Did anyone else have trouble with ESPN+?

moneybox wrote:

I know all of your posts are ultra pithy (like the one about the coach's outfit), but can't someone respond to mine once in a while?. 

I didn’t really have issues. I think twice I saw it buffer but it went back to normal quickly.

moneybox wrote:

Did anyone else have trouble with ESPN+?

No issues

Last edited by Florida Colonial (12/13/2022 8:22 pm)

ESPN+ on GW site had problems. Went to ESPN+ on cable and it was ok.

Thanks for your responses. Boy, do we need some big men for next season if we have a prayer of being competitive. 

I was looking for the ESPN streaming platform, if I had to guess, it is likely AWS. As people cut the cable, all cloud services are experiencing problems. If you broadcast with Zoom, melon or natively with OBS, you are seeing issues popping up. The video gets passed over so many boxes and edge proxies. moneybox, I stream over Verizon suing YouTube TV and the signal drop one time.

While it was nice to see a comfortable win, and I certainly applaud the team's rebounding last night, I can not help but think that the excessive three point shooting that I am seeing out of this team will not bode well for the future.  We've eclipsed 40% three point shooting twice all season.  One was in the shootout loss to Hofstra and the other was in the "everything went right" win over South Carolina.  The team has shot under 32% from three in its last three games, losses to Radford and AU along with a 10-31 mark in last night's win.  Did we really need to take more than half of our field goal attempts from 3 against Coppin, or AU?  Just seems like all of these missed shots are making things much tougher on this team than it has to be.  For the season, the team is shooting 33.6% from 3, and 60.2% on two point shots.  Of course the two point percentage should be higher, but not nearly by this wide a margin.   

Anyone else feel that Juan Dixon had a coaching beside manner similar to his old college coach?   When things would be going poorly, he would even turn and yell at some poor player who wasn't even in the game, ala Gary Williams.

Good win! Coppin was clearly gassed from the number of games they've been playing on the road and the travel that comes with that. This is the second straight year we played them at the very end of their road trip which certainly helped us. The team that we played yesterday did not look like one of the fastest-paced teams in the country. Given their limited size, I'm not necessarily surprised we crushed them on the boards, but I think fatigue again also hurt them there. Many of their guys just looked like they had run out of energy.

Happy for Max that he had a great game yesterday. It was nice to see shots fall for him, but more importantly that he was playing with energy and was looking to do the right thing on the court. Good play is usually rewarded and he was the reason we won the game (JB did his thing to put the game away late, but Max's play prevented Coppin from ever threatening to take the lead). Coppin wasn't great on the boards, but if Edwards is able to continue to help out rebounding that will take a lot of pressure off the frontcourt. Max is a freshman and certainly won't be able to do this every night, but the important thing is that he can provide some of what he did yesterday to help the team out. His scoring may be inconsistent, but if he can help rebound and hold his own on defense that can help the team too. Positive contributions are what is needed. Loved his cutting off the ball as well.

The team offense after the first three possessions looked pretty good. I was worried that starting the game by launching three shots from distance that missed was going to persist throughout the game but the team did a better job of getting the ball to the hoop after that.

I know that BA had 4 assists tonight, but I'm not sure I want the ball in his hands late in the shot clock over JB. For whatever reason, the ball usually sticks and everyone (including those just watching the game) know BA is launching a three point shot. Compared to last year, it's been tough to criticize Adams for taking those shots because he's made more of them but you will have a 2/8 performance like the American game because of it still here and there. At least JB will look to make a few moves here and there, whether it's drawing contact or at least going a little closer to the hoop. Unless he's toeing the three point line, JB doesn't necessarily always look to launch from distance compared to BA late in the shot clock (it's not a coincidence that arguably BA's best game this year against UNH was because he was aggressive taking it to the hoop - he had the size advantage, but remaining aggressive is important). Because of this, I would again prefer that we get into our offense a little bit quicker. There are times where I like the fact that we are taking our time to find the right shot to take in the offense, but others when the ball sticks and we have run the clock down too much only to take a bad shot. Depth may also have played a role in the pace that we play in the halfcourt.

As for the 3's vs 2's discussion, I think it's also important to mention who is taking those 3 point shots. Our guards (JB, BA, EJ) are shooting a combined 36% from distance. I think that's pretty good. The question is more about the shot selection for Ricky and Qwanzi who are 9 for 42 (21%) from 3 on the season and went 0-5 last night. Last year, this duo went 37/99 (37%) from distance and are career 31% 3-PT shooters which is not amazing but not terrible either. I think if three of their 5 attempts were taken inside yesterday our team percentage goes up to nearly 36% which I think is a reasonable expectation for this team moving forward. We are certainly not a prolific three point shooting team, but I have to say we are a lot better than I thought we were going to be going into the year.

Also have to say that analytics/the way the game is played in the NBA has hurt transition efficiency at the college level. There was one play where we passed it to EJ who missed a 3 on the fast break when he could have probably faked and had an easy layup. Coppin had an even worse mistake, as Tarke passed up an open layup for a 3 which was bricked.

Defensively, it goes without saying that there is significant room for improvement. Outside of the South Carolina and New Hampshire games, we have consistently struggled to stay in front of the opponent. Last night, we allowed Titus to score 16(!) points. For the season he averages under 2 points and had 3 total points coming into our game. Titus did score 17 against UVA last year but we are talking about a guy who has scored double figures 3 times in 37 games at the D1 level. We kept allowing him to drive to his left instead of forcing him to adjust. Bad things happen when you allow a team to get past the initial perimeter shell. Any D1 team has the ability to beat us off the bounce or kick out from 3 if we collapse too much on the penetrator. CC is right to say we are a bit limited on that front (JB and EJ certainly try on defense but are simply not impactful defenders), but this team has shown that they can have success defensively. Putting it together consistently remains to be seen. Compared to last year, I do like our activity down low forcing players to adjust when Hunter is available. Our zone is also significantly more effective, but we still have work to do in rotating. The team is generally burned by made shots from the corner. We were fortunate Coppin was tired and missed some additional open looks from the corner 3 spot. So far, not running teams off the three point line has hurt us compared to last year. We are currently allowing opponents to shoot 34% from 3, which is the second worst mark in the A10. Some luck will definitely help, but we can also control the quality of those looks.

Some other thoughts:
1) Going back to the earlier discussion, perhaps Ricky is nervous about picking up an offensive foul by barreling into a defender taking it to the hoop. It is here where other players need to help Lindo out by cutting to the basket. Max showed how this is done -  the other guards on the team need to do this a lot more as well.
2) We are going to really need Hunter for the Hawaii trip. I always laugh when I hear we have "frontcourt depth" because Hunter's injury has shown that we really don't have that (although Jabari entering the transfer portal and Daniel getting hurt hasn't helped). Our next opponent, Washington State is a team that certainly has frontcourt depth and height in general.
3) The team played better in the second half with Keegan and Qwanzi not on the floor. Harvey gets a pass for not being 100% (and he did at least try to fake a 3 and get to the hoop) but Samuels needs to give the team something. The starters are already playing as much as they possibly can. Not expecting Q to give us several baskets a game or anything like that, but again any positive contributions would go a long way.
4) Amir continues to give good minutes defensively/be impactful when in the game. Would prefer that he plays closer to 5-10 given his limitations offensively but we could certainly do worse at this point.

Gwmayhem wrote:

Where I would fully agree with CC is that we don't have the lightning quick guards wo can blow by guys and score on drives.

Agree. That's where the loss of Brayon hurts a bit this year.

Hoping for a better performance traveling out west than last year, but we are likely the worst team in the field. Staying competitive should be the main goal.