in 2016, there's not a rising or proven coach in this country that will come to GW. We are stuck with the Mojo's and JC's of the world, always hoping we will catch lightning like we did with MJ, KH and ML. It's going to be a long time before we find a young, promising, established and winning coach who wants to come to GW and is experienced and confident enough to overcome our institutional issues that continue to get in the way of success.
I laugh when I hear other posters talk about what a great opportunity it is at GW. 
JC will have another 2 years to "raise this sunken ship". If he leaves then (or before), nothing will change with the next coach, or the one after that - unless we get lucky and find that hidden gem out there willing to take on the challenge of the stink our program continues to ooze the last 6 years.

Tennessee Colonial wrote:

Dmvpiranha, your analysis of the team is like a doctoral dissertation. Well thought out and very informative. Now we have to get the coaches to look at your analysis. Good job!

Thanks Tennessee Colonial!! I would hope the coaches are already aware of our shortcomings I've mentioned and address them this offseason (that would be very concerning otherwise!).

Since the Bishop thread (predictably) went off the rails, I'll just mention JB briefly here. There is no doubt that Bishop has grown as a player this year, from playing improved defense (although I don't think the analytics necessarily support that) to communicating as a leader on the team. He not only has the ability to create his own shot but more importantly knows what shots to take/what shots he can make more consistently. James has also forced things considerably less.

Like pretty much every player on the team, the next steps in his growth are 1) improving his assist/turnover ratio, and 2) improving his efficiency shooting the ball. JB has more turnovers than assists on the year (although other players on the team certainly have a worse ratio than Bishop).

To his credit, he's reduced his turnovers of late as he's become more experienced. Earlier in the year (and last year), he would cough up the ball down the stretch in critical moments. That 10 second violation last season he had (I think it was against William & Mary?) late when the Tribe exerted absolutely no pressure was one of the most frustrating plays I've ever seen at GW.

JB was very efficient shooting from the field in the SLU game, and I hope he keeps that up. I like him off the ball, but he's shooting under 40% from the field and just 32% from 3 which is bad for a SG. I think he's definitely capable of boosting both by 3-5% even though he has always struck me as a scorer who needs the volume to succeed.

Having said that, it's not about any individual player (Bishop is also the least of the problems). We simply aren't playing as a team outside of some nice individual performances each game. Consistency is key, but having dug into the stats this team just simply isn't good in many areas. Compared to an average A10 team this year, this team rates very poor in scoring margin, rebounding, and assists which pretty much just equates to a bad team. We are near/at the bottom of the league in pretty much every category.

We are good at guarding the three point line but that's pretty much it. The fact that we're above average in blocks and steals compared to the rest of the league reveals how good certain individuals are on the team defensively, but it's still telling that when it comes to the main team stats the team is among the worst if not the worst in the league. Defensively, we are giving up the second most points in the A10. We've seen slight increases in shooting/assists since conference play started, but the improvements have been negligible at best.

Unfortunately, the another statistic where we rate highly - defensive free throw percentage (we are #2 in the A10 currently) is pretty much a luck-based stat and one that is due for some regression to the norm. URI and Mason (our two wins) happen to be the two worst free throw shooting teams in the A10.

GWRising wrote:

Now, maybe the criticism should be directed at the talent on the roster (as not being good enough and overrated) and as a coach, you are responsible for assembling that talent. In other words, I'm arguing that all the great X's and O's can't help you out of a talent hole. I think JC has a talent hole at the moment and he needs to keep working to close it or we cannot improve.

I agree with this (as I did in the other thread) but the word talent is overused and doesn't mean much after a while. I don't want JC to just sign 3-4 more P6 down transfers or whatever in the offseason just to see us continue to play isolation ball and see no chemistry on the floor. He needs to get more skilled players but also guys that can play together (aka strong off ball and capable of playing complementary roles to others) and not take several months before there's any cohesion. Right now, I don't have confidence JC can find the right guys who can play together. The 262nd ranking in KenPom is a massive disappointment this year and is a regression from last season. Whether that's X% coaching to get the most out of the roster or Y% improving the talent, it needs to get better.