What the flying f#%" was that inbounds "play" out of the timeout? This game was lost by atrocious shooting inside the paint and poor coverage of the three on defense but YIKES!!!! 
The Crown has a limited number of bids. Need to start winning games like this or Vegas will be a fleeting dream.

We've seen this same movie over and over. Caputo absolutely can't win games down the stretch and his players don't help.

Alum1 wrote:

Why you have turnover prone Marshall in at the most critical moment of the game is going to be a great question I hope one of the lads from the Board asks CC after the game.

Why Indeed?!?! When was the last GW had a smart team?
Another game thrown away. Shows the problem with big roster turnover, which GW HAS to play to compete.

GW Alum Abroad wrote:

What the flying f#%" was that inbounds "play" out of the timeout? This game was lost by atrocious shooting inside the paint and poor coverage of the three on defense but YIKES!!!! 
The Crown has a limited number of bids. Need to start winning games like this or Vegas will be a fleeting dream.

Mason was 8-23 from three.  I don’t think our three point defense was the problem. 

Shooting just 50% (16-32) was what did us in. Must havr missed 7 or 8 that we normally make (it’s very strange that we’re 38th in the nation in 2FG%, but it feels like we miss a lot of shots at the rim).

When you look at the stats, it was shooting that failed us.  We did a great job on the boards and had fewer turnovers, but poor 3 point shooting in the first half and poor 2 point conversion in the second did us in.

I hope this team can regain their confidence because they are so close.

moneybox wrote:

Talk about roster turnover. Mason has an almost completely new team from last year. Again, Caputo is a fine recruiter but a poor Xs and Os coach. Can't any of our 12 assistant coaches do anything to help?

The takeaway from Mason’s success is Tony has his team covet the basketball. Rarely do you see them try the risky pass or jump with nowhere to go with the ball.

We have the talent to compete with anybody in the A10 this year but the mental mistakes are going to continue to hold us back.

Many opportunities to win but we couldn't bother to execute. Embarrassing.

moneybox wrote:

Talk about roster turnover. Mason has an almost completely new team from last year. Again, Caputo is a fine recruiter but a poor Xs and Os coach. Can't any of our 12 assistant coaches do anything to help?

I know this team has come up short in a few games, but can you really call him “a poor Xs and Os coach” when we literally have the most efficient offense in the history of the A10?  I don’t think you can be bad at Xs and Os and have an offense this good. 

Defense, though, is disappointing this year.  Too bad we can’t combine past year’s defense with this year’s offense.

Free Quebec wrote:

moneybox wrote:

Talk about roster turnover. Mason has an almost completely new team from last year. Again, Caputo is a fine recruiter but a poor Xs and Os coach. Can't any of our 12 assistant coaches do anything to help?

I know this team has come up short in a few games, but can you really call him “a poor Xs and Os coach” when we literally have the most efficient offense in the history of the A10? I don’t think you can be bad at Xs and Os and have an offense this good.

Defense, though, is disappointing this year. Too bad we can’t combine past year’s defense with this year’s offense.

He seems to be OK at coaching in practice (getting the team ready for games), but his in game coaching has been very bad, imho. As Tennessee Colonial notes, I can't remember the last time we won a close game because of effective timeouts, substitutions, and drawn up plays. All too often, we get what we got the last minute of tonight's game. At this point, it seems to be a pattern, not luck or poor execution. Why not run a play at the end of tonight's game that has been practiced in practice and the players therefore know what to do? That would at least give them a chance to get a shot off...

I had a dream that one day a CC-led GW team could maintain their composure against a Skinn-led GMU team...

Jokes aside, the game was just about as even as you can get. Same number of made field goals, same number of made threes. We knew going in that Mason would have the edge in FTs (not to mention that they were at home), and that was the difference in the game since no one outside of Slim on the team gets to the line particularly often. From a math perspective, GW had to have the advantage shooting from the field, and they simply did not do enough there - especially from 2 as FQ mentioned. Too many missed layups. For a team so offensively potent, it feels like there's been way too many stretches where GW just forgets how to make layups. The Delaware game, first half against Davidson, tonight. Guys don't maintain their composure and cannot execute. When things spiral, they really spiral.

Seeing just 12 turnovers in the box score won't look bad on the surface, but nine of those came in the second half which is quite bad. FTs weren't a problem overall tonight, but I knew the second both CJ and Slim split their FTs late that GW was going to come out on the wrong side of things. The fact Slim attempted just 2 FTs all game was shocking. That's the fewest he's attempted in a game all season.

I don't even know where this team would be without Slim, so I try to avoid critiquing him. However, he went just 3/7 from the field after beginning the game 5/6. That's not good enough given Mason's frontline. I liked off a called timeout late he went up and dunked the ball. Honestly, I'd like to see him be more aggressive like that because the layup attempts can get him in trouble. Additionally, he can be prone to coughing the ball up or making bad decisions when teams bring more pressure/help his way and that has been exposed a lot lately.

