Given the media blackout, all I have to go on is the box score. But did Lindo and Brown really combine for 11 points, three turnovers and two fouled outs. And neither played more than 17 mins? Oy vey. Looks like Bishop and Max Edwards were unintimidated by their lower-level opposition.

I was there.  Fun to be back at the Smith Center.

WCU really sagged off penetration and we did a great job finding the open man.  Lack of inside scoring was a problem, but the way we kicked out and found the open man was beautiful and if we can do that, we will find ways to score. 

Defensively, I thought this was a good opponent for a practice game. They seemed to be well coached and moved without the ball a lot. But what I liked was for most of the game, we pressured the ball nicely and took them out of what we wanted to do. 

Rebounding was an issue, particularly once Brown was out. And the last 15 minutes or so after Bishop’s day was done, were nothing like the first 25 (we looked focused and good, but then it broke down once bishop’s day was done and we were up like 30). 

Some specific player thoughts: 

Bishop - moved the ball really well, seemed to be working on defense.  He scored off catch and shoots, but was really looking to pass first.  Very encouraging   

Maximus Edwards - big, physical, confident, and can shoot it.  We are going to love him!  He looks like a legit A10 top 5 team type of guard. 

Lindo - looked a bit stronger.mostly hung out on the perimeter.

EJ Clark - nice shooter, experienced players.  Handle was ok but really seemed like more of an off ball player despite his size. When Adams is back, he’ll be a bench player who I am guessing runs hot and cold with his production, with some huge games and some quiet ones.

Noel Brown - looked bigger and did rebound when he was in there. I’m not too worried about the foul trouble.  First two were Ticky tack moving screens that some refs wouldn’t call, third was a foul going for a loose ball on the floor.  I don’t remember 4 or 5, but I remember thinking 5 wasn’t a bad foul.    It’ll help to have dean back so there’s less pressure on brown. 

Qwanzi - I’ve not been high on him, but he shut me up with solid play.  He especially moved it well along the perimeter. Also drained a couple threes, got some boards, and competed on defense.  He’s not really a guy who will play on a top 5 A10 team, but he’ll get plenty of important minutes for us off thr bench. 

Amir Harris - injuries really wrecked his career, but he still has those quick hands on defense.  He had 4 or 5 nice defensive plays with his hands - steals, blocks, deflections. 

Keegan Harvey - Our first look at him. Hopefully he was just nervous, because he couldn’t get a rebound inside and the hall kept going off his hands. He’s very thin so he’s really a 6’11” jump shooter, not really a center. On offense he hung out beyond the arc.  He hit one three that was a line drive and gave us little else on either end. Never though I’d say this, but we need Dean back. 

Daniel Nixon - he’s lost some weight, but his game didn’t seem ready.  He slowed the ball down and shot some bricks.  There was one play where the ball was kicked to him with someone running out at him, he could have swung it quickly to Qwanzi, who would have had 10 seconds to line up his shot, but nixon’s ball movement was far too slow.  I’m not sure how much we can count on him, though this is just one game, and possibly a nervous one. 

If I forgot anyone, sorry.  Bottom line is that I’d expect us to lean heavily on the 5 starters plus Clark and Qwanzi - and anything else is a bonus. It’s also too her Joe Bam transferred because I would have loved to have seen Bishop/Bam/Edwards together on a team they shares the rock and pressures the ball.

