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Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
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Bucs06 Offline
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Post: #21
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer
The ref literally blew the whistle on Armus before Armus was even set or made contact on that screen.
(This post was last modified: 01-24-2018 08:51 PM by Bucs06.)
01-24-2018 08:48 PM
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Bucs06 Offline
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Post: #22
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer
I still can’t believe that call. Not so much that it was a foul but just the fact that the ref blew the whistle before contact even occurred.
01-24-2018 08:50 PM
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ETSUfan1 Offline
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Post: #23
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Bucs have won 11 in a row. Wofford 12 of 13. Gonna be a really tough game Saturday. Gritty effort by Mercer today.
01-24-2018 09:09 PM
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JWBUC Offline
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Post: #24
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-24-2018 08:48 PM)Bucs06 Wrote:  The ref literally blew the whistle on Armus before Armus was even set or made contact on that screen.

Looked that way to me. Frustrating
01-24-2018 09:48 PM
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queenladybug817 Offline
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Post: #25
Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
SoCon refs are just awful.
(This post was last modified: 01-24-2018 09:52 PM by queenladybug817.)
01-24-2018 09:51 PM
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brock20 Offline
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Post: #26
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
A good win. Mercer played out of the mind tonight. I love the demeanor of this team.
01-24-2018 10:08 PM
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brock20 Offline
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Obi Provided a spark tonight. I think he’ll be able to help some next year.
01-24-2018 10:17 PM
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JWBUC Offline
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-24-2018 10:17 PM)brock20 Wrote:  Obi Provided a spark tonight. I think he’ll be able to help some next year.

Agreed, happy to see it.
01-24-2018 10:36 PM
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squeak Offline
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Is this team more fun to watch than last years team?
01-24-2018 10:45 PM
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BucDoctor Offline
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Post: #30
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Does Mercer have another fan forum? There haven't been any postings in the one we have links to since Jan 1.
01-24-2018 10:54 PM
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Buc76 Offline
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Gritty win tonight. Guard play saved the day on both ends of court. Armus gave effort, played better in 2nd half. Peter and Burrell took the night off. They got to play much better at Wofford or win streak ends.
01-24-2018 11:52 PM
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swvabucsfan Offline
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
Who lost more due to injury in this game? Mercer without senior leading scorer Holland, or the Bucs without freshman substitute Hodges?

Consider what they did the first time the teams met:
Holland had 38 minutes, 12 points on 5-12 (1-3 from 3), 1 rebound, 3 assists, 2 turnovers and 0 steals. And not much defense.
Hodges had 25 minutes, 12 points on 5-7 (1-1 from 3), 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 turnover and 2 steals. And lots of defense, helping to control Jelks (4 points instead of 14 points) and helping to prevent guards from scoring underneath like Cohen did tonight for 16 points.

I think the answer is clear. The Bucs did pretty well without Bo, but I’m fairly certain that they’ll welcome him back.

It would be nice to see him against Wofford, but you don’t mess with knees. I’d rather risk a loss to the Terriers than risk further injury to Bo.

Defensively the Bucs did their usual (in conference) fine job defending the 3. They did not do as well defending the basket from 2, lost the turnover battle 13-12 (Bucs made 1 more turnover), although they did get 2 more steals (6-4). Last time around they won turnovers 14-18 (making 4 fewer turnovers) and steals 10-6 (snatching 4 more steals). Fewer turnovers and steals were one reason for no flashy dunks. They couldn’t find one from this game for the promotion – probably a first in the Forbes era.

Defending the 3 was good as Mercer was held to 6-24 for 25%. That is not a fluke. The Bucs have been holding opponents to .276 from 3 in conference. Mercer had been averaging .326 in conference.

But letting Mercer score so much from 2 was worrisome. Ringer had his way around the basket for most of his 21 points (he also made his very first 3 of the year), Jelks hurt us inside for most of his 14 points (but was also 2-6 from 3) and 6’4” freshman point guard Marcus Cohen penetrated at will for 16 points (no 3’s attempted. He’s only 1-4 on the season from the perimeter.). This is not the way that ETSU has been defending.

