Free Quebec wrote:

Tennessee Colonial wrote:

19 turnovers for us and 5 for them. 70-52. Hmmmm. Oh well. 

6 turnovers in 30 minutes at this paint is pretty impressive.  Honestly, hats off to McNeese.  Sometimes you run into a desperate team who plays basically a perfect game.  Gonna be frustrating watching them play worse the other games in this tourney.

Sooo true

No matter what happens, I’m proud the good guys have fought back. Teams from previous years would have folded. If we had made our layups, this would be a game.

Deeply disappointing for numerous reasons, including lackadaisical play for much of the game.
 But impressive that we didn't give up to get closer at the end.

Pretty easy to figure out why we lost the game tonight: turnovers.

Need to clean those up if we want to bring the ball up against A10 competition.

Seems like we’ll be able to get back to playing our game the next two days.

moneybox wrote:

Why did Castro sit out so much this game? No foul trouble. Hunger can't do what he does on the court.

Guessing it’s because their backup center had 9 offensive rebounds against him.

Hunger was in when we made our run so I’m sure CC didn’t want to disrupt that flow.

On the turnovers, obviously we need to be better - but we also have to give some credit to McNeese.  They were extremely quick and accurate with their hands and very quick in the passing lanes. I’m just as disappointed that we didn’t force more turnovers as I am in how many we coughed up.

In the 1980's, Georgetown basketball embraced the phrase, "Hoya Paranoia."  I believe this had multiple interpretations.  To John Thompson, it meant that his team was always the hunted, that everyone was ready to put their best effort forward to try to upset his mighty team.  It also meant a certain level of toughness, personified by power forward Michael Graham who played alongside Patrick Ewing.

To detractors of the program, it also meant that the refs are not going to call fouls all game long.  This gave the best Thompson teams license to play an overaggressive style of defense.  If the refs were not going to slow the game down by calling everything, this meant Georgetown would be able to get away with a lot on the defensive end.  Smartly, they took advantage and developed a highly successful program.

This is how I felt about our game with McNeese.  To be sure, the refs called plenty of fouls on the Cowboys, as evidenced by GW being in the bonus early into both halves.  Nevertheless, McNeese was relentless in their effort to force turnovers.  For the most part, they either pulled it off or they committed a foul.    Yet because of the way the game was officiated, many of these fouls went uncalled.  Which was both a shame and at the same time, to be expected.

There were other factors as well.  When you give a team as many extra possessions as GW afforded McNeese, between turnovers and offensive rebounds, it was astounding that GW even had a chance to win or force overtime at the end.  GW simply did not match McNeese's energy or toughness until they came back late in the game.  By then, it was a little too much to overcome.  Simply put, this team will need to show more grit when the situation calls for it.  A good learning experience.

I wish Caputo acted faster to adjust when things are clearly going south. The incredible amount of sloppy plays and turnovers in the 1st half might have argued for slowing things down a bit and not engaging McNeese in the “off to the races” sprint that they were clearly winning. That may have also helped get our big guys more involved amd helped on the offensive boards too. But what do I.know…….

MVCOLONIAL wrote:

500 people at the game. How do they make money? Are our expenses paid or is it our dime?
Big disappointment.

While there are legitimate businesses in the Caymans, its main industry is "financial services", the kind of financial services where actually making money is not a primary concern. Just let people enjoy the nice weather and good diving and try not to think about the dollars and cents part.