It was a tale of 2 halfs, with GW playing like an A-10 school vs a DIII school in the first half, then being outscored in the second half and looking not very good. As a team, what stuck out to me in the first half was the 10-19 shooting from the 3 as well as the 12 to 3 assist to turnover ratio.   In the second half, we shot 5-12 from the 3 (still respectable, I guess) and the assist to turnover ration was 6 to 10. Further disturbing was being outrebounded 32-31 and allowing 13 offensive rebounds to a team whose tallest player was 6'6"   We looked like a team that was still in the learning process of both a new system and how to play together.  All in all, we took very few bad shots, frequently penetrating then dishing to a wide opened 3 point shooter, something that have not done very well over the past few years. 
.
     Individual positives were the play of James Bishop, who seems to have a leash on him and at least in my opinion did not take any bad shots and still finished with 19 points on only 9 field goal attempts (to go along with 6 assists and 0 turnovers, along with the play of Max Edwards (the announcer did refer to hims as Maximus), who scored 18 but turned the ball over 4 times.   I was also impressed with EJ Clark, starting for the injured Brandon Adams (who was in uniform but did not play), and seems to fill that need for a backup point guard.  Qwanzi also had a solid game,with 8 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists.   After missing 2 of the ugliest shots you will ever see in the first half, Daniel Nixon scored 5 points and had 3 steals, but doesn't look like the answer based on this game.    Brown and Lindo each fouled out, mostly ticky tack fouls on players that were too quick for them to guard.  Brown played only 14 minutes due to foul trouble and the offense does not seem to be gered to his strength, namely getting the ball inside and laying it in.  Was disappointed in Lindo's performance.  Although he had 9 points on 2-4 shooting, he had zero rebounds, zero assists and 2 turnovers.     Amir Harris is just invisible on offense (3 points and 0 assists in 18 minutes) and Keegan Harvey does not appear to be the answer.  After Keegan his first shot, a 3 pointer, he did not score for the rest of the game (he played 20 minutes).  He is tall, very thin and cannot rebound even a little, frequently out muscled by a much smaller opponant.   Not having Adams and Dean definitely hurt the team, but we should have put a bigger hurtinhg on a D-III opponant than we did.  All in all, I will need to sleep on the question of whetrher or not I liked what I saw today.

Last edited by Long Suffering Fan (10/30/2022 9:03 pm)

Some additional random thoughts:
-Agree on Max, that is the level of talent we need to get back to being consistently competitive in the A10. Enjoyed his game.
-Keegan is very soft as others have pointed out, but will hit a few threes for us.
-We have a lot of lefties. Bishop, Edwards, Clark an I think Jones might be a lefty too. Assume this is just a coincidence.
-Not worried about the fouls outside of Brown who has a history of foul trouble. The game was about 20 minutes longer then it needed to be, to the point at the end of the game one of the few students was giving it to the ref for calling so many fouls.
-Lindo is going to need to help us inside, we prefers to be on the perimeter but we will need him to help on the boards.
-Caputo is pretty calm on the sidelines, he will get on guys here and there but he seemed to have a calming presence.
-Patsos was there chatting up the AD staff during the half. Who knows how we will be on the mic but I like having a local guy that is pretty connected in the area around the program.
-WC deployed the full court press a lot in the 2nd half. We handled it ok until Bishop was taken out. That is where I noticed how quick Clark is, nice to have a very fast guard.
-Nixon looks like he should be playing football, he is thick. A little out of control but hit a nice 3, as other have said he is not the answer but I could see him at least contributing a little.

I would caution against reading too much of almost anything (except  maybe player rotations) into an exhibition against a relatively bad D3 team (middle of the road team in a weak D3 conference). I can tell you from past experience that the GW kids aren't particularly excited for this game and the D3 team treats it as its Super Bowl. It sort of is what it is and the goal is to just get through it in one piece and get the players used to playing in front of a crowd. Much better indicator of where we are beginning next Monday.

Last edited by GWRising (10/31/2022 9:11 am)

A couple of other notes:
* Was impressed with Edwards' rebounding.  He was constantly going after missed baskets in an instinctive way.  Carl Elliott-type stat stuffer, maybe with more points and less assists.
* Missed part of the first half, but should note that WCS played a lot of full-court press in the second half, which we handled with very mixed success, especially after Bishop left the floor.
* CC did a lot of teaching during the game.  Intense, but in a productive way unlike some other ex-GW coaches

Last edited by BM (10/31/2022 9:38 am)

I was also at the game...and left feeling positive about our prospects for the season. It looked like we have several tools in our toolbox. Edwards and Clark particularly impressed me. and Amir Harris seemed to have a quiet maturity; I think he will be a leader on this team. Lindo played with his usual intensity, and will be a positive force as well, in his final season with us.

Thoughts and observations (some having nothing to do with the exhibition):

1) I was interested in seeing how a CC coached team was going to play.  My takeaway is that CC knows what he has in this team and what he doesn't have.  They played up tempo, shared the ball fairly well, and shot and made many 3's in rhythmn.  (Speaking primarily about the first half which to me was a truer indication of how this team will look, minus Adams and Dean.)