For the season we are 56th in D1 in 2 point FG% defense, holding opponents to 46.3%. But in conference we have been dominating – first in the SoCon. And in the last 3 games we had held opponents to 36.7% from 2, 3rd in all of D1 over that 3 game period. https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basket...-point-pct

ETSU did a lot of things right tonight, but 2 point defense was not one of them. We’ve got to get our basket protection back to what it has been in conference. As stated, 3 point defense continued to be fine.

Rebounds were ok, too, at least in the second half. The Bucs laced them up tight and outrebounded by far the best rebounding team in the SoCon (coming into this game Mercer had a +9.9 rebounding margin in conference) by 29-28. Most of those rebounds, 16-10, were in the second half, as Desonta put on his usual calm and efficient 2nd half surge with 5 rebounds to go with 9 points, and Mladen Armus added 4 rebounds.

As for offense, the Bucs 3 point shooting continues their conference surge: they posted a season best 13 three’s, making 50% on 13-26. The previous best was 11 makes against Xavier, Samford and Savannah State. The Bucs have been averaging .416 from 3 for the last 8 games, so it’s about time to stop considering this a fluke and recognize that it is mostly a new normal in level of performance. I don’t think that we’ll be seeing much ‘reversion to the mean’ from here. I think that a new mean has been set.

Overall field goal % was .511, in line with ETSU’s conference leading .522.

For individuals, Jalan McCloud had another excellent outing against Mercer – 2 of his top 3 performances have come against the Bears, with the 3rd being a 25 point outing against Fort Wayne. This time McCloud got another 25 points on 6-7 from 3, with 2 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 steals. It should also be noted that Jalan has increased his points per game, 3 point shooting and assists in conference, following a pattern from last year which saw his game pick up markedly over the last 3rd of the season as he became a big part of Texas Southern’s run to the NCAA.

Devontavius, despite his injury, had his second highest scoring night as a Buc with 18 points on 4-9 from 3.

Mladen Armus, despite struggling to defend the basket against 6-9 250 Ringer et al., had 8 rebounds and 7 points in 18 minutes. Most impressively he improved his free throw shooting to 5-6, critical to the Bucs in the second half and critical to his continued development, to make it counterproductive to just hack him underneath.

But steadiest of all was Desonta, who once again kept things calm and productive, especially in the second half. That 2nd half is always his. Total of 15 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block. Key again to keeping this game in hand was making free throws down the stretch – 9-10 for Desonta who is now .867 in conference play. This despite the braying of J****ss Bob Hoffman and his assistants, the only coaching staff in conference who stoop to trying to spook the other team’s players by hollering ‘miss it’ themselves during free throw attempts. Jermaine Long also did well in this regard with 5-6 from the line for 8 points, also knocking down a 3.

In contrast to Hoffman, Desonta exudes quiet class, doing it so efficiently and with so little fuss, that the opponents hardly notice till they look at the stat sheet and see that Desonta has beaten them again.

Coming up is a big one, against a full strength Wofford team that has one of the toughest home court records in conference at 10-1. Of course, the best road record, the only winning road record in the SoCon, belongs to the Bucs at 6-3.
(This post was last modified: 01-25-2018 01:54 AM by swvabucsfan.)
01-25-2018 01:36 AM
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posterformerlyknownasthedoctor Offline
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Post: #33
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-24-2018 10:45 PM)squeak Wrote:  Is this team more fun to watch than last years team?

No. At least not in my opinion. But I can see why you, or others, may think that. They are easy to admire in the way they battle and find different ways to win. If you want to say "more fun" because the wins are sometimes more challenging than maybe they should be.....then I think one could make that case. (Altho that was certainly true last year at times, too.)
Also, one could say it's rewarding, encouraging, etc., to see a team become (much) better than they were at the beginning of the season. That's very easy to appreciate, too. Maybe it's just in the eye of the beholder.
01-25-2018 03:23 AM
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posterformerlyknownasthedoctor Offline
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Post: #34
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-24-2018 08:37 PM)MTBuc Wrote:  Cummings is not a D1 player but I'm happy Bob thought he was.

