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Bill & Mary sitting in a tree…S-C-O-R-I-N-G.
Couldn’t stop ’em all night. Same as it ever was as far as our defense is concerned. Not good.
But this is Gottfried’s “most athletic team” according to the commentators. I’m as big a Gott supporter as any come March, but really, what the fluke did I just watch? Couple this with the attacks in Paris today and this has to be the $hittiest day in recent memory.
Unlike our like football schedule, this is what can happen when you schedule a decent opponent and don’t play well. Cat played horribly. I think Gott said it during preseason, if Terry Henderson scores 5pg, we won’t be very good. He played 7 minutes, went to locker room, and was scoreless. With no 2G on court, the defense was more atrocious than usual. And it was no shocker that it was horrendous.
Comments from the Game and also the Post Mortem.
We were out played….out scored…..outted….in every conceivable way. The only thing we kept in tack were the Uniforms….
If you look at the Box Score, W&M hit 52 or 53%…..OUCH. I SHOULD backtrack on one statement. NONE of our Bigs had a Jock Strap left tonight….the trainers were making them put on new ones….on every play, the Princeton Offense would read out defense….and if we were heavy on the perimeter, then they snuck a guy inside and he dunked or had an easy shot. Our bigs looked like….”How’d THAT happen?”.
You really had to see if from the second level to fully understand the ugliness on the court. We had NO answer (or energy or athleticism or BB IQ) for that offense.
Henderson has, they HOPE, ONLY a High Ankle sprain. He will be evaluated….but GOTT said that these things, while less severe than a break or a tear….COULD result in him being out 4 – 6 weeks IF it is severe….and that you can NOT dismiss them or slough them off.
He said that Kirk was NOT 100% and would need to gain strength….and would also be required to “Step UP”. Freeman is about 2 months BEHIND in his conditioning due to his leg surgery earlier this year. He played, according to the announcers, for 13 minutes and was about 1 – 2 steps slow….He was ineffective.
Abu had cramp issues and was in a lot of pain. The WP Network interviewed him. We have had a LOT of eloquent players in the past and their BB IQ was astounding. Unfortunately, the best was Lacey. He was a treat to hear. Well, Abu will probably give him a run for his money. Abu was concise and also critical of himself and apologized for his efforts tonight and that he will improve his conditioning and hydration…..”I will consume a very unpleasant amount of liquids before Sunday and I will be much better”. YES, that sounds good….but he did sound sincere. He also analyzed the game.
Maverick (and you DO know he was named after Lt. Pete Mitchell in the 1983 Top Gun movie), actually lived up to his name. He was brilliant at times….but, like his namesake….Lt. Mitchell, he could not maintain focus and left his team (or his wingmen) often. He DOES need to get in rhythm…..he also GOTT faked a lot. Bobby Lutz may have to share the blame for that.
I guess my biggest disappointment (other than it was a HELLUVA WAY to “celebrate GOTT’s Raise and Contract Extension) was that we (the Coaches and the Team) did NOT prepare for the Experienced W&M Princeton Offense. It obviously caught the staff off guard. NOW, on any given day, any given team can beat any top ranked team. TO say that W&M were the best they will ever be….? Don’t KNOW.
BUT, it seems that a lot of W&M players had Career Highs or Highlight moments…..so our curse continues.
Need to step back from the ledge…..think about tomorrow….the sun’ll come up…..bet your bottom dollar…..A>N>D T>H>E>N….
Shut up you annoying little red headed girl…..go find Charlie Brown and tease him awhile….you are getting on my nerves…..
We play FSU. DD has got a hard row to hoe….but he and the team COULD take a lot of sting out of tonight’s loss with a W in Tally….
Relax aid the Night Man…..
We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you want….
BUT, you can never leave this place.The PNC was, tonight, like a psychedelic video of Hotel California……
They stab it with their Steely knives…..
But they just can’t kill the beast.In this case, the Beast was the Princeton Offense. HWWNBSOHA would STILL be here, if the guys had executed the Princeton Offense so crisply.
I haven’t read this whole thread, so apologies if I’m repeating what others have expressed.
I’ll start with this: I think the team will be fine by season’s end. There is still a lot of talent here, and Gott’s teams usually round into shape as the season goes on. The world is not ending and this is not a sign that we are doomed this year. We’ve seen this before and been fine by the time the tournament rolls around. But isn’t that the problem? Every year we see the team come out of the gate unprepared. We see the team have huge defensive problems. It’s one thing if you have a young, inexperienced team, but I expect more from this roster. Tonight was just a failure of the coaching staff to have this team prepared.
