CenterCourt wrote:

  So let's add that we were outcoached today; Mojo would not have received much grace from any of us today.

OK, I´ll bite. What was the offensive play drawn up during that last timeout (called by Navy, by the by)? I have seen more off-ball movement from metalic monoliths in the Utah wilderness than I saw from GW on that play-- which of course led to a clanked miss from even more one-on-five action.

58 of our 71 points came from 3 players (Battle, Nelson and Bishop). Battle had 20 points and 6 rebounds, but also had 0 assists, 6 turnovers and showed no improvement on his bad defense from last year.   As mentioned earlier, Bishop keeps both teams in the game.  I did not like his game today.  I just can't figure out why we would stay in the zone nearly the entire game.

I didn’t watch the second half.Once again-every year-year after year-no matter who is coaching our offense 
looks made up on the fly.Terrible offensive sets.I don’t get it.It’s not that hard.

We’ll lose a ton of games relying on an offense primarily organized around 3-point shots. 56% of shots today from beyond the arc. To me that’s absurd on a good day, never mind the fact that we don’t have the pure shooters to justify it. But when you see it going bad and you’ve got no game plan other than to double down and keep digging the hole deeper - that’s on Coach. I’d like to say it’s only one game but it isn’t. This was his M.O. last year too. He needs to inject some diversity into the offense or you can expect teams to just extend their defenses and we’ll need to shoot crazy percentages on high degree of difficulty treys just to stay within shouting distance. How many significantly contested threes did we fire up today.?  Way too many. Enough to end up with a dismal 9-29 from behind the arc. Not gonna cut it.

Last edited by Alum1 (11/25/2020 2:51 pm)

Gwmayhem wrote:

Last point for now...our bigs were terribly slow on defense today.  Like feet in wet cement slow.  These guys will need to realize that with added depth in the frontcourt comes the luxury to play more aggressive defense.  As has been pointed out, their high post players against our zone had  a field day because nobody was coming out on these guys (or were arriving way too late).     

Absolutely.  More than anything else, this is what killed us today.

Oh, and free throws.

And not looking for the open player.

But, really, our defense sucked.

Looking forward to the next game already!
 

Watched a little of the first half. Terrible. No focus, or energy. And the lack of defence. What is JC doing?  Where's the coaching? Looks like a bunch of misfits and cast offs on the court. Tennessee Vols football, not to mention the Jets and Giants. Whew!! 

Cutis wrote:

Keeping it simple.A good coach does not lose this game.

My nuance is that he was out-coached.

Few things of note:
1) Last year's team struggled out of the gate. My best comparison would be the New England Patriots. JC like Belichick spends the first quarter of the season testing things out (that maybe as far as the comparison goes though). The announcers said as much today. They felt JC was just mixing and matching lineups to see what would work best. He did the same last season. Remember that Potter didn't start until three or four games in.

2) JC was so adamant against using the zone last year, that we almost never saw it. Also, we were in the upper tier of teams in 3 point defense last year. Two things that did not ring true today. You can blame that on personnel, or maybe you can refer back to note #1. Also, before the game several people claimed Navy played a similar offensive game to Fordham who beat us THREE TIMES last year. That got me thinking that maybe JC implemented the zone early to learn from it. We play Fordham really early on in A10 play, so maybe, just maybe, this was meant as a teaching game in preparation for conference games. 

3) There is definitely athletic talent on this team. I'd say even more than last year. The issue here on out will be how that talent can be coached up. For instance, despite the gaudy numbers and obvious athletic gifts he has, James Bishop may have been the biggest problem in our loss today. He was an inefficient shooter who while showing some absolute brilliance in passing, rarely did so. He took 7 more shots than anyone else on the team but only made one more basket than anyone else on the team and his time management in the final 4 minutes of the game was atrocious. 

4) Why didn't we feed our bigs in the post? Navy was smaller than our bigs and they often fouled us the few times we went to the hoop. Couldn't understand that for the life of me. Also, going down low worked for us last year when we could also pop it back out to an open shooter for three.

5) Was super impressed with Battle and JNJ's shooting efficiency. 6-10 each was pretty solid. JNJ I was very impressed with on both sides of the ball because I never felt he was forcing the issue on either end, something I saw repeatedly last year. Today he seemed far more in control which if it holds true would be a major step in his maturation. He also read the floor far better than he did last year. Last year I was adamant he couldn't be a PG in the A10 due to his court vision. Sure it is only one game, but he read the court better than any game he did last year. As for Battle, the 6 TOs are major warts, but I thought his overall game was far improved. I actually disagree with a couple of posters here in that I was impressed with his D. No, he wasn't perfect, but he kept his body in front of who he was defending and used his long arms a lot better to force players to alter their shots. 

6) There was a major difference in the players who played for JC last year and the transfers he brought in. Last years players were unselfish to a fault (two consecutive passes ahead to Paar that were intercepted) while this current crop of transfers were ball hogs. Too often I saw Bishop and Moyer try to make something of absolutely nothing when they had wide open teammates on the perimeter. I felt they wanted to be the stars rather than truly team players. And yes, I know Sloan Seymour us supposed to have excellent range, but just because you are open SUPER DEEP doesn't mean you have to shoot when their are better options open as well. Hopefully JC stresses this before the next game.

Gwmayhem wrote:

Alum1, they key to making this work is that Bishop and Nelson, when driving to the basket, have to show that they are just as likely to kick the ball out as they are to finishing a drive.  This is why I singled out the late play from Bishop to Battle.  When a guy drives to the basket, the tendency is for a defender of a three point shooter to sag off of the man in order to help stop the penetration.  That leads to an open three point shooter.  The problem today (among many) was that James and Jameer were not looking for their three point shooters nearly enough.  If the defense knows that they are liable to find an open shooter, it will have to decide on stopping the ball or stopping the perimeter.  Tough to do both.

It's like a football team with no running game consistently running play action passes.  Defenses will not bite on the fake when they no that there isn't a real threat to run the ball. 

This is what Armel Potter was extremely good at last year.

Tennessee Colonial wrote:

Tell me, was anyone else irked by our present coach doing the Thompson towel thing? Honoring a guy who refused to play us for years and years. This guy was not a friend of GW.  Does the present coach know this? Disturbing. And his coaching is disturbing too. 

Not at all, every black coach in the country decided to do it together. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/30370402/multiple-black-coaches-honor-john-thompson-jr-towel-right-shoulder-sources-say

Last edited by Hugh (11/25/2020 6:10 pm)