I respectfully, and gently, disagree, although the 'data' from the game provides nearly zero evidence to back my viewpoint. It's just the eye test. He had hops, quickness, a good-looking shot, and played smart - other than the two fouls - the first of which against Jurkin was a 'bad' one. But my, oh my, was he hounded every time he touched the ball. Different players guarded him, and guarded him tight. It was clear the Forbes had watched carefully what he did Saturday. And as he said on the post-game show, ETSU wanted to stop them (he didn't mention any specific player) from shooting the 3, which of course hurt Cummings.
Further, he wasn't really much of a defensive liability - at least that I could see. I watched him a lot because of dashspartan's comments earlier in this thread. Is he a top DI player? No; but adequate. Hoffman wouldn't have played him 23 minutes in a game like this if he thought he was that bad of a defender.

Maybe because my expectations were low, he just exceeded them by quite a bit. Just the way I saw things....
01-25-2018 03:39 AM
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posterformerlyknownasthedoctor Offline
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Post: #35
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
The Bucs had lots of reasons, chances, and ways to lose this game - but didn't. I've used the term "gritty" after multiple games this year, and, as Buc76 already has, it applies here, too.

At some earlier point I had mused whether or not Hoffman was hurting Mercer's team now. After tonight, I'll have to say he isn't. I thought he had a masterful game plan, considering Holland wasn't available. As Forbes alluded to in the post-game show, they "played different" than what we were expecting. Hoffman ran a couple of extremely innovative sets that gave great isolations to the guards to penetrate - both in the first half as I recall. One I don't think I'd ever seen before.
But in general, his plan to have Strawberry, and more especially Cohen, penetrate and then *bounce* pass the ball to their bigs for inside (but contested) buckets worked like a charm. Without saying so, that's what Forbes was referring to when he said "that gives us something to look at and improve on" (slightly paraphrasing maybe).
Cohen and Strawberry 'only' had 8 assists between them, but it seemed like 12 or more.

So no one needs me to tell them that Desmond Ringer was much man tonight. He missed exactly *0* FGs - including that surprise 3. Gosh he was impressive. Jelks was, too, but quite a bit less. They together pretty much neutralized the Jurkin/Armus duo. Those two only got *3* FG *attempts* between them. Wow. Jurkin got his one (and made it) at the very beginning of the game, and didn't take a shot (not even a FT) the rest of the way. And Burrell's only made shot was a 3.
Of all our guys over 6'4", their entire shooting performance from the field was 3/5 - in 56 minutes of collective PT. Wow.

However................I noticed we also had some guards on our side, and that story is almost the opposite, as others have already pointed out. I won't go into chapter and verse on all that, but Desonta Bradford sure earned his keep at the line tonight. And 13/26 from deep for the team? 13 being a season-high, I think. 6/7 of those were McCloud, who sure earned his plane ticket from Ft. Worth, too. And Man Man was his cool, assassin self.
But Bradford, as swvabucsfan already said, was Mr. Steady. He just never got rattled. Nor did anyone else, either. That may be one of the great strengths of this team. Beyond not quitting, they *almost* (see "Xavier") never get rattled. Composed like a team full of seniors should be.

We won this game at the free throw line.
We won this game with defense.
We won this game with 3-pt. shooting.
We won this game by at least having a draw on the boards.

Mercer had *13* more FG attempts than ETSU, and they shot a respectable 47%. You're going to win most games if you can do that. But we made 10 more FTs, and a ridiculous 7 more 3s.
My point being that if ANY of those 4 factors I listed above went the other way, we *don't* win.
Again, big props to Desmond Ringer and Marcus Cohen.

