I have noticed the timely timeouts that were not taken earlier in the season. Now, if the opposing team begins to go on a run, a timeout is called. This was not happening before.

To me it started with the first RI game when Jamion went to the motion offense and stuck with it. That and a double down on a tenacious defense has turned it aruund and made these guys believe on themselves. JC made the right decision and the have t looked back yet.

I love this JoeBam quote because it shares the sentiment here of many who did not foresee a 13th place finish.  As fans, many of us knew that this team had talent and could not begin to understand the 2-8 start.

While the road win at URI was very significant, I think the turnaround for this season goes back to JC's eventual realization that Brayon Freeman and not James Bishop needed to be his team's point guard.  I was hoping to see this from Day 1 but two factors that can't be ignored were: 1) Brayon is a freshman and JC did not want him playing 30+ minutes as a starter from the beginning and 2) JC had told James that he was going to be his point guard with a scorers mentality.  I think JC wanted to give James every opportunity to thrive in this role but James's skill set is just so much better suited to play off the ball.  I felt Brayon would excel given the competition he faced in high school.  To JC's credit, he reversed course and ultimately gave the ball to Brayon to set up the offense.

Most amazing, is that we're not getting absolutely killed inside.

The defense has been somehow even better with a 3 Guard lineup.  

 

Free Quebec wrote:

Just saw some stats about how we do in the half court.

The TLDR is that we have the worst halfcourt offense in the league, but a solidly average (6th) halfcourt defense.

Unfortunately on balance, because the offense is so bad, we are the worst halfcourt team in the league when you met out offense and defense points per possession

https://twitter.com/a10stats/status/1495830894975795204?s=21

Seems like this is the full season? Curious what this would look like just for conference play.

The Dude wrote:

My main question, are we witnessing the beginning of an actual program turnaround?  

No.  The beginning took place this past offseason when it was obvious to everyone but you that JC had upgraded the talent level of this team.  Don't you remember Dude?  You kept clinging to the notion that all of these experts and forecasters (when in actuality, it was only some forecasters but not most or all) were predicting a 13th place finish for this team while proceeding to mock me, GWRising , and anyone else who had even the slightest amount of foresight regarding this team.  With this past weekend's results, GW can now finish in no worse than 12th place.  So despite your repeated claims (and I do mean repeated) that we were all delusional and creating unrealistically high bars to make JC look bad when he didn't meet them, it certainly does appear that this team will finish far closer to what we thought than the 13th place finish that you were anticipating.  In fact, what we know for sure at this point is that 13th place is an impossibility.

Agree with Rising and I think if I had to start working on the next next step it will be how much of this team can JC retain and how do we structure the offseason so it doesn't take 10 games for the team to figure out how to play together.  Obviously returning a core of Freeman, Bam, and Bishop will help greatly in that effort but given that we'll probably have some combination of 4-5 new players via recruits and transfers those three vets will need to work on getting all the new players into the fold.  

And with last night's results in, GW is guaranteed to skip play-in Wednesday as they are guaranteed to finish no worse than 10th place.  They could still finish in 6th place but realistically, somewhere between 7th and 9th appears to be more likely.  A resounding validation to several here who analyzed the talent on this team and predicted a finish very much along these lines.  A surprise to some forecasters and predictors, as well as those who seem to hang on their every word to form their own opinion.

Let's revisit just a few of those moments, courtesy of The Dude:

"It's important to properly state where the team is, the bottom of the A10.  There's a lot of fraudulent nonsense here to achieve some bizarre make believe agenda."

"Bart Torvik has us 273rd and 14th in the A10,  a widely respected site.  I'll put more stock in Torvik."

(Yes, this is the same Bart Torvik who gave GW under a 35% chance of winning at Duquesne.  Guy really knows his stuff.)

Note:  I hope the board understands that ordinarily, I would never shove someone else's erroneous prediction in their face like this.  However, The Dude has this coming and then some.  This is what you get when you troll and troll, and then wind up being wrong.  

I know there's a part of The Dude that had to be rooting for a 13th or 14th place finish, just to be able to say yet again how right he was.  I only wish I was kidding.

 

My view remains we were the Ira Lee injury away from actually being good this year.

We've won a lot lately but it's not an actually good team because the front court is so weak without Ira Lee and the Jamison Battle departure

1 or 2 big front court additions and we're right there since we have top 1/3 A10 Guard talent. If Lee was playing or Battle had stayed or both we'd be a bubble type team or close to it now.

The Dude wrote:

My view remains we were the Ira Lee injury away from actually being good this year.

We've won a lot lately but it's not an actually good team because the front court is so weak without Ira Lee and the Jamison Battle departure

1 or 2 big front court additions and we're right there since we have top 1/3 A10 Guard talent. If Lee was playing or Battle had stayed or both we'd be a bubble type team or close to it now.

Your view remains?  

My view remains that you are a pathological liar.