Yes, not helping Dean was telling.  Should have let them take more 3's then with a sure number of points with the Davidson center.

well, rhode island lost to umass by 11 at home. But our win is looking less and less impressive. Maybe David Cox would make a good assistant on the bench next year with local roots.

I'll start with some positives:
- Really great to see the team fight against a significantly higher ranked team. Showed some true heart 
- Bishop had an absurd first half. I think this is four games in a row where he's scored 25+ points
- Joe really hustled throughout the entire game. Must've been exhausted
- It was nice to see Brown get back in and get some minues. Was relatively productive offensively in his short stint

A few questions:
- Why did JC not have anyone help Dean in the post? He was getting embarrassed all half and he just continued to let that happen
- Is Lindo still hurt? Still coming off the bench and his rebounding numbers have plummeted. 
- In the final minute or so when we were down by 3 Davidson was inbounding why did JC put someone on the ball? We needed a steal so, in my opinion, we were better off not having anyone on the ball. 

Other observations:
- Worst defensive game Dean has played all season. He got embarrassed throughout the entire 2nd half and it's not even as if Brajkovic was doing anything special. A few shimmy's, some shoulder dips, and pump fakes. Not going to go so far as to say that's why we lost the game but it surely was a huge factor
- No Harris at all in this game. I wonder if he regrets transferring to GW.

All in all, hard to be entirely disapopinted by this game. They covered the spread, showed some growth, and it's something to build off of.

GW0509 wrote:

I 

I hope...PRAY...that JC finally understands how critical it is to get some usable size on his team for next season.  Dean has been doing the best he can and Noel provided us a couple of points, but like DC Native said, the footwork of Davidson's bigs is light years ahead of GW.  If that means JC has to go out and get a different assistant to teach the bigs so be it.  We need to be able to have someone that can play with his back to the basket.

[On Amir] I guess he might've been able to play down low a little bit and taken a couple of fouls away from Lindo or Dean but other than that I don't think our ball security (his biggest asset) is what lost us the game.

  Agree with the quoted parts, but wouldn't have hurt to have Amir there to steady the ship during their big run--and him or Noel (even with 4) to take the load off of Dean. Despite his size, Harris does mix it up down low and had no fouls as he didn't play, so it might not have been a bad idea. We need something to stop him.
  Not unhappy with the results or recent play, given expectations.
  But it was odd that everyone else saw Dean alone couldn't do it and we didn't change things up. If situation were reversed, McKillop might have come up with something different.
Disclaimer: Never been an A-10 coach.

Couple of quick observations, then I must nap.
Positive
-Bishop played one hell of a defensive game today, Completely shut down Lee, a deadeye 3 point shooter and one of their leading scorers.  And it wasn't that Lee had a bad game...James was in his face all day.   I hope everyone picked up on that.
-Game plan was excellent, namely take away Davidson's 3 point shooting and make them earn their points down low
-We hardly looked like one of the worst teams in the conference today.  Bishop and Bamisile are one hell of an offensive duo
On the negative
Someone explain to me why in heaven's name when it is a one possession game in the closing minute and there are 5 more seconds on the game clock than there were on the shot clock, did we foul their 95% free throw shooter.   You play 30 seconds of hard defense and get the ball back with a chance to tie.
It is hard to win when your center is outscored 30-0 by their center.  Coach...at some point you must conclude that Dean just couldn't guarrd Brajkoic and you try something else.  Weak side help was rare and ineffective. In one crucial play, after Dean got beat, Lindo was slow in helping out and landed up fouling and setting up a 3 point game in what was a tied game.
In the last couple of minutes, why aren't you subbing Dean on offense, where he was absolutely useless all game.
Again, we get outcoached coming out of the half.  Down by 8, Davidson made a very simple adjustment...they started playing an inside out game, giving their big guy a touch on every possession where he either layed it in or kicked it out for a wide open 3.  In the blink of an eye, we go from up 8 to down 8.  We had no answer.   Proud that we fought back, but you can't allow a 16 point swing in a close game.