2) Often, a new coach comes in and is essentially coaching someone else's recruits.  If he inherits a veteran team and can mesh his objectives with the team's abilities, it can work.  (See Year 1 for Tom Penders at GW).  If he insists on having his team play a certain way and the personnel is not up to this, it can be a long season (See Year 1 for Karl Hobbs or Mike Lonergan at GW.)

3) So on this scale, I do see CC coaching more to his personnel in Year 1 than necessarily what he would ideally like.

4) Of course, the 15-31 from 3 is not sustainable over a full season.  This team will need to develop ways to score from two point range.  Several players, most notably James and Max, have the chance to excel in the midrange game.

5) If this team does not lack depth in the frontcourt, then let's just agree that it lacks polish in the paint.  We will again be hard-pressed to find easy points in the paint and I believe CC & staff must know this.  Noel represents the best hope but the fact that the team wasn't really looking for him to post up in the paint against a much smaller D3 team should be a signal that this really isn't going to be part of the offense.

6) There are several things about CC and staff that are worth pointing out:

a) I have said before that I felt one of the huge mistakes of the JC era was an inability to recognize from Day 1 the requisite talent to effectively compete in the A10.  The result was that guys who may have been considering playing for JC at Siena, like Shawn Walker, Lincoln Ball, Tyler Brelsford, or in the case of Sloan Seymour, did play for JC at Siena, were now playing in the A10.  Even Jameer Nelson, Jr., who we were all very pleased to see in a GW uniform, was a great athlete who was ultimately recruited over.  To his credit, JC recruited the transfer portal hard, to both make up for these mistakes and in retrospect, because he had to know his seat was hotter than it arguably should have been.

b) By luring Max Edwards, bringing in EJ Clark to fill a specific, needed role, and now with the recruitment of Christian Jones and Trey Autry, it is very apparent that CC and staff comprehend the level of talent that this program needs to compete effectively.

c) We need some talented bigs, badly, and fully trust that this is realized.

d) What makes a good recruiter?  In addition to all of the obvious answers, let's also add "knowing everyone."  OK, I'm sure CC does not know everyone but he seems to have a ton of connections aside from Coach L, from Erik Spoelstra to Adrian Wojnarowski to Jeff Van Gundy.  Notice that each of these names are NBA guys.  If you're a 16 or 17 year old young man with an eye towards a career in professional basketball, my sense is that you're going to pay close attention to what CC has to say.  Not only does he have a track record in working with Miami players who have reached the NBA but he seems to also know many people who can definitely help with this goal.

7) Question for Rising:  If players are generally unenthused about playing in an exhibition game, do you think this may also be the case one week from today when we open against a Division 2 school?  My hope is that this is a team that wants to start strong out of the gate given the OOC experiences under JC, and that sufficient motivation should not be a problem.  Then again, this may just be wishful thinking on my part.
 

GWRising wrote:

Gwmayhem wrote:

7) Question for Rising:  If players are generally unenthused about playing in an exhibition game, do you think this may also be the case one week from today when we open against a Division 2 school?  My hope is that this is a team that wants to start strong out of the gate given the OOC experiences under JC, and that sufficient motivation should not be a problem.  Then again, this may just be wishful thinking on my part.
 

Think it's different (or should be different) when you get to regular season because players are aware that the game counts. I don't think there will be a lack of enthusiasm on opening night regardless of the opponent especially with a new coach. If there is a lack of enthusiasm, then we have bigger problems then we might imagine.

So this is an interesting question. Does the next game actually count?    It wouldn’t count toward making the postseason (NCAA and NIT committees do not count games vs non-D1 teams) and it doesn’t count toward any computer metrics (KenPom, Sagarin, RPI or whatever it’s called now).   

So I’m curious if other people think this next game really counts any more than the exhibition game we just played (other than the fact that we can put it on our “record” to fool people into thinking we have one more win than the postseason committees and computer metrics think we have).

A large factor in lack of attendance was the fact that the Marine Corp Marathon made accessing the District a nightmare. The big problem again this year is the lack of a true rebounding presence. Noel Brown looks as lost as he has for 2 years. I continue to hope Lindo will become Dennis Rodman, Jr. but he continues to pick up cheap fouls and disappears on the court. This team will need to show a defensive grit and toughness that has been missing since the ML days to have any success. Let's hope next Monday is a step in that direction.