Mentzinger wrote:

Maceo playing today in the MAC Tournament for Buffalo. Tied at Half..

Tough 2-point loss, Jack on bench down the stretch for SUNY-Buffalo.

Thomas wrote:

I don't think Jair has played in a while, he's been a healthy scratch!! It looks he got recruited over during the offseason. 

Indiana beat Michigan 74-69, IU trailed by 17 in the 2nd half. I believe that was considered an NCAA tourney play-in game for both teams, so Michigan may be headed to the NIT now.

Syracuse lost today without Buddy Boeheim, but I was surprised to see that he actually finished the game against Florida State after he threw the punch. How could the refs not review the play? Did the FSU player not tell his coach that Boeheim punched him? Syracuse probably would have won(and had a good shot at winning the tournament after knocking off Duke) if Boeheim played so justice was served!!

Georgetown was actually competitive for the entire game against Seton Hall but were unable to execute in the final seconds and lost. It looks like Patrick Ewing will return because they are too cheap or are afraid of the Ghost of John Thompson Jr. to make drastic changes. Down below is a post from an anonymous former Georgetown player who bashes the program and the influence John Thompson and his family have.

https://medium.com/@tamers.blurbs-0u/opinion-from-a-former-player-georgetown-mens-basketball-program-reaches-epic-corruption-levels-b053ef58ab5d 

Thomas, I'd hope Jair serves as a cautionary tale.  I get going down if you have zero time here, I get moving up if you are Lasan Kethan or Battle, but I'd say any of the 3 would have been in a similar spot professionally if they stayed at GW

But Jair who has been getting zero time at all the 2nd half of the year, a real disservice to him. In the Big East he's lost all of his PT this season, on one of the weaker teams in the league.

 

Last edited by The Dude (3/11/2022 12:25 am)

Marfo and 11th seeded Quinnipiac are playing in the MAAC semifinals against 2nd seeded St. Peters on ESPN News, the game is early in the 2nd half and St. Peters leads by 6

Nice to see Richmond beat VCU.  Really enjoy watching the style of play that UR plays - structured motion offensive sets and strong D - much better than the hacking VCU - “refs won’t call everything “ style.

The announcers have mentioned that Vermont coach Becker(I believe he replaced Mike Lonergan and has continued to dominate the league) will be pursued by schools from larger conferences. It seems as if Rhode Island and UMass would be logical fits since he could still recruit from the same areas or maybe a BCS school like Georgia will make him a big offer, Becker has probably dominated enough to justify a leap to a BCS/Power 5 school similar to Steve Pikiel. Someone here posted that UMass was likely to hire a UConn assistant but if Becker were interested in the job, I'd take him over Hurley's assistant. 

Last edited by Thomas (3/12/2022 11:41 am)

GW0509,  You think UMass and Rhode Island will go the 'Fired BCS Coaches' route and hire someone like Cuonzo Martin, Bruce Weber or Tom Crean(The Dude's favorite coach!! LOL) ? I think someone like Cuonzo Martin would do a similar job to what Anthony Grant and Travis Ford are now doing in the A10, where he will immediately bring in highly touted transfers and high school recruits, and have his team finishing in the top 4 of the A10 in a short period of time.

Vermont is going to win this game going away, but I wanted to say more about Becker. Either on this board or the old board, Becker's name was brought up to replace Mojo, and someone posted a link to Vermont's message board where their posters were saying that "Becker and his family loved Vermont and didn't want to leave." I'm not sure whether it's true or not but the America East conference will always be a 1-bid league, would a great coach want to be in a situation where he has a team that is 27-5, 17-1 in conference(which Vermont is this year) but needs to win the conference tournament to get an NCAA bid? I'm sure that's got to be real frustrating for a guy coaching a powerhouse mid-major program. I recall that Pikiell and Stony Brook seemed to always have the top seed in their conference but would get upset in the conference tournament until his final year there, then he left for Rutgers. 

Former Lonergan assistant Becker sure looks like he would be an asset anywhere.
There's another place that could use his talents, but alas, it seems improbable at the moment for numerous reasons.

Thomas wrote:

The announcers have mentioned that Vermont coach Becker(I believe he replaced Mike Lonergan and has continued to dominate the league) will be pursued by schools from larger conferences. It seems as if Rhode Island and UMass would be logical fits since he could still recruit from the same areas or maybe a BCS school like Georgia will make him a big offer, Becker has probably dominated enough to justify a leap to a BCS/Power 5 school similar to Steve Pikiel. Someone here posted that UMass was likely to hire a UConn assistant but if Becker were interested in the job, I'd take him over Hurley's assistant. 

He was an assistant to ML at Catholic and Vermont.

Thomas.   Regarding your statement to the effect that Ewing would not be fired because of the ghost of John. Thompson, don’t you think that even apart from Thompson, Patrick could more than stand on what he has meant in talking Ge**getown from a sleepy local program, ala GW and American, to the program we all wish we could become notwithstanding their stinky season and as such is entitled to the benefit of the doubt? Even as bad as the H*yas were, they still had a KenPom rating better than we did.

LSF,  despite Patrick Ewing's heroics/greatness as a player at Georgetown(and then the NBA), Georgetown just had one of the worst seasons in college basketball history in my opinion...21 Straight Losses, 0 for 20 in Big East games!! That is more than just a bad season, a bad season would be 2 or 3 conference wins, not zero. Also, this is his 4th or 5th year as coach, there should be some sort of forward progress with his team at this point. I don't see any way a school that wants to win can justify bringing him back, but it looks like he will be back with new assistants. Another thing to keep in mind is, the Big East has the old-school round robin format so you can't benefit from an uneven schedule like other conferences, you can't inflate your conference record by feasting on bad teams in the Big East!! Georgetown may lose their best 2 players/leading scorers so they could be even worse next year.

GW0509,  I didn't know Becker was also ML's assistant at Catholic U, do you think ML has been advising him on what job to take? I haven't paid that close attention to the Maryland job search, Rick Pitino and USC's Enfield are the big names brought up, but Becker seems to be someone they would consider. The LSU job just opened up, so there could be lots of big-name schools targeting Becker.