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Post by loyal on Nov 18, 2014 21:58:51 GMT -5
Assuming Desi gets healthy and Q stays that way, our current club has two and maybe arguably three players who can be counted on to score.
The PG is spot unlikely to generate many points, if one season and two games are a reliable benchmark.
We have five candidates on the roster for the SF/third guard position. Gaskins body of work is what it is; appears to be a below average shooter. Boone is a freshman, sans a good outside shot so far. Patterson......a soph with the same profile. Hester looks like a shooting savant at this stage. Dennis is MIA.
Given front line backups and Fields look to offer little scoring, seems to me one of the SF/ third guard suspects is going to have to step up. Otherwise, Marvin will constantly be double teamed and guard defense will play off Trevis to deny Desi.
It's way early, but it appears we don't have the offensive scheme or player passing skills or defensive skills to win in the MAAC consistently this season unless we find a SF scorer. My guess is Boone offers more upside than the rest, but can he do it this year? I am beginning to fear Tyler may just not have it in him. Hope I am wrong.
The Jaspers have the best coach in the MAAC and good talent. Iona's pressure will be a challenge for this roster. However, given Marvin and Desi......SPU can still seriously contend, IMO.....if a SF scorer develops.
We'll see.
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Post by oldtimer1 on Nov 18, 2014 23:34:22 GMT -5
Loyal....except for the fact that it's way too early to draw any final conclusions I would assume that almost everyone on the Board would agree with your analysis. In fact, didn't we say this well before the Season began?
My immediate hope is with Q as he has the potential to be a dominant player. Too early to tell as his minutes are limited due to the fact that he is not yet in game shape and has been slowed by his injury. Yet look what he did the other night! Only gets me excited about his potential.
Also agree with you on Boone. Not a "pretty" player but knows how to get it done. Note his increase in minutes from game one to game two. If Tyler doesn't perform at #3 look for Boone.
Regarding Tyler, all those who say he can't shoot are correct in that he hasn't brought it to the game. Don't know if he will but the kid can shoot the ball. Two best pure shooters are Marvin and Tyler except for the fact that Desi does it in prime time and is a winner. Tyler hasn't to date but I'm still hopeful. Yet, if he doesn't do so soon it will be Boone's job. By the way Tyler can easily play the #2 as can Chazz so if Boone secures #3 Tyler will still get playing time.
I really like Hawkins. Much too thin and has to muscle up but has great moves around the basket. Has the knack of when he misses gets the rebound and puts the ball back in. Question in my mind if he's too undersized.
Drives me crazy about this offensive scheme stuff and that JD can't or doesn't coach offense. Those people should try attending some practice sessions and watch the team work on play after play offensively. And for those that think they know something about basketball there are only so many plays and offensive schemes in college basketball and under the sun. It's really more about execution. As some posted... in both games we took and had many more open looks than our opponents. What more can one ask for?
Finally agree on defense. Except for Chazz and perhaps Fields we do not have great/good individual defenders. Team defense has to be the key and we will play a lot of zone unless things change.
Remain optimistic but, as you say, we need to find more scoring threats. Hope everyone breaks out Thursday
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Post by eport on Nov 19, 2014 2:06:45 GMT -5
Agree our offensive scheme is not the problem. We had a lot of open looks due to our offensive scheme. The ball just didn't go in the basket, clear and simple. There's a lot we need to work on, including foul shooting.....we threw up some awful looking free throws. Ball rotation needs to improve on offense, also too much fancy dribbling around standing in the same place gets you no where. The fastest way to get the ball to any spot on the court is through a crisp accurate pass. Also, noticed we made some dangerous cross court passes over the top of the defense. I was taught never to pass over the defense from one side of the court to the other ....too dangerous. I did that in a high school game and even though I made an accurate pass resulting in an assist, my coach benched me and told me not to do that again.....never forgot that lesson.
Finally, we need to rotate faster on defense when we are in a zone. Hartford's SF killed us with those threes because we were late every time rotating on defense. The good news is we did hold them to 51 points, the bad news is we only scored 50 points. No way you should lose a game when you hold a team to 51 points.
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Post by oldtimer1 on Nov 19, 2014 7:58:03 GMT -5
Agree entirely with eport. Also a very perceptive comment about failure to rotate a zone properly. Normally we are a man to man defense but I suspect and posted that we may see more zone given the limitations ( hope that improves ) of playing one on one. As eport knows, one danger of playing zone is getting lazy. That's JD's job to coach or instill an "active" zone.
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Post by oldtimer1 on Nov 19, 2014 9:03:16 GMT -5
Hey loyal....you got me going on coaching. I'm very opinionated on that and I don't mind if anyone disagrees but here is my firm opinion
1) "Coaching" is often overated. Yes, there are outstanding coaches but more often than not they (or their staff) are outstanding recruiters. If "coaching" is important it's all about ( after recruiting ) preparation. Always loved John Wooden's statement that if he prepared his team properly, he didn't even have to be at the game.
2) By the way, look at the so-called coaching gensius' (sp) when they didn't have the players. Need I say Bobby Knight after he left Indiana or Wooden himself before he began his great run with Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazard. How about our own Don Kennedy, a coach who many consider way ahead of his time. While Kennedy (who I knew very well and attended his practice sessions) did have some decent teams in the late 50's his teams 1960-1966 were not very good. It wasn't until O'Dea, Webster, Laurie et al arrived did his gensius shine through.
