It might be time to set our sights a bit higher than "Operation No Wednesday."  Tonight, a return game against Duquesne who has split its last 8 conference games which includes a pair of wins over Fordham and a victory over La Salle during this span.  Pull off an upset and we'll stand one game behind three schools who are tied for 6th-8th place.  Those three would be Davidson who we own a head-to-head tiebreaker with, St. Louis who owns one on us but who we played very tough on the road, and VCU who really can't get Marcus Evans back fast enough.

In a game where VCU had everything to gain, a win against the 5th ranked team in the nation, on its own floor, to put itself back into serious bubble consideration, the Rams lost largely because it could only make 11 of its first 20 free throws.  The one facet of the game that mighty Dayton has zero control of and that's where VCU blew it.  They suddenly look beatable, even on their court.    Saying a team looks beatable isn't to suggest that GW should win that upcoming game.  But, if GW shows up ready to play and is capable of withstanding havoc (a big "if" I realize), this one is not out of the question.

In fact, this season, there has been Dayton and then Rhody and Richmond.  After that, very little has the right to shock anyone.  Shocked that Davidson followed up a 29 point win at St. Bonaventure with a loss to previously winless in the conference St. Joe's, who played without Ryan Daly?  Well, the Hawks did play the Cats to overtime before losing the first meeting.  Shocked that UMASS knocked off St. Louis last night?  Well, the Minutemen did play the Bills to overtime before losing the first meeting.

UMASS lost by 24 points to your GW Colonials earlier this year.  Only four A10 games this season have resulted in larger road victories, and each was far more one-sided on paper than GW-UMASS with the exception of the aforementioned Davidson win at Olean.  Unfortunately, one of those contests was at the Smith Center against URI but why dwell on that again?  (The others were Dayton and Richmond wins at La Salle.  You can now admit that you had either Fordham or St. joe's pegged for one of those blowout home losses, if not both.)

Sure, I can understand the mentality which suggests that if we can just win home games against La Salle and Fordham, that should be enough to avoid Wednesday, particularly with a tiebreaker over Mason.  But in this year's A10, why stop there?  Richmond lost to St. Louis who lost to UMASS.  VCU got wiped off the court by Richmond.  Duquesne doesn't have a home court, merely a home city.    Dayton?  OK, I am not feeling great about that one.  Besides, with a realistic shot of landing in the 8/9 game, a win there will likely have us matched up against Dayton again, so we don't want to show our hand too much.

Think that was a joke?  The last team to go undefeated in A10 play was the 2005-06 GW Colonials who proceeded to lose it's first A10 tournament game.  Before that, it was Jameer Sr. and St. Joe's who managed to retain a #1 seed despite their quarterfinal.  Temple went undefeated twice.  One time, they lost in the semis to West Virginia on West Virginia's home court.  (Gale Catlett really tried to rule the conference back then.)  The other time, they won the conference tournament but it should be noted how rare this is.  The last time the regular season winner also won the conference tournament was St. Louis in 2013.  Before that, you'd have to go back to the 1992-95 UMASS teams.

All of this is to say that Dayton will be playing for a national seed and therefore has everything to play for is a load of crap.  If Dayton falls off the 1 line to the 2, or even off the 2 line to the 3, they will be just fine.  What they will and should be craving at Barclays is a quick return home to rest.  Ask Tom Izzo how he feels about conference tounaments (though don't ask him this year when his team will have far more of a  need to play well than most years).

So, let's go get the 6 or 7 seed but if that proves unattainable, let's win the 8/9 game to get a shot at Dayton.  Not on their senior day, but when it counts the most...at least to GW.

I'm all for it Gwmayhem. However, I think if we can win those two games we are then playing with House money this season. Recall that we were picked to place 12th pre-season by the coaches. A top 8-9 finish would be huge given expectations, a new coach and the roster overhaul which has occurred. Whatever happens after that is more than could reasonably have been expected for this season and puts the trajectory of this program for the first time in four years heading upward. But I hope you are right that we can go higher.

If we really want to set our sights high, we're in the best position in years to steal a bid in the conference tourney. With all the threes we take, if we get real, real hot for a few games in Brooklyn, anything can happen.

I love the enthusiasm, but let's not get carried away. We need all the help we can get.  Mason and Davidson played terrible against us. Plus, we got an advantage Saturday against Mason because of the injury to Wilson. I will feel the enthusiasm if we beat Duquesne tonight. And to do that will need to play like we did in the second half Saturday and Duquesne will have to struggle like Mason and Davidson did against us. We should be pleased if we lose by less than 10 tonight. But being a GW fan means there is always hope... too much suffering. 

GW73 wrote:

I love the enthusiasm, but let's not get carried away. We need all the help we can get.  Mason and Davidson played terrible against us. Plus, we got an advantage Saturday against Mason because of the injury to Wilson. I will feel the enthusiasm if we beat Duquesne tonight. And to do that will need to play like we did in the second half Saturday and Duquesne will have to struggle like Mason and Davidson did against us. We should be pleased if we lose by less than 10 tonight. But being a GW fan means there is always hope... too much suffering. 

Davidson did not play terrible against us at all.  They had only like 6 turnovers in 60 minutes of basketball.  Davidson relies heavily on Grady and JAG to make plays and we did a great job making those guys take tough shots, especially late, and we made some incredible offensive plays.

Mason matches up poorly with us because they are the worst three point shooting team in the league, are not a very good passing team, and are a poor defensive team.  There’s a reason they are just 3-10 in the A10 (and their two best wins, VCU and Nebraska, were games where they were making threes, which they don’t normally do).

I don’t know if you are feeling enthusiasm now, but I do thinks you could credibly day Duq played poorly last night.  They got up early with ease and then got a little sloppy/lazy, we got confident and Duquesne never turned it back on, except in the last two minutes when it was too late.

But real reason for optimism isn’t the results themselves, it’s the way we compete.  It’s night and day vs the beginning of the year and vs last night.  The team seems to play very focused and smart right now, and when we compete for 40 minutes, we can hang in games. 

As a side note, last night was our first top 100 road win since Lonergan was the coach.