GW!  What a win!

40 points 7 assists for Bishop in a brilliant performance, the whole team

Happy New Year GW Nation

Last edited by The Dude (12/31/2022 6:07 pm)

When James is “in the zone” we are a very hard team to beat.  It is when he is having an off night or the opposition takes him away that we really really struggle.  Having Noel give us productive minutes is very helpful to Dean.  Not sure how long that will last but it is a nice thing to see.

James got an efficient 40 without forcing up shots, but making them count. Seems like well over 60 pct shooting (maybe 66 pct rough calculation if reading box score right) and a great 3 pt. percentage, too
Brendan is driving more to the basket recently, which results in scores and opens thing up. Ricky did his usual all around points and rebound things, hit those lovely 3s and put his body on the line.
Hunter made some nice free throws and boards. Max got some boards and points.
   As I posted earlier, Amir and Noel injected defensive and offensive energy that marked out turnaround.
Really a team win.

What an incredibly satisfying game, which I was fortunate to attend along with Wisconsin Colonial. Gentile Arena is a nice little arena, says it sits close to 4,900 but looked smaller than that to me.   Looked about 2/3rds full, with attendance announced at 2,424.  Not bad, considering students are on break and it is New Year's Eve.   Wisc. Col. seemed to like the arena a bit more than I did.   I would put it as somewhere betweed Bender (American) and the Smitty, with the Smitty having a far nicer scoreboard.   Prior to the game, Sister Jean prayed for the health of all involved and for a Loyola win.  I was disappointed in the GW turnout. I would think that there would be lots of alum living in the 2nd largest city in the country, but there were probably no more than 20-25 GW fans in the crowd., The 4 rows of seats behind our bench that was reserved for our fans was pretty empty.   As for the game itself, we used 7 playes and I thought CC did a very good job of juggling the players in and out, although playing Adams and Bishop 37-38 minutes a game is not a formula for long term , and I fear they could turn into the National's bullpen from overuse.  We started out extremely slow, scoring only 2 or 4 points by the first media timeout, and falling behind 11-4, with several turnovers  Before I could say, oh crap, here we go again, we turned it around and took control of the rest of the game.  I give most of the credit to the turnout to the insertion of Amir Harris, who played a great game defensively,  We are a very different (better) team defensively  with him in the game, and it really showed today.  In the last 5 or 6 minutes of the game, Loyola made a run at us and cut it to 4, but damn if we didn't hold tough, getting  a couple of key defensive stops and some very clutch shooting.   Bishop and Adams were absolutely incredible the entire game, scoring a combined 59 points on 19-27 shooting from the field (including 7-10 from the 3).   The 2 headed monster of Dean and Brown had a combined 16 points on 5-5 shooting from the field, as well as 12 rebounds.  Not so much of a monster guarding the interior, however.  I wonder if Dean is fully healthy.  I saw them working on his leg or ankle before the game and he has played only 32 minutes in the past 2 games.   In the end, Loyola just could not stop Bishop/Adams, and we won going away.

Happy New Year all.

Last edited by Long Suffering Fan (12/31/2022 10:48 pm)

Really happy for the guys that they were able to regroup after the tough Diamond Head Classic trip that really tested the team's depth. I am almost convinced there is something different about the Hawaii rims compared to all the other gyms we have played in thus far on the year.

Glad to see Ricky back. He was very key to giving us a chance to win outright yesterday. I am terrified every time he takes the ball to the basket. Don't know if they offer classes on how to break a fall but Ricky should certainly enroll. I will never knock his effort, but this has to be the fourth or fifth time now where he hit the floor hard and ended up really dinged up after a fall. CC did a good job giving him a bit of rest after that before inserting him back in during the final play of the first half. Nice to see Lindo's threes finally fall, especially given they were very well contested. It was just one of those games where every shot was falling but I did think his three point shooting was due for positive regression. He's closer to a 30% shooter than 15% for sure.

JB and BA got pretty much whatever they wanted. I know that the analytically "better" shots are threes and layups, but we may have to make an exception for this team. This team is borderline automatic in the midrange. Per Haslametrics, we have the second best midrange shooting percentage in the country. Adams made several contested ones, JB can of course make those in his sleep, and even Max got into the action swishing one off a nice screen.