Thanks Skittles! They're a lot of fun to write.

Proud of the way the team battled today, especially as it seemed Davidson was starting to pull away in the second half. We had the game down to the last minute, and against a team like Davidson, that's where you want to be. At the very least, we gave ourselves a chance at the win.

Shout out to the student section for showing out and it was nice to see the pres right in the middle with a wig on. It's probably too premature to definitively say there's a culture change since we were playing a strong team today, but I hope the students continue to show out for home games in the future.

I had said Brajkovič was underrated coming into the game, but we may have helped put him in the POY conversation after his career performance today. It wasn't unexpected to be honest. There isn't a big on the roster with his kind of mobility (maybe Harvey will be that guy next year?) I was a bit disappointed that we gave him such good positioning down low time after time. There's no way of stopping him (or really anyone) when someone is that close to the hoop, and the only thing fouling is going to do is to give them a chance for three points. I would have liked to see us try to deny him the ball a bit more. When the same thing is happening on play after play, you have to change things up. Send a second man to come help. I realize Davidson is so good at all five positions (that's why they're a good team) but you have to force a guy like Lee who's struggling or Jones who only made one FG to take the shot late in the game. If they knock it down, you tip your cap but letting Brajkovič just drop the ball in the hoop was simply not the answer. I think there might have been like 1 shot that he forced that didn't go in. We did a good job defending him along the perimeter for the most part (especially in the first half) but lost him on consecutive trips coming out of the half. Our defensive rotations weren't as good after halftime and Davidson burned us. As others mentioned, thought JC could have made use of his timeouts late in the game.

Pretty much every game has been a broken record though. The difference between our frontcourt and most frontcourts in the league are just not at the same level. That's not to say Hunter, Noel, Qwanzi, and Ricky haven't had bright moments this season, or even during this game. It's just hard to play with the top teams in the league with what we've got right now whether that's with scoring or rebounding. Davidson pretty much scored every time down the floor which limited rebounding opportunities, but Bamisile ended up being our leading rebounder with...4 boards.

Hunter had a tough game on both ends today, but I feel like our style of play almost encourages him not to be aggressive offensively. I mentioned this in the Fordham game, but 1-2 players on the floor are basically non-factors in the offensive system and defenses know that our forwards are always looking to hand the ball off to one of the guards. We need our bigs to be more aggressive. Hunter can't be taking one shot in 35 minutes and failing to score. Perhaps we feature him more and Brajkovič finds himself in more foul trouble. Nice to see Noel back and convert on a couple of baskets. Our forwards bit on way too many pump fakes. Despite the lead, going into halftime we had three forwards with three fouls so I'm not entirely surprised Davidson just kept pumping the ball inside given our situation.

JB squared have been absolutely fantastic the past few games, although I'm not sure that I can expect us to continue to make 13 threes every game moving forward. We were making shots, but I would have liked to see us attack the hoop a bit more. It did seem like the refs were calling fouls on us a lot more in the first half (which put us in a bad situation - that hook on Loyer against Brayon was a bad call) but part of that was that Davidson was taking what was given to them and going inside. There are times where we without a doubt we settled for jumpers when we could have gone inside. Davidson isn't particularly good defensively and not that threatening inside. Joe was the only player who really did that. As has been the case for much of the season after halftime, our ball movement is significantly less effective as other teams make better adjustments out of halftime than us.

Ricky definitely doesn't strike me as being at 100%. He made some frustrating fouls which prevented him from staying on the court. He got hurt I believe just before the first half again but managed to tough it out after halftime. Against the better frontcourts in the league we need him to stay on the floor.

Brendan has done a better job of making the extra pass lately and not firing from deep, but man I'm sorry the two threes he took were not even close to going in. Unless he has to absolutely shoot in the final seconds of a shot clock, it would be ideal not to take those shots.

