What in the holy hell?!?

Walker gets a ticky tack foul on a rebound, with barely any contact when we came up with a loose ball, then on next rebound, their guy tosses Battle to the ground with no call. 

Two tough ones to help stymie an almost miracle comeback.

Disappointing loss.  Going to happy when we don’t make shots (and the other team makes a lucky number of them).  More offensive talent will help mitigate these kinds of games.

Someone in the A10 has to make Fordham happy. And we were very gracious about it.  Boy, did they stink it up tonight.

Glad o play Dayton and VCU on the road this year

Last edited by FredD (1/23/2020 7:18 am)

Overall going to take a glass half full approach despite the result. The number of good looks we had on offense that rimmed out was outrageous. Credit Fordham for playing great defense - I was skeptical by their KenPom efficiency, but they are legitimately great on that side of the ball. They gave us limited to no room offensively, and we got called for several push-offs which were good calls. Their zone made it tough to drive to the hoop, and Armel often found two defenders meeting him at the hoop making it difficult to finish. Agree with FQ that more shooters would have changed the result of the game. Execution could have definitely been better on some plays, but we had enough good looks to win. The shots just refused to fall. Surprised Adam got no run as our third best three point shooter if only for a bit. Also Mezie didn't play for some reason. Nice to see AT back.

Defensively, it was pretty much the same. The number of really deep threes and tough midrange shots Fordham made was ridiculous. We could probably have hugged Cobb (and their guards) a bit more from deep given how well they were knocking down shots if anything. Fordham seemed really reluctant to take any shot near the rim for some reason. Every time they drove to the hoop they pump faked and passed it back out. I really liked our mayhem towards the end of the game which helped us bridge the gap at the end. Just came up a shot short from sending it to overtime despite our really poor shooting.

If we are looking at improvement, we lost to them by 11 at Rose Hill last year. Also, we continue the streak of losing by exactly five points in our conference losses. Taking GW will be easy money against VCU and Dayton as they will be heavy favorites! Kidding of course.

Disagree with taking a timeout with 20 seconds left. A relatively open three from the corner for Jamison is a shot I'd definitely want us to take unless an easy layup is available. Considering he just made the same shot just seconds before, I had no problem with that. Taking a timeout would have allowed Fordham to prepare for not only taking away a good shot on our possession, but breaking the press when they got the ball back.

Overall, I think who we lost to hurt more than our actual performance (and after we lost to Morgan State earlier this year, this seems less bad in my book). There is still not quite enough yet offensively for these kinds of performances to be avoided from time to time, and many of our key guys are still freshmen. Hoping to see more shots fall against St. Joe's in a few days.

Player Breakdown:
Jamison - a really rough shooting day, but most of his looks as mentioned were good ones that just rimmed out. Would have liked him to get to the line. Wasn't as active on the boards, but had a memorable intercepted pass on defense. Don't ever recall him getting into the passing lane like that before which is steps in the right direction.

Chase - he converted on some nice buckets down low, and did well to come up with some loose balls. However, the number of passes that slipped out of his hands was frustrating, and there were some additional 50-50 balls where he just didn't really get on the floor for.

JNJ - nice to see him show progress with dishing out assists and limiting his turnovers. Just 1 turnover in the past two games combined which definitely shows progress. He has actually outperformed Armel in assist to turnover rate the past couple games, and I'm starting to feel a lot more comfortable with him making decisions offensively. Bodes well for the future. Had a really impressive block at the rim, and overall liked his defensive energy (many fouls trying to get into the passing lane, but the idea was right and he nearly came up with a couple of them). I believe there was one play off a missed Armel free throw where he was called for a foul that I didn't see anything. We had come down with an offensive board late in the game. His room for improvement comes as a shooter. He has improved from deep over the course of the season, but it would be nice to see his efficiency cross 40% from the field.

Armel - a rough past couple games in terms of passing the ball, and he's been a bit too error prone of late with the ball in his hands. The one thing I would have liked to see him do more of tonight was shooting the three (and I can't believe I'm saying that). So far in conference play, Potter is 3-6 from deep. He is showing an improved stroke, and made his lone attempt today. Fordham was respecting his drives to the hoop, so he could have forced them to play more on him had he pulled the trigger from deep a bit more, but Armel overall seems hesitant to shoot threes (maybe based off his past performances). His much improved free throw shooting has been awesome to see. Armel has quietly been very active on the boards of late as well - 16 in the past three games, including leading the team in that category tonight (something I didn't expect to see). Overall, he still did enough to give us a chance to win.

Maceo - perhaps the most encouraging thing to come out of the game was his defense. He still had moments where he gave up points (the and one play for Perry early in the second half comes to mind) but he has actually been a great fit to the mayhem scheme. Came up with four steals today, and overall this may have been his best ever defensive performance. A sign of growth - earlier in the season he would turn the ball over, or get no points after getting out in transition off a turnover - today he made a nice eurostep to get the ball in the basket. Unfortunately, a rough day at the office in the shooting department overall. Would have liked a few shots slashing to the hoop, but again Fordham made it tough to get inside and credit to them. Thought his energy was a big boost today overall.

Amir - would have actually liked to see him out there more today. This seemed more like an Amir game than Armel given Fordham's zone. Had a really nice scoop shot, and his off ball cut to the hoop for a dunk was cool. As long as he's not taking threes, he does a good job of filling the stat sheet. The only real knock is I somewhat expected him to be a go-to guy once healthy this year, but hasn't really had a big impact scoring since the Bonaventure contest.

AT - gave us some much-needed rebounding and looked pretty good overall in his return. Would like to see him refind his old free throw shooting, but overall his return will give us some much needed depth in the frontcourt.

Ace - you can guarantee the one bucket a game from him. He now has five straight games with two points. Gave us his usual good energy.

Shawn - he doesn't usually get that much playing time, but I've always been really impressed with his composure when he does play. JC tends to get him out there late in games as one of the big mayhem guys and he definitely had an impact doing that, which shows JC's strong trust in him. His pass to Jamison off his own steal showed really good vision.

Next up is another winnable game against St. Joe's. Hoping for a better shooting performance Saturday!
 

From Hatchet game article: “ Head coach Jamion Christian declined to comment through an athletic department spokesperson.”

No question we were not very good last night but we got plenty of open looks. The ball just didn't go in. Our defense was fine. Not worried about Cobb scoring in the slightest. We gave up 59 points and lost because we couldn't score not because we didn't guard. The only positive of the evening was that the players continued to fight right up until the end despite the fact they had every reason to give into the frustration of the evening. 

As I've said before here, if we want to be better consistently we are going to need more talent. It's going to take time for the roster to change over.

I sometimes wonder if Rose Hill isn't a more difficult gym to shoot a basketball in because of the lighting and the way it's configured.  During the first half, everytime we passed the ball over to the far wing I jumped a little because I couldn't see our player over there in the corner, and I thought we were throwing it out of bounds. (I was watching the game on ESPN Plus.) 

I've been to several games there.  I like the gym, but it's tiny, and those high windows on the south side of the gym always throws the lighting off in some way, imo.  Anyhoo... 

Last edited by Sons of Liberty (1/23/2020 12:48 pm)

A shame.   If GW completed an improbable comeback from down 9 in the last minute because of 2 made 3s by a  freshman a few seconds apart in the final moments of the game, it would have made Battle an instant GW legend