John Thompson and his Georgetown powerhouse teams didn’t seem to have problems in their Big East games after perennially playing OOC cupcake opponents save for typically 1 game against a big-time opponent. GW may not beat Fordham or anyone else on their A10 schedule but it won’t be because of complacency or their schedule.

Poog wrote:

John Thompson and his Georgetown powerhouse teams didn’t seem to have problems in their Big East games after perennially playing OOC cupcake opponents save for typically 1 game against a big-time opponent. GW may not beat Fordham or anyone else on their A10 schedule but it won’t be because of complacency or their schedule.

Poog, you may be ignoring the cumulative effect of playing so many easy games in a row.  At least 4, 5 if you were to count Navy, which we won't because this game was anything but easy.  If my memory is correct, Big John used to schedule the St. Leo's of the world fairly early on, as in November.  Even if some cupcakes were scheduled in December, the strong likelihood is that he would not schedule four ridiculously easy games in a row immediately before the start of the Big East season.  This is why I have some trepidation over the Fordham game where I otherwise might not...after a steady diet of Coppin, Bowie, Alcorn and UMES, taking the floor against Fordham may appear like playing a different sport.

jf wrote:

Assuming we hold a lead, we might as well give the end of the bench some experience and
give the walkons a decent run. Would like to see if Luke Cronin can use his height to advantage in the frontcourt.
    Not sure what this game does for us or how it makes sense, otherwise. Our schedule is weak enough as it is.

First, I can't imagine what you really meant by what you said was that you hope the scholarship players get some experience if we hold a lead.  A big lead is what's clearly implied given the Division 2 opponent and I can't recall an instance where 8th-12th type scholarship players did not receive more minutes than usual during a blowout 

Second, you specifically referred to the walk-ons getting a decent run.  That was really what my remark was referring to.  I suppose we can argue over what constitutes a decent run but as Rising suggests, the reality is this will practically never be more than say 5 minutes in a game and more likely closer to 2.  It would be one thing if we were playing 9-11 guys regularly but given the fact that we have several quality scholarship players who have not played very much, to me, it's far more important that they receive any excess minutes.  And that was my sole point.
 

Glad the team could have an easy one during finals.

Still need to clean up the bad passes.

We're on to Alcorn State.

Good to see so many different players playing well, good to see the team build and hold a 30 point lead, until the last 5 minutes

would rather see guys who work hard all year a rare extended chance on the court, in a game like this, then turning a 30 point lead to 40 points, which we could have easily done.





 

Last edited by The Dude (12/12/2023 11:02 pm)

MVCOLONIAL wrote:

We are 9 and 2 yet according to ESPN there were only 1200 people at the game. Why is that? Smith Center only seats 5000, we should be able to pack it with rabid fans

The problem is not on the student side.  It's on the ticket-buying side.

Glad to see the deep bench get lots of minutes and make some shots. Hope the whole team works on transition defense before A10 play.

https://gwradio.com/ten-players-score-as-mens-basketball-cruises-to-88-73-win-over-bowie-state/

Asked Caputo postgame about scheduling a D2 game and he had a pretty interesting response:

“We've been told by the powers that be, you know, people on the NCAA Tournament selection committee. I was talking to a high major head coach yesterday, two days ago, who’s playing a D2 this week. You do your best with your schedule and then to give yourself some flexibility, it's like playing another buy game but obviously from a cost standpoint it doesn't cost what it would cost to buy a division 1 team. And quite a number of people in our league are doing it actually. Because I think everybody's basically been told, ‘Hey, instead of playing a really hard game or going on the road—‘ I think that's the other side of it. If you play a home and home, even if it's a decent opponent, you think that we should be able to beat them in our place, hopefully, then going on the road. It's actually better probably than going on the road. I don’t understand— I don't think the NET accounts for [D2 schools] at all. So I guess that's fine, right? It doesn't really affect it. None of those metrics go into it against Division 2 or non-division 1 opponent. It bothers me a little bit because— What bothers me is like, I don't want to be thinking about the NET when you're trying to think about how to get guys playing time. Things like that.” 

Does that come into your mind? 

“Not right now. We're not quite there yet. I joked with the guys when we were playing Stonehill and we're up 40 and they were like ‘hey, do we want to go with the walk-ons?’ I’m like ‘how about the NET? What’s the NET say about that?’ But it’s the right thing to do, but it's— it is what it is.”

Last edited by gwstudent2024 (12/13/2023 11:47 am)

The Ross-Man is correct; don't call into question why people won't come out to watch GW play Bowie State.  Or for that matter, each of our OOC home opponents.  (I think Hofstra could have drawn a better crowd had it been held on a weekend.  Perhaps Navy as well.)  If you think this is a problem now, wait until the A10 games start and we're still drawing under 3,000 for most games. 

I'll repeat what I've said before: GW has the second largest alumni among all DMV schools who still live in the DC Metro area.  More than Mason.  More than Georgetown.  Only College Park has more.  And yet, what do we do to try to attract alums to attend games?  Sure, an active alum may see a promotion for an alumni night but what if you're not active?  You could mail to these folks, you could email to these folks, you can even advertise on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn to these folks.   I guarantee that if you reached 50,000 people this way, at least 500 who have not been to a game since they were students would attend.  Most will bring guest so now, attendance has grown by at least 1,000.  I suspect many would then attend future games.

But, not a whole lot gets done to coax the alumni in the area to attend games.  And that's pretty much why the building is almost always less than half full.
 

I absolutely agree that this is a marketing problem. We have an incredible product - high level competitive live sports in a great stadium for $10/cheap ticket.

This is the same price point as American. $15 cheaper than Howard. $10 cheaper than Georgetown. $10 less than UMD. And like $8 less than going to see a movie.

Especially now that we are having a touch of success - GW is some of the best bang-for-your-buck entertainment in the entire city. I tell people about the price point all the time and among people with even the mildest interest in sports, the response is universally - wow, I didn’t know that, I should check that out.