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Full Version: Final stretch
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With 9 or 10 games left, this final stretch should be gauge of the progress we've made in year 1 of the Spiker era. The tougher part of the CAA schedule is behind us, the trouble spots have become glaringly obvious (consistency and defense), and the freshman have now started to feel what CAA play is all about. Its time to see if Spiker and the players can make adjustments and finish strong. I think they can.

After listening to the latest DragonsSpeak podcast (nice job guys), I thought about predicting the rest of the way to see what would be an encouraging finish.

8 conference games remain. Winning half of them would show promise. (My picks: Delaware, Hofstra, Towson (home) and JMU) Towson and JMU may seem like a stretch and sweeping both UD and HU might seem difficult, but I'm looking for what would really give us momentum as the season closes.

Hofstra, JMU and Delawre are our Pillow fight partners. I think it'll be Hofstra. Could we really beat them 3 times? Maybe I'm overly-optimistic, but I'm saying Pillow fight win for the Dragons. A second round date with CoC or UNCW will be ugly, giving us 5 wins in the final 10 games. (13-20 overall, 6-12 CAA).
I don't see us finishing that strong though I do expect to see some new wrinkles and game plans from Spiker and crew. My biggest worry is the minutes our freshman are logging. I think Iceman already hit his wall and I think Kurk is going to hit his soon. What we get out of Overton, Mojica, and Major will really determine how we finish. Rodney can only do so much, but we will need him to demand the ball even more down low once our freshman guards fully hit that wall. He will need to step further up to alleviate the pressure from the guards. I think We can beat UD and JMU, maybe steal the home game against Towson. But that is it. I know we beat Hofstra once, but I still think that is a bad matchup because they have more scorers than we do and an equally bad defense. If we draw JMU or UD I will like our chances to lose on Saturday, if we draw Hofstra, I think we are one and done.
Soon we'll find out if last night was a fluke, or if this team is going to start playing up to their potential. They've gotten through the toughest stretch of their schedule, now they've actually got 4 very winnable games coming up. Towson (Drexel should have beaten them on the road, so why not at home), Delaware (Cluck U plays better at home, but they're still Delaware), Elon (good but not great team..Drexel should win at the DAC), and JMU (again, lower tier team and Drexel should win at home). I know that they won't beat COC on the road. But let's see if they can finish the regular season winning 5 of 6. Maybe they'll have a chance to win a Friday game down in Charleston.
My optimistic view: Out of the last 5 games of Towson, Delaware, Elon, JMU and Coc I think will be 4-1. Ideally It would be nice to be the 7th seed somehow and play Sucks to setup a game vs Coc. Just like every team in this conference besides UNCW Drexel can compete with anyone but they can also lose by 20+ against anyone.
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