Toro Fouls Out.

Nelson on line for 2.  Miss!!!  Miss again. Nelson is the man in the clutch.

67-61. Woeful foul shooting from a certain guard. Comeon!?

La Salle was 4 for 4 or 5 for 5 from the line in the final seconds, while GW was 1 for 4, that was the difference 

Missing 8 foul shots in the first half is on the players. The inability to use all 4 players on the floor to help with an inbound pass is on the coaches. GW makes inbounding a pass , suspenseful, exciting, and uncertain. JNJ threw one ball away and on the next possession LaSalle hits a three. A five point swing. Battle then repeated this mistake. The Duquesne game win almost disappeared with errant inbound plays. Does this coaching staff need a visit from a tutor.

Well, good comeback, though stalled. Good to see Juice on the court and MJ in the stands, though sadly, Jarvis saw us lose to 3-10 in the league LaSalle.
The FT's missed were disturbing. First half was terrible.
But as pointed out above, the inbounding is still very bad after we almost lost a game with a really big lead
by what seemed like five turnovers in a row. We had a critical turnover, actually 2 of them, on thrown away or picked off inbound attempts to get the ball to Potter and Toro.
Guys need to come to the ball, which we were doing in the end, but still not enough. Actually Arnaldo did the Kevin Larsen thing and prevailed but not as fluidly as Larsen. We shouldn't need to have AT bring up the ball as we usually have a minimum of 3 guards on the court and at times, effectively 4 guards.
Wouldn't have hurt, either, to give Adam Mitola a few 3 point shots when we were really lagging.

Great games for Armel and Maceo.  

Tough game for Toro.

On to the next one!

Pretty much echo the sentiments of Cutis and FQ. The two passes thrown away out of bounds were real momentum killers. We did not do well enough closing out on Spencer - he was a 42% three point shooter going in so he was going to be the one we needed to stop. Also agree with jf that AT brought up the ball too many times in the game, though props to him for handling it pretty well. You would think that after the Duquesne game we would have figured this out, but it remains an issue. For once, the opposition had some issues too at least - La Salle got called for a (somewhat quick) 5 second count at one point, and Armel came up with an intercepted pass that led to free throws at another juncture of the game.

Free throws were killer, and the freshmen accounted for 60% of the misses. Shoutout to Maceo for continuing to bring it offensively, and going 7-7 from the line though! It helped us go up 1 during that 24-5 run in the second half. It's a given that JNJ needs to improve on his FT shooting this offseason as well as a more consistent jump shot. He is great at driving into the lane and finishing (or drawing a foul) but if teams start packing the paint he will need to keep the opposition honest by knocking down jumpers at a decent clip, or if he's fouled he will need to cash in on those drives where he gets fouled at the line. JNJ was a bit sloppy with the turnovers, and one time JC got pissed and subbed Juice in for him. His 5 steals are very much deserving of praise though.

The defensive intensity just wasn't where it was the previous couple of games. Our guards seemed a tad slow staying with their guys on drives to the hoop. We also gambled a bit too much in the post trying to deflect passes away and were burned several times, especially late in the game. AT tried to tap the ball away many times, but the ball still usually got over him to Croswell and at that point he had a clear lane to the hoop for an easy dunk. I think especially later in the game AT should have just stayed underneath. Not saying that would have definitely prevented Croswell from scoring, but at least he would have had to work harder for his points.

We were definitely unlucky though with some of the shots La Salle were making in the game. Every shot of theirs seemed like it was going to rim out and then somehow the basketball fell back in. Croswell was a 50% shooter coming in, and made four straight FTs in crunch time. When we were on offense, the ball did the exact opposite. Armel and AT had several layups rim out, and Potter also had that late 3 that was going down and came out. He was mostly good at the line, but missed two free throws late in the game. Potter only had 3 assists, and the team as a whole had just 6 for the game. Generally, we do have success playing slow, running some clock, and then Armel bailing us out by making a good play late in the shot clock, but I think the team could benefit at times making more passes earlier in the shot clock because if a pass cannot be made late, and Armel can't get to the hoop, we effectively have a wasted possession.

To me, depth also made a huge difference in the game. La Salle had 9 guys play roughly 20 minutes, and their bench outscored ours 37-6. They don't have a big time scorer on the team, but a pretty balanced roster, and got good contributions from everyone. This game definitely exposed how thin our roster is for this year, as well as how many injuries we've had all year. Maceo at least got a few minutes on the bench, but Jamison and Armel have played 40 minutes for two straight games. This team just cannot catch a break with the injuries. Very happy Juice is back and can finish out his senior year at least (although unfortunately he isn't nearly as impactful in JC's scheme) but as soon as he comes back, Shawn is out and in street clothes. Walker has given us some good minutes for stretches and could have spelled Armel some. Hope he makes it back soon because the fatigue is going to hit these guys hard. Also surprised Ace didn't play at all. We don't have a week off for the rest of the year - there are only 3/4 days between each game, and of course the tournament will be consecutive days.   

Overall, I thought the energy at the Smith Center was great, and when the crowd got loud during our big run in the second half, La Salle got a bit flustered offensively which was nice to see. Sadly, the crowd didn't bring the same spirit late in the game when La Salle was shooting free throws as everyone was weirdly quiet.