Of course, GW can't afford for CJ/Tre/Jean to go a combined 2/19 from the field and expect to win. CJ literally had a wide open layup in transition at one point but went too fast and botched it. Still, he did other things well defensively and moved the ball effectively on offense. Tre and Jean have to impact the game in other areas when they aren't scoring.

The defense was better for stretches tonight but I still felt GMU had no trouble executing their offense and making GW guard them for nearly 30 seconds each time. I just don't know if this team will ever get to the point where they can survive an off shooting night from so many players when the defense can't pick up the slack. Bubu's presence defensively was missed tonight and hopefully he gets back soon.

Regarding the Woo Marshall play throwing it out of bounds, honestly the play that upset me more was the one right after that where GW let Mincy wide open for an easy layup. It may have not made a difference in the result, but sums up the issues with the team with guys not on the same page. You can go back to the end of the Murray State game or the Davidson breakaway play late and get the same feeling. The sad part is that GW had way more roster continuity than Mason did. You could not tell that tonight and Skinn deserves a lot of credit for getting GMU to that point.

I thought Garrett had a good game, and despite that inbounds play I thought Woo was a positive contributor. I didn't hate the double-big lineup either, but I wish Luke would stop shooting threes.

Things don't get any easier coming up. Richmond will be looking for revenge on Saturday, and the following game at SLU feels like a near impossible ask for the team.

Thanks LSF for the kind comment earlier. GW's luck rating after the game is now down to 359th, getting that much closer to bottom five in the country.
 

It's probably never a good idea to place so much emphasis on any single regular season game, let alone one that's being played in mid-January.  Despite my own warning, I suppose I'm willing to take this risk.

What's been somewhat unique in my mind about this team and this season is being this perplexed so late in the season.  By now, we've historically had a feel for what a GW team can accomplish.  Is the goal to stay out of the pillow fight?  Earn a double bye?  Finish above .500 in the conference? By mid-January, more often than not, we've had that answer.  

What we know about this team compared to other CC coached GW teams is that there is greater depth, a more challenging OOC schedule, and a presumed competitive advantage in the number of key contributors who returned from last year's team.  This helps explain why pre-season forecasts generally had GW finishing between 3rd and 5th place in the conference.  A team with an upside of 12-1 in the OOC finished 9-4, not disastrous but not without some disappointment either.  Within the conference, the team lost a winnable game at Dayton and more or less crapped the bed at home against Davidson.  

For weeks, I've eyed the George Mason game as a litmus test.  Last year's team went 0-3 against Mason, two nailbiters followed by being bounced from the conference tournament in a convincing manner.  Mason turned over practically that entire team but has still managed to lose one contest all season.  Winning at Mason was always going to seem less daunting than winning at Dayton regardless of the talent levels of each team.  Yesterday's game was more than a chance to get back on the winning track against Mason.  It was also somewhat of a referendum on whether GW gets to sit at the SLU/VCU/Dayton?Geo. Mason table or if it's more appropriate for them to sit along with SJU, Richmond and Davidson.

Sadly, this question was answered pretty defiantly in my mind.  Sure, the game was close, and we can talk all day long how our talent level is as good as GM's or any A10 school's talent for that matter.  Nevertheless, what's really separating the men from the boys this year is our defense, and that could not have been more on display than by watching how Mason defended us.  They didn't try to force us into generating turnovers though the 9 we committed in the second half were often self-inflicted.  They just played hard-nosed defense energetically and enthusiastically.  By contrast, we resembled those old Loyola Marymount teams at times, seemingly willing to give up a basket if that means running up the court and taking a quick shot on offense.  The problem is that many of those quick shots weren't good shots, resulting in 3 point deficits turning into 7 point deficits very quickly.

As solid a defender as Slim is, he was being asked to do the near-impossible yesterday.  Riley Allenspach is a talented big man who has scored at least 16 points in seven of his past nine games.  He knows what to do in the low post and Slim was asked to stop him 3-5 feet from the basket without any help defense.  There are not a lot of college basketball players whose odds I would like under these circumstances.  And still, other Patriots were free to roam the baseline without any real pushback from GW's defense.

It's great to have an efficient offense but not at the expense of playing soft defense.  On the other side, I saw Mason players working incredibly hard on defense, willing their way to crucial stops when they were needed.

The botched inbounds pass from Wu to Tre and the subsequent breakaway by GM to put the game away were both extremely unfortunate.  But to me, they fall in comparison to a far more serious issue.  It's fun to talk about how many of our guys are averaging in double figures and similar type stats. But as we are seeing, it doesn't necessarily win you any games.

Offense is fun, Defense is work. If this team is serious about accomplishing its goals, it's time to get to work.