not blocking out leads to a Lindo foul. His 4th
 

Rebound problem raising its head. Leading to a lot of fouls
 

RI only with 5 fouls
 

Not taking good shots. Got to calm down
 

Good win. Seems like we had a crowd tonight. We need that. 

Hail to the Buff! Hail to the Blue!!!
Well played tonight, not as obvious a blowout as the Duques game (what could be?) but still a comfortable evening of viewing.
While this GW team is clearly on the rise, URI is an unmitigated freefall. If URI and Duques play each other in the A10 Tournament play-in round, the good people of Washington may never let the conference stage its tournament in the District again.
Crunch time is coming up, starting Tuesday.
Meanwhile, give a gameball to the fans dancing in the background during the post-game interview with JoeBam...
 

Last edited by GW Alum Abroad (2/19/2022 8:01 pm)

Have been out of town and have not seen most of the last 3 games.  Followed on my phone with updates....seems we are, and have been, playing better.  Happy for all involved.

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

OK, if might not help you get your NIL cha-ching, but on the scoreboard a lay-in is worth just as much as a slama-jamma highlight, Someone should tell JoeBam this...

 
This is a very good point and can come back to bite us in a closer game. He also missed a second windmill attempt that was not fully finished. Not amusing.
Great to win like we did-- and have the margin of error.

Last edited by jf (2/19/2022 9:17 pm)

Could only watch part of the game, but I’m just so happy to see GW being truly competitive. Outside of the Dayton game, things have really gone well. 

Would you want to be bubble team that matches up with GW in the A-10 tournament, playing in their home city?

Great to see us put together two of our best performances in consecutive games. This team is playing a heck of a lot better from earlier in the season and it is coming at the right time of year. Bishop hasn't been at his best the past couple games as defenses are zeroed in on him, but it's a good sign that we've won by double digits despite that.

I honestly think URI had more to play for coming into this game in terms of seeding. Not that we didn't, but the Rams are solidly in PIG territory right now while we aren't. Having said that, Rhode Island played with so little energy that it looked more like a team that had somewhat checked out with no communication. In the first half, Cox along the sidelines even signaled to a player where they had to be on the court when closing out on defense and they were still slow to rotate over. I don't think Cox has full control over the team.

URI's biggest mistake was not pushing in transition more. We didn't always do the best job running back off a missed shot, but luckily Rhody took their own sweet time getting the ball up past halfcourt. There was a scenario where we could have been in worse foul trouble.

Thanks to the Mitchells for being stupid for yet another game. That jersey tucking and jawing fiasco halted URI's momentum coming out of halftime and they never really put together a threatening run after that the rest of the game. The refs were being pretty fair on the jersey tucking, because they asked Brayon to do the same thing earlier in the game, which he did so immediately. It seems that many players pulled out their jerseys to wipe their hands. There were several plays on both sides where it seemed like the ball just slipped out, leading to turnovers so I get it.

Joe was bound to miss a dunk at some point, but I don't think he missed it trying to do anything too fancy. Looking at replay it was somewhat bizarre. He seemed to have hung on the rim a bit longer than normal which caused the ball to roll out. He probably felt the pressure of a Mitchell behind him otherwise I think the dunk would have been fine.

Since Noel has returned, we have been seeing Hunter and Noel play together down low for some minutes at a time. On paper, that would seem pretty disastrous (especially offensively) but so far it's actually been okay for stretches. It definitely helped on defense yesterday to cover the Mitchells (or at least neutralize them). I'm actually surprised Noel didn't play a bit more in this one.

As FQ mentioned, the ball movement in the first half made the difference and we settled for too many threes in the second half. We did really clamp down defensively though to offset that. Compared to the beginning of the year, at least those threes were open shots even if they didn't fall. We should have attacked inside a bit more. URI leads the A10 in blocks, but one-on-one the Mitchells aren't actually great defenders. Hunter and Noel both successfully posted them up and they are certainly more vulnerable than they come across on first glance. When both Hunter/Noel are more aggressive, they have success more often than not.

Qwanzi is the ultimate glue guy. While there will always be a couple of plays close to the rim I wish he converts, he made a couple big threes in the game to keep URI at bay and of course had that big offensive rebound before halftime to give Joe the buzzer beating 3.

There are a lot of talented freshmen guards in the A10 (Smith, Nunn, Reynolds come to mind) but Brayon is showing that he deserves to be on the all-freshmen team outside of the Dayton guys. He has shown lately to just have a quicker step than the opposition, leading to a number of easy layups and I really liked that he didn't give up on a play where he missed a three a possession before and stripped the ball from Thomas on the very next play and took it in for a layup. An average freshman would try to finish over a big man in traffic, but Brayon has also made good decisions for much of the season, finding Ricky for an easy layup in the first half instead of taking it himself.

I don't mind Ricky getting the chain of command from a confidence standpoint. He certainly made quite a few big plays in the game, although I wish he wouldn't bite on pump fakes so often down low. That is usually what ends up getting him in foul trouble. The threes weren't falling but Lindo made the extra pass and was otherwise great defensively.

I thought Brendan has come up really big for us recently. It wasn't his biggest game from a points perspective, but I thought this was his best performance attacking the hoop offensively, making some big shots late to put the game away (if it wasn't already). He played really good on-ball defense all game and has done a great job bringing the ball up the court as a third point guard option at times. This team needs some veteran leadership on the court and I think Brendan is giving that to the team now. I think I may have given him the chain for all the little things he did in the game.

Nice to see a fairly sizable turnout for the game, perhaps a sign that things are looking up in the near future?

Next up will be surely a tougher test as we are facing a team that is actually strong offensively in Richmond. Given how laughably bad we've been defending their backdoor cuts/Princeton offense I hope to see strong communication on the defensive end. Less worried about the offense. 6th place in the A10 is not an impossible scenario given what's left on the schedule and I can't believe that's even in the cards. Despite Davidson crushing SLU, I would still like to find a way to potentially match up against them on Friday instead of Dayton/VCU. Anyways, kudos to JC + staff and the players on the improved play. Do they get Captain Cookie milkshakes for home wins?