Did I say "gritty"? There was never any breathing room, and Mercer answered every KO-punch attempt ETSU threw at them - again and again - and came back with fierceness repeatedly. I don't think we can emphasize enough how brilliant Hoffman's game plan was - and it could easily have succeeded. Had they had Holland, would the outcome have different? Who knows? The way ETSU defends the 3, perhaps likely not. And yes, we did miss Bo, but our guards certainly took up the slack. Obi-Rapu's spark was at a very key time, too. Tip o' the cap to Jermaine Long at the FT line (5/6), and about 3 more tip o' the caps to him for his insistent D. He's just amazing how tight he can consistently guard super-quick guys for looong stretches (he played 31 minutes tonight).
01-25-2018 04:23 AM
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etsubuc Online
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Post: #36
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
As for whether this team is more fun to watch than last year's team, generally speaking I would say very much so. As I have pointed out before, I don't like when our "offense" is basically to come down the floor and put up a contested 3. Even if we hit them, I just don't like that style of play. We have a long history of individuals who would bail us out of games, and lose others, by taking those shots on a regular basis. I like team basketball, and I feel this year has been a consistently better "team". We have experimented with different lineups, play a different style pretty much every game depending on the opponent, etc. Of course, our offense played pretty much the style of play that I dislike last night, but other nights we focus on our inside game instead.

I don't think we have been playing our best for the past 3 games, and I fear that the Wofford game is where we will get our first conference loss. But if we can somehow win, and even if we don't, we have 4 very winnable games in a row coming up after that.

The moving screen on Armus, I saw the same thing where the ref blew his whistle before contact was made. Reminded me of NBA ref's who regularly anticipate fouls rather than wait until they happen.
01-25-2018 06:06 AM
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BigIslandBuc Offline
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Post: #37
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-24-2018 10:45 PM)squeak Wrote:  Is this team more fun to watch than last years team?

This team is like watching a farmer grinding corn in a old time mill. Coach turns the handle slowly and relentlessly and by the time the game is over there's the meal. This game was especially that way. Mercer, even up till a little over 2 minutes to go, thinks it's still in the game and has a chance to go ahead and then the game is over and they're looking around at each other wondering what happened. We will need to play better than this against Wofford I would think, but I am beginning to wonder. We have had mediocre performances overall in a few games lately and it just seems that the incessant grinding finally gets to every team we face.
01-25-2018 08:41 AM
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brock20 Offline
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Post: #38
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-25-2018 08:41 AM)BigIslandBuc Wrote:  
(01-24-2018 10:45 PM)squeak Wrote:  Is this team more fun to watch than last years team?

This team is like watching a farmer grinding corn in a old time mill. Coach turns the handle slowly and relentlessly and by the time the game is over there's the meal. This game was especially that way. Mercer, even up till a little over 2 minutes to go, thinks it's still in the game and has a chance to go ahead and then the game is over and they're looking around at each other wondering what happened. We will need to play better than this against Wofford I would think, but I am beginning to wonder. We have had mediocre performances overall in a few games lately and it just seems that the incessant grinding finally gets to every team we face.

Perfect way to describe this team. Last year had a lot more flash. This team just wears you down with their defense.
01-25-2018 08:52 AM
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Bennett42 Offline
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Post: #39
RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
I would agree with the above. Not a lot of flash, but they get the job done. One thing that i pointed out last night to somebody that was going for the first time this year is that this team is confident and cool. They don't let the tightness of a game get to them..well, except Xavier. At no point last night did I feel they would lose the game, it was just a little too close for my comfort. Under the former regime I couldn't have said that.

I was disappointed with the defense in the first half on Cohn. Too many easy drives in to the basket, but "In Forbes we trust" and in the second half the adjustments they made pretty much shut him down.

Good solid win.
01-25-2018 09:12 AM
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RE: Official Game Thread: Mercer (W 84-75)
(01-25-2018 09:12 AM)Bennett42 Wrote:  I would agree with the above. Not a lot of flash, but they get the job done. One thing that i pointed out last night to somebody that was going for the first time this year is that this team is confident and cool. They don't let the tightness of a game get to them..well, except Xavier. At no point last night did I feel they would lose the game, it was just a little too close for my comfort. Under the former regime I couldn't have said that.

I was disappointed with the defense in the first half on Cohn. Too many easy drives in to the basket, but "In Forbes we trust" and in the second half the adjustments they made pretty much shut him down.

Good solid win.

I would also describe this team as "business like"
01-25-2018 09:28 AM
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