– Opposite extremes from Rowan in this game. As advertised, he’s a terrific scorer. Even though the shot wasn’t falling, you could see a good, repeatable stroke, quick release, and total confidence. He’s decisive when he catches the ball, and seems to just have that knack for getting the ball in the basket. On the other hand, he was an absolute disaster on the defensive end. He got backcut all night. He got beat off the dribble. He helped when he shouldn’t have helped and didn’t help when he should have. That has to change, because great scorer or not, he’s unplayable against good teams if he defends like this.
– At least Rowan is a freshman in his first real game. The rest of the roster has no such excuse. They were terrible defensively in 100 different ways. It was a complete breakdown both effort-wise and schematically.
– Our pick and roll defense has reverted back to where it was at the beginning of last season, after making huge strides at the end of last year. Far too often our big men end up in no-man’s land. They’re not pressuring the ball handler, but they’re not really covering their man either. That lets the guard just string them along until they have an easy pass to the big guy under the rim. You have to either aggressively trap the pick, or the weakside defenders have to be better at helping the helper and then scrambling to open shooters. As it is now, we just didn’t put any pressure on the opposing offense.
– I think Beejay Anya is a terrific defender on the whole, but you have to defend the pick and roll with him in a particular way because of his lack of quickness, and we’re not doing it. Several times I saw his man set a screen up high, and the player getting screened just didn’t fight hard through the pick. Happened a couple times with the Martin twins, and they just kind of pointed at their man instead of fighting through. You just can’t do that. It means that Anya has to stay up too long on the guard, and it leads to wide-open big men rolling to the rim.
– There’s way too much standing straight up and down from off-ball defenders, and just a general lack of activity and active hands. Guys don’t collapse and help crisply, and that leads to open layups and easy putbacks. It’s laziness and bad habits, and they’re the same bad habits that we’ve seen before. Hard not to see that as a failure of the coaching staff, and a failure to promote a culture where defense is important.
– How bout we don’t run any more post-ups for Cody Martin this year? Man, did he play terribly in this game.
– Abu is the lone bright spot. I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that he’s the guy I’m most excited about this season. He showed flashes of everything I wanted to see from him tonight. He bullied his way to the rim, he looked confident in his mid-range jumper, and he faced up and beat guys off the bounce a few times. He looked great, and we did a terrible job getting him the ball.1 Top ranked PG signs
1/2 million bump in salary
2 million dollar a year coach
5 year contract extension
17 point loss at home to W&MPRICELESS !!!
I think ’87 captured it brilliantly. This game seemed doomed from the beginning.
– We started out missing everything, including foul shots, and they hit everything.
– The ref in the end we were defending in the 1st half was calling every hand check, the guy on the other end was not. So while we benefitted from the calls in the 2nd half, the damage was already done.
– Henderson got hurt and Rowan came in. For every 2 he scored he gave up 4 on defense.
– Cat was not good. I have no idea why, but we was just not good. I’ve not seen him play that bad in a long time.
– They were a well coached, experienced team, we played a lot of playground basketball.
– Everytime we started to get a tiny bit of momentum, someone would miss a critical shot or commit a turnover. W&M would do down and score. End of rally. Rowan missed a ton of potential momentum building threes.They have a lot to learn from this game, and I think as the season progresses they will. Once Mav learns to play D, he is going to be a very good player. He has so much more to his game than Scott Wood for example. He exceeded Wood’s 4 year total of drives to the basket in this one game. Fortunately we play a much weaker team than W&M Sunday, but man, there is so much that needs to be fixed moving forward.
I had a feeling it wouldn’t take our fans long to start criticizing Maverick’s defense.
Here’s a hint – if you’ve got a kid who by all accounts works really hard on his game and you find his d lacking – perhaps, the staff doesn’t do a very good job teaching and reinforcing proper technique and good team defense.
Guys can only do what they are asked and taught to do. I suspect that’s exactly what they are doing.
Whatever the reason, it was not good. Certainly to be expected from a freshman. Seth Greenberg sat through a practice and noted Mav’s D would be a concern. I’m sure he will get much better as the year progresses. Also, I don’t think the staff intended for him to play so many minutes, but Henderson’s injury and the fact nobody else was scoring forced their hand.
I had a feeling it wouldn’t take our fans long to start criticizing Maverick’s defense.
Here’s a hint – if you’ve got a kid who by all accounts works really hard on his game and you find his d lacking – perhaps, the staff doesn’t do a very good job teaching and reinforcing proper technique and good team defense.
Guys can only do what they are asked and taught to do. I suspect that’s exactly what they are doing.
This is a great point. We are constantly bad at defense. #Coaching.
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