3) Regarding Coach Masiello, I do not consider him the best coach in the league...he had the players, Brown especially...great recruiter! Think he almost singlehandidly lost Manhattan's NCAA game last year. Don't remember the exact time and senario but it went something like this. Manhattan up by either 3 or 5 with under a few minutes left. Manhattan grabs an offensive rebound, rushes down court and throws the ball away running very little time off the clock. All coaches can be second guessed but that was a big one. Should have called a time out, set up a play and run some clock. Big, big mistake which I think turned momentum and possibly cost Manhattan the game.
4) My favorite, however, was in the 1980's with the legendary Dean Smith coaching. In a game on National TV, North Carolina is down a quick 10-0 within two minutes. The play by play guy asks Al MaGuire if Smith should call a time out. MaGuire praises Smith and says that Smith is a smart coach and is waiting for the 1st TV timeout so it doesn't cost him a team timeout. Well the TV time out came later but Smith was now down something like 20-4!
My point is that yes there are good coaches, very good coaches and a lot of poor coaches but there are no gensius' in basketball or any other sport. They however are the visible part of their Program and criticism or love go with the job. Very appropriate of fans to second guess and/or complain because, well, we are fans.
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Post by 68grad on Nov 19, 2014 11:20:06 GMT -5
Don't get too down. The 4 schools (Iona, Siens, SPU & Manhattan) that were forcast to be league leaders in the MAAC are a combined 1 - 7 in the first six days of the season.
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Post by figgyprez on Nov 19, 2014 13:19:48 GMT -5
More than anything the thing that troubles me is a repetition of the tendency to play even up ball in most games for about 33-34 minutes but we always seem to have a 6-7 minute drought where we get totally out of sync and opponent goes 10-0 0r 15-2 for the decisive run. It can occur early, mid game or late, but it happens about every night. Seems that the problem is on the offensive end. We take bad shots which lead to repeated points the other way. Somehow we never seem to have a run stopper set that gets us FTs to stabilize the game before we are stuck in a hole which our guys always try to fight out of but mostly fail to do.
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Post by cindycrawford on Nov 19, 2014 17:02:59 GMT -5
Tomorrow's game is huge. It's great to get Niagara at a time when Desi is out and Hawkins is not yet eligible,but we can't afford to lose a game at home against a bottom feeder. Road games against LaSalle and Rutgers loom on the horizon.
The offense is sputtering with too many shots being passed up when the open looks were there.I can testify firsthand that the coaches were not pleased with this fact. Nor were we very good at draining them when we did shoot.
I'll contend that the zone was not as bad at Hartford as you would believe.Against it you are bound to give up some outside looks to the tradeoff of protecting the paint. You just don't usually see a five for five from from a player who was one for seven his previous game.How open was he on his 4 point play? I think not at all. Giving up 51 points is not a problem no matter what the defense,I'll take that every night.
On last point, currently there are no players in the "dog house." Other factors have determined the minutes allotted. That will become clearer in time.
I hope all here present make an effort to show some support in person tomorrow.
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Post by oldtimer1 on Nov 19, 2014 17:42:49 GMT -5
Cindy...you couldn't be more right in your post....and contrary to any of us (video steaming or not), YOU WERE THERE.
Regarding your comments about Dennis and the "doghouse" there are some things that you/we are privy to but cannot post ( even though we might want to ) Sometimes things told in private,need to remain remain private. I salute your ethics. However, isn't it amazing how some try to use everything to conjecture, guess and just bad mouth the coach and staff. Not that JD is beyond criticism and coaches are indeed fair game but there are some that, as Galt says, have an agenda. Pretty obvoius.
See you and the others tomorrow night. There to support.
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Post by newfan on Nov 19, 2014 18:42:59 GMT -5
Cindy...you couldn't be more right in your post....and contrary to any of us (video steaming or not), YOU WERE THERE. Regarding your comments about Dennis and the "doghouse" there are some things that you/we are privy to but cannot post ( even though we might want to ) Sometimes things told in private,need to remain remain private. I salute your ethics. However, isn't it amazing how some try to use everything to conjecture, guess and just bad mouth the coach and staff. Not that JD is beyond criticism and coaches are indeed fair game but there are some that, as Galt says, have an agenda. Pretty obvoius. See you and the others tomorrow night. There to support. |
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Post by newfan on Nov 19, 2014 18:44:44 GMT -5
Watching news channel 7. Upstate NY state of emergency. They showed Niagara women's basketball team stranded in snow on bus. 5'+ snow. Expecting 1-3' more. Anyone with info on game
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Post by eport on Nov 19, 2014 19:03:36 GMT -5
The player who had the four point play wasn't Taylor Dyson the forward who went 5-5 on threes and had 5 open looks. Hartford's guard Corban Wroe made a fad away jumper from the top of the key for a three and did a good job of acting to get the foul. as he fell backwards. Corban Wroe was well covered on that play and got the benefit of a home job call from the ref. Turned out that fourth point was a the difference maker in the final score.
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Post by eport on Nov 19, 2014 19:10:30 GMT -5
There could be a positive if the Niagara game is cancelled.....it may allow Washington to be in the line-up against them in a make-up game. We need all the offensive power we can get. Most likely we would have beaten Hartford if we had Washington in the line-up.
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