Davidson did a great job doubling Bishop after halftime, but we still needed to find a way to get him more than four shots after halftime. He scored just 5 points in the second half, and took just one shot in the final six minutes. Part of that is Joe getting hot but Bishop needs more shots down the stretch as one of our closers.

We have been really good with assists vs. turnovers lately. I hate to point out the turnovers when we only committed nine in the game, but there were two that stuck out. Brendan throwing the ball to Davidson out of an inbounds play for an easy basket and Brayon putting too much energy on a pass to Bishop. Adams did follow the former play up with a three point play, but there's always a couple of those kind of plays that we make that no other team that we face seems to do. Unfortunately, those kinds of plays make a difference in a 5 point game. We had a number of close calls on inbound passes and were probably a bit fortunate to not be called for a 5 second violation multiple times.

Our defense will continue to be tested as we hit the road to face UMass. I expect another high scoring game as UMass is a complete mess defensively. The Minutemen don't have the most dominant bigs, so we should match up relatively well with them.

We currently sit at 4-5 midway through conference play. I think in most years, going 8-10 should be enough to help us escape the play in game. Can we go 4-5 again the rest of the way? That's all I'm really hoping for. I feel like it's not an outrageous ask. There are a few tough games, but it's not the most imposing schedule. We have the third hardest schedule in conference this year overall, but I think the second half of conference play rates roughly around average (or slightly below average) per Bart Torvik. Hope we can steal one against UMass. 
 

The prez shows up and gets involved. That is never a bad thing.

As for the game, it was a hard fought battle. Lost to a better team but kept it interesting and close all day. I can see us closing out with 12-13 wins if we play consistently like this. Realistically.

JC is showing improvement but I'm not sold on him being worth more than one more ride next year. The goal isn't bottom half A10. unless we want to settle like Fordham

Don´t get me wrong. GW lost to a better team and came damn close to winning what would have been a major upset.And JC had a good gameplan for this one. My quibbile is not that Dean was not given help down low but left on the court long after he was gassed and getting regularly beat. Samuels/Brown/Lindo had 4 fouls to spare among them in the final three mins, and a combo of two of them should have been on the court at some point, if for no other reason than to let Dean get his wind back. And those unproductive offensive sets at the end could have been improved by using the two time outs GW wound up eating. My issues are with the game and personnel management at the end. But this was perhaps the first time I have seen GW come in to a game with a discernable gameplan and execute it as designed (hot shooting helped that), and credit for that lies with the coaches.

FQ, I did not say nor will I likely ever say that we lost solely due to coaching.  There is nuance to practically everything I have to say when it comes to offering analysis.  We will never win or lose a game solely due to coaching.  And, coaching will have something to do with every win or loss.  It's not one or the other.

I was about to find another way of stating my biggest concern but you actually just said it.  We needed to try something different against Luka.  Changing up possession to possession would have been just fine.  I understood everything there was to know about Davidson's personnel, and fully understand why we would have a game plan to take away their three point shooting.  But where was the in-game adjustment?  Davidson shot an uncharacteristic 8-22 from 3 (yes, perhaps largely due to our defense), while Luka was unstoppable in the second half.  At some point, you have to change gears.    Again, if not a double team or a zone, why not trying to deny him the entry pass to begin with?  Why not even put him on the line (though our fouls were an issue)?  Anything other than watch him repeatedly score over primarily Dean would have been preferable.

Making any sort of change would not have guaranteed a win.  They are 19-3 for a reason.  But, upsets occur every day in sports.  So yes, we lost to a better team, but I can't simply conclude that the reason why we lost is solely because they had better players.

Halftime adjustments once again??  Well, it appears JC is coaching them up as we have become more competitive, gotta give credit where credit is due.  

However, we can't totally blame Dean for his performance.  There comes a point where you accept the talent you have and and adjust accordingly.  He did NOT adjust by giving Dean help.  Dean just wasn't talented enough, it is not his fault. It is just the way it is.  I'm sure he would have wanted help, but he didn't get it.  Too bad. 

Great effort by the kids, seems like they are having fun, unlike a few months ago.