Via Bart Torvik, this was GW's highest offensive efficiency (135.7 points per 100 possessions) game since February 21st, 2018 at home against Richmond where we won 103-77.

Max had another solid game. Really like his rebounding effort. There was a teachable moment late in the game where he should have pulled the ball out instead of attacking the basket which was well protected by Loyola. He had a couple understandable freshman-like plays - I thought it was interesting that CC kept him in the game at times. Might have been partly due to lack of depth, but that also shows trust.

Huge shout outs to Hunter, Noel, and Amir for playing complementary roles very well.

Really liked the play where Hunter got the ball on the block and was fouled on a made hook shot along the baseline. Dean is also a really good free throw shooter, which allows us to keep him in late in games if we're up and we can sub him out for Noel or Amir on defense if he's in foul trouble.

Noel has made more positive plays than not the past several games. Was really amped up to see him pull the ball away from Golden and then go back and finish with the ball down low. I always thought he was solid enough defensively, but he may be good enough offensively now to get 10-15 minutes a game consistently.

Amir did his typical glue guy things. Loved the play where he cut to the basket and we found him for an alley-oop dunk. He shouldn't probably take a three unless the shot clock is about to run out, but he gives good minutes when on the court and is versatile defensively.

Seems like Qwanzi and Keegan are not in the rotation as of now, although I'm not sure if both were dressed for the game yesterday.

My takeaway from Loyola is that they need to improve their athleticism in a big way. They definitely have some good pieces on their team but by and large it appeared that we had a major advantage in terms of athletes. That's partly to be expected given they are just transitioning from the MVC, but I think that really shows how much bigger and stronger players in the A10 are compared to that league. I thought Valentine did a good job drawing plays out of timeouts. They really should have attacked the basket more with Golden and Alston. They started to do that later in the game but it was too late by then. Hunter and Ricky not being in foul trouble is a sign that you are not being aggressive enough as a team.

Not going to get too high on the W because obviously the defensive end is a major weakness (we need to learn to not go under screens and contest better near the rim). The team won't shoot this well game after game, but it was cool to see us play with a kind of swagger where we knew we could score on pretty much every offensive possession even if Loyola scored after we built up somewhat of a lead. Had one of BA's takes to the basket not rimmed out and Ricky made an easy layup, we would have shot borderline at 70% for the game which is insane. I think that might have played a role in us probably playing a little half-hearted on D. I continue to be really impressed by CC and staff's offensive playbook. We may not have 1,000 or whatever plays that JC had, but the plays certainly look a lot more effective with largely the same players. Also looking much improved on the boards although we obviously have a ways to go.

Things don't get any easier as we continue our extended trip away from home with a visit to Richmond on Wednesday. Burton vs. Lindo figures to be a key matchup. Time for the team to rewatch the game against American to see how to better defend the Princeton offense (if we can). Hopefully shots continue to fall because this team will definitely need it to remain competitive.
 

PKGW wrote:

Need to ship those rims to the Smoth Center.  40 points for Bishop!!!

Amen! Plus same pregame meal for Mr. Brown!

Does this mean Loyola-Chicago is the ONLY team in A10 history to have never beaten GW? (Even Butler beat GW, and they were in the conference for a nanosecond)

Gwmayhem wrote:

3) I'm the first to tell folks to calm down about Noel Brown so I'll also be among the first to sing his praises for a game like the one he played on Saturday.  If the team can receive this level of consistent production out of Noel, on both ends of the floor, this will be a huge plus.

9) Am very happy to celebrate this win.  If I am looking for a down side, it would be how we shot lights out throughout the game just to be in a tight contest down the stretch (not a nailbiter but also far from a blowout).  There will be plenty of games where we will not be able to shoot this well and the team will need to find other ways to pull out victories.  Let's hope we can get to this point.    

Until Lindo hit those late 3s, Noel Brown was our 3rd best player according to Game Score rating.

We are a top-3 offense in the A10 but DFL on defense.  Either we figure out a way to play even just below-average defense, or we as a fanbase need to be prepared to have to win every game 86-80.

Last edited by GW0509 (1/03/2023 12:45 pm)