Very much agree with FQ  on the Divest Now protest.  Nothing wrong with the message or for that matter, the right of students to protest.  However, there is a time and place for everything and clearly, becoming a distraction in the middle of a game was unfair.  Had the demonstration taken place during the halftime Student Dem/Rep game and then ended, this would have been fine. Not that Swae Lee wasn't a distraction in his own way but at least most everyone seemed to have a lot of fun with that.

As for the game, the free throws were an obvious source of blame but so were some other factors.  Richmond scored 22 points off of turnovers, a much higher total than GW has recently been surrendering.  Like the poor free throw shooting, this speaks to fatigue as the high mileage attributed to Armel, Jamison, Maceo, and Jameer is cumulatively adding up.  The counterargument to this is that these are young men who would play pickup basketball all day long if they could.  However, this doesn't hold up because the circumstances are so different.    Playing every 3 or 4 days, under a high-pressure environment, where just a handful of miscues can separate winning from losing, creates an enormous strain both physically and mentally.  JC wants to win as much as anyone and he clearly believes that his best players, even when worn down, give GW a better chance than going deeper into the bench for extended minutes.  Am not saying he is wrong about this in general but at least for one game, last night, it was evident to all how exhausted our players looked.

The Spiders were more aggressive from 3 than in the first meeting and much of this was our own doing.  Simply put, you can't attempt a double team that will result in Richmond rotating the ball along the perrimeter so that Nick Sherod gets a wide open look from 3.  Sherod had 15 points on 3-6 shooting from 3 in 28 minutes.  Like I posted yesterday, he's likely the most underrated player in the conference.  Golden's scoring was better held in check than the first meeting but he still took advantage of baseline moves even if it was to pass the ball (where he had 8 assists).  Chase had some solid defensive stops last night (including 4 blocks).  He absolutely has real potential to become  a force for this team and I suppose that asking him to spend 30 minutes on Golden is going to be by definition,  a tough assignment.  It was obviously Richmond's game plan on defense to have Golden double-team up high and we counteracted this beautifully at first by making them pay by finding Chase down low.  Credit to Richmond for eventually providing great help defense on this.

Richmond always seem to have diminutive guards who streak up and down the court and this year is no exception with Gilyard and Francis.  Francis is a tough kid who can flat out score.  His presence, along with Sherod returning healthy from last year's season-ending injury, makes this Richmond team like night and day compared to last year.  And Gilyard is insanely under control running the show.  He had an off game last night with Golden doing most of the distributing and yet still managed to grab 5 rebounds and pick up 3 steals.  That's a great example of really helping your team when your shots are not falling and the ball isn't in your hands as much as usual.

Glad we were competitive.  A few more made free throws and/or defensive stops and this could easily have resulted in a win.  Another learning experience for a young team learning to play together.
 

 

GWRising wrote:

Put me firmly in the category of those who think the divestment protest was the wrong time and the wrong place. I'm not going to get into the politics of  the underlying issues other than to say these same students would be outraged if someone came into one of their social activities and disrupted it with a protest in favor of fossil fuels. Then they'd be asking for therapy dogs and counseling. All we do is complain about it here.

lol a protest in favor of fossil fuels? Did I really just read that?

I'm wit porter71...the most irking part of it is that they all left after the protest. It really summed up GW in a nutshell.

I am for: more free throws made, fossil fuels, no protests during games, and more wins.

Last edited by Mike K (2/27/2020 6:31 pm)

Wait!  We are upset because students don't attend sports events. Really? Maybe if we were winning and games were more fun for students they would show up.   Complaining about students not coming to games is a slippery slope. The bottom is Nick Saban complaining when Alabama students don't fill stadium for game against Louisiana-Monroe. 

The game itself seemed to go by fairly quickly, especially in the first half. The number of reviews during the game was truly annoying and slowed things down at times, although I can't complain too much as we got to shoot technical FTs twice in the game. Interestingly enough, despite being terrible from the line all game, we went 4-4 on technical foul shots. I don't believe we are even that bad of a FT shooting team, we were 5th in the conference at a decent 74% earlier in conference play, so I think you have to attribute a good chunk of it to fatigue, especially when they are shot in crunch time. Armel looked completely winded with his hands on his hips. I believe he got a few seconds of breather during the game, but that didn't make too much of a difference. This is where having Amir and Shawn would help. I'm guessing Amir isn't returning the rest of the season, but is there any update on Shawn's status? He has been very good for 5-10 minutes a game and just giving Armel a few minutes break during the game will be just as impactful. Depth as others have mentioned have been a big factor in a number of our losses.

