Schedule is out.
Link
Easily the strongest set of opponents in a long time (go figure). Nabbed Florida State at home. Have La Salle and St Joes at home. Buffalo at FSU at home. Our ladies will be part of the Homewood Suites Classic in Ft Meyers where we will face FGCU and Cleveland State. Unfortunately we do have a non-