I’m in the half full category!  There are 2 reasons:

We have a coach who can coach.
We have a coach who can recruit good young local players.

We can be both happy and realistic. We're 4-0 for now, at least. 
 CC continues to show he seems to know what he is doing on the court and how to recruit smartly for our needs. James appears to have gone through a great transformation as a team player with the availability of our depth. That will help him and us this year. Max is great and a strong rebounder.
   We have some great prospects emerging from the games so far. Would happily name them, but don't want to curse our luck so far.
   But the schedule is softer than Charmin and does us no favors against better competition. And the better
competition is this tournament, warm in the Bahamas, but relatively lukewarm in terms of competition at the national or A-10 level. Even if it is a step up from what we have seen at the Smith Center.
   Dayton played Houston and beat LSU. Bonnies beat Oklahoma State. Even St. Joe's takes Kentucky to overtime, despite apparently not friendly refs. Meanwhile, we are sweating out Ohio. Maybe as we should be.
   On the other hand, as pointed out, you've got to walk before you run, etc. This is a team with almost all new players, most inexperienced in college games. And we are dealing with the aftermath of trashing our own program 7 years ago. 
    Still, we may regret not being challenged more, at least in the preseason scrimmages. Especially since this is our last year with both an all-conference player and last year's Rookie of the Year. 
   There's nothing wrong with mentioning or relating this. We would deride this type of non-conference schedule on another team. And the shoe tends to always drop for us.
   But at least right now, we are more hopeful than in a long time.
    And that's also something special, especially for a GW fan in recent year.
    

GW0509 wrote:

GWRising wrote:

Once we re-establish the program, there will be plenty of time to discuss upgrades to the schedule. You have to walk before you can run.

Exactly.  Remember when we trotted out Mojo's 9-24 team against Virginia, Michigan, and South Carolina in back-to-back-to-back games?  The 19-point loss to UVA was the best result.

That team actually had a decent OOC schedule but in no way shape or form was it helpful to the team's development.

Hopefully in a year or two CC and staff can craft a similar schedule but for now I'm happy with winning and our players building confidence in advance of conference play.

That 9-24 team was terrible.  It was the byproduct of Lonergan recruits having left the program coupled with an inability to bring in talent as a subsequent result of the Nero mess.  MoJo was left holding the bag as I can't envision anyone achieving success with that group nor could most coaches have recruited far more successfully under the circumstances.  I hope GW0509 is not suggesting that an easier schedule would have even potentially resulted in a markedly different season (an inference if one is to claim that playing three tough consecutive opponents slowed down the team's development.  Plain and simple, this team was never going to develop.)

As for this year's OOC, the strong odds are that it will be rendered meaningless with respect to GW's postseason chances.  However, on the off chance that the team enjoys great success this season only to be snubbed by the NCAA Committee as a possible at large due to a tremendously weak OOC schedule, something tells me that the prevailing attitude around here would not be "oh well.  We didn't know we would be this good."

Given the youth of the team, I'm fine with the OOC schedule. The first step for me is simply winning the games that should be won which hadn't been done in previous seasons. Low bar, but the fact that on top of that we have covered three of the four games, and the fourth game would have been covered if the opposing team hadn't shot outrageously from 3 + GW becoming a little careless under duress in the last few minutes is a major accomplishment.

The only gripe with the schedule for me even in the preseason was the December slate, specifically the Coppin State-Bowie State-Alcorn State-Maryland Eastern Shore stretch. Keeping two of these would have been fine - maybe Alcorn and one of the others around exam time where the chances of a letdown are higher. The play style is a bit too similar for there to be any benefit to playing all of them. Specifically playing a D2 game at that point makes no sense to me. At least some of the other bench guys should see more action.

CC said during the Raise High show that Christian Jones is expected to redshirt. Not unexpected, but I'm surprised they are not doing the same thing with Zam if he's not getting a few minutes of run during OOC play. Maybe that's due to less depth up front especially with Antoine sidelined? Hoping Smith is available by December - I thought it was reported that the hip issue wasn't overly serious unless there was a setback.
 

Gwmayhem wrote:

[I hope GW0509 is not suggesting that an easier schedule would have even potentially resulted in a markedly different season (an inference if one is to claim that playing three tough consecutive opponents slowed down the team's development.  Plain and simple, this team was never going to develop.)

Markedly different, absolutely not!  We still would've been whooped in conference play.  But if there ever was a year to schedule a Coppin State-Bowie State-Alcorn State-Maryland Eastern Shore stretch it was that one (knowing that team we would've gone 2-2 in that stretch anyway lol).

I shouldn't have used the word development.  I just meant going 1-7 to start the season couldn't have been great for clubhouse morale. 

Last edited by GW0509 (11/21/2023 9:20 pm)

Would be surprised not to see Smith in the Bahamas (Caputo mentioned how he's going to need guys further down the bench while they're there) but I think if they really felt they needed him he would have played already

Hugh wrote:

in the post-game press conference after the Stonehill game, CC said Smith was still dealing with the hip. I assume since he's dressed he's available to play, but maybe it's still impacting him.

 

Prior to Hofstra game, assistant coach stated Smith is able to play.

I expect CC to go deeper into the lineup this weekend if for no other reason that we have to play 3 games in 3 days. If Smith is healthy, I expect him to play some. Probably same for Keegan and Zam.