The game itself wasn't too engaging until the last few minutes (again, I think the number of reviews really ruined the flow). Yes, the number of missed free throws down the stretch were tough to see (we started the game 2-5 from the line, and JNJ was the only one who was 2-2 at that point - after the La Salle game, that was really funny but credit him for clearly working on them during the past few days - far fewer hit the back rim), but like the last game you can point to some small plays from earlier in the second half where Chase missed a dunk and that was followed up by a missed Maceo layup. One of our few chances in transition where JNJ tried to pass it to Armel ended up being intercepted by Gilyard and Richmond ended up benefiting from that. Credit Richmond for really being sound with the ball (we had just 2 steals), and I think their Princeton offense which spaced things out made it tough for us to do any kind of mayhem in the game. There were periods where I thought their team was truly unguardable, and I think Golden deserves a lot of credit for that. His shot was off, but his ability to find guys along the perimeter off a double team reminded me a lot of the KevLar days, and when you have guys like Francis and Sherod dotting the perimeter, it becomes very hard to stop. Especially for the fatigued guys, rotating over becomes much harder. We did do a very good job down the stretch though defensively, and I think at times Richmond lost a bit of focus. They weren't very good with clock management, and that allowed us to nearly steal this one.

As mentioned by others, Chase (and also Jamison) had some really nice moments defensively that will hopefully be a sign of good things moving forward. I continue to see Chase making his threes at shootaround, and I really hope at some point the coaching staff lets him take a chance. At the 5 position, it will really help open up our offense even more. Even on a team with limited talent, we need to find that third option from deep in JC's scheme. Chase by no means is going to be a 40% shooter from deep (or a third option), but his stroke looked pretty reliable to me in practice and I think it would open a lot of things underneath for guards to cut down low. Chase also had a really nice pass to Jamison earlier in the game. JNJ (who has a really high arc on his shots) has improved but is still inconsistent. Same goes for Shawn. Juice doesn't strike me as that third option, but he is still working his way back (I believe JC's offense has made Juice less impactful in the energy category, since he is spending a lot more time behind the arc instead of down low where he can grab some rebounds and finish). Overall, a perfectly good showing against a strong team.

It seemed like the Divest Now protest and Swae Lee (who looked much better on his free throws than our team did in the media timeout) took much of the headlines in this one. I believe two of Armel's siblings are associates at Ear Drummer Records in Atlanta (they are under Interscope), and Rae Sremmurd is one of the biggest artists under this label (Swae Lee is one half of the group Rae Sremmurd along with his brother - which is Ear Drummers backwards). Lee was in town as he had a concert at Capital One Arena on Thursday (with Post Malone - the two artists had the second biggest song in the country last year with the song "Sunflower", which was included in the last Spiderman movie), but I believe that one of Armel's brothers who works for the label (as well as his mom) were in attendance so Swae Lee came to the GW game because of that connection. It wasn't like he randomly decided to watch GW play over the Wizards or something who I believe won at home against the Nets on Wednesday. Anyways, it was probably free publicity for the school and I'm sure GW has taken full advantage of it.

This all probably added even more pressure on Armel to show out on Wednesday, and to his credit he did for the most part (minus the 11 turnovers). I'm sure he would have liked the last 10-20 seconds of the game back, where he drove a bit too much past the three point line and probably should have stayed along the perimeter - at least he could have probably thrown up a shot if he felt contact was coming. Not being able to call timeout before the foul was tough, and I saw Armel saying a few words to Maceo after that - I think he was trying to find him coming off a curl or something like that. I'm actually surprised he was able to catch his own FT miss, but given the odd bounces the ball took the last few seconds it was going to be tough to get a good shot - again, it's amazing Armel was even able to throw anything up at that point even if it was an air ball.

Anyways next up is the lone meeting with the other team from Richmond, VCU, at their place. The Rams have lost 5 games in a row, so will probably come into this one motivated. They aren't a particularly good shooting team, but we all know they are going to be hot against us. The big thing is the turnovers tomorrow - we can't afford another 11 turnover game from Armel.