Unfortunately, a difficult stretch coming up at home against Richmond and then on the road against VCU. The Rams might be on a downward spiral right now, but that still poses a challenge as we can be loose with the ball at times. No league game is ever easy, and hopefully we are able to reset. Our play during conference season has been pretty solid, and it's understandable that some of the young guys are still learning to be consistent. Just hoping we don't get blown out on Wednesday.
 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but it's not hard to decipher whose opinions should be deemed more qualified than others.  Anyone who thinks that Armel and Maceo played great games against La Salle probably didn't even watch the game.  Armel was clearly well scouted, from La Salle using a help defender on practically all of his drives to the Explorers defending the lob pass we've been executing very well over the past month or so.  Armel got to the line as frequently as he did because the ball is in his hands practically every possession.  Armel has had great games this season; this one was a decent one at best given the bar he has set for himself.

As for Maceo, his scoring was instrumental in allowing the team to overcome a big deficit.  However, once we were back in the game, the three shots he subsequently missed were all rushed, contested looks with nobody under the basket for a rebound for which I really can't get on Maceo's case because I feel these guys are instructed to take 3's regardless of whether anyone is in a position to rebound or not.  But, I can get on his case for taking rushed, contested shots.   These were all critical possessions and they might as well have been turnovers.  Unlike the Duquesne game when Maceo relied upon scoring in the paint to ultimately get his three point shooting going, on Saturday, he recorded zero official two point shot attempts.  (He actually tried two and was rewarded with 4 points, all from the foul line.)  He grabbed 1 rebound, handed out zero assists, and reverted back to being a one dimensional player.  Scoring 19 points while doing little else does not a great game make.   

Very much agree with the point that depth played a key role in determining the outcome of this one.  It is exhausting to make up a big deficit and GW clearly looked tired down the stretch of this game.  Combine this with the fact that the Explorers played all 9 of their players a minimum of 19 minutes and what you saw was that La Salle was the more energetic team most of the afternoon.

Did GW come in overconfident as Thomas asks?  Well, after consecutive road wins at Mason and Duquesne, I would normally say that the players were guilty of believing their own press only as we know, they don't really receive much if any press coverage.  The principle though does apply.  Starting to play better on the road, coming home, playing a team who has not played well this year, all adds up to the potential of overconfidence.  Lesson hopefully learned by a young, relatively inexperienced team.  You have got to get up for everyone no matter what their record may be.

One last thing I'll mention that I have not seen so far.  I understand why JC and staff opt not to generally let our players try for offensive rebounds off of free throws.  However, there are situational exceptions that should be made and one such opportunity was ignored on Saturday.  With 47 seconds remaining, JNJ went to the line with GW down by 4 points.  He unfortunately missed both free throws but on the second miss, the La Salle player mistimed his jump and had GW put a player in a position to grab the rebound, he likely would have come up with it.  My question is in this situation, why wouldn't you put guys in a position to grab the rebound?  I suppose down 4, you could have played out the possession and if you held defensively, you'd be down 4 with maybe 20 seconds left in the game.  However, I believe the better strategy would have been to foul immediately after the missed free throw to help extend the game.  Your worst case scenario would be to still be down by 2 possessions (6 points) with around 45 seconds left.  In other words, you want guys lined up so that if they don't get the offensive rebound, they are able to foul right away.

Instead, what happened is we waited 23 seconds before Juice purposefully fouled Ed Croswell.  So to recap, not only did GW not get an offensive rebound that would likely have been theirs, and not only did they not foul with 45 seconds left to increase their chances at a comeback by extending the game, and not only did they not play out the possession to remain down 4, but they wasted 23 seconds before fouling on purpose.  As much as a certain poster would like me to give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt on everything, they unfortunately are not getting it from me on this one.  Just some bad decision making that helped seal the victory for La Salle.

Last edited by Gwmayhem (2/24/2020 10:23 am)

I think on the foul shot that GWMayhem referenced, perhaps it was the one actually JNJ knew it would be a longer rebound and almost snared it himself. Good chance another GW player on the line could have gotten it. Sometimes analytics shouldn't always rule.
  But there was an even bigger problem against LaSalle. Inopportune quick trigger 3s with no one, as usual, under the boards, also didn't help. Yet, seemingly worse is that when we need scoring or in crunch time, with time ticking away, we seem to have all the time in the world to set up an often bad shot (Armel either makes it astoundingly, gets fouled and bailed out, misses the shot or gives up passes to someone for a bad desperation shot.
DMVPirhanha noted this :

dmvpiranha wrote:

 Generally, we do have success playing slow, running some clock, and then Armel bailing us out by making a good play late in the shot clock, but I think the team could benefit at times making more passes earlier in the shot clock because if a pass cannot be made late, and Armel can't get to the hoop, we effectively have a wasted possession.
 

  Down by 18, or need a quick score, we seem to be playing like a team with the shot clock 30 seconds or under at the end of the half. Everyone more or less clears out and we wait...and wait for something to happen. Nevermind if time and score should require something to happen quicker--or at least a better shot. We play like we're holding for one shot at the last second. This happens all the time. Armel dribbles and dribbles. Waits to make his move. Everyone knows what he is going to do.
  True, more often that it seems like it should, it works out for at least FTs (another adventure). But it can be a real killer when it doesn't, particularly in the waning minute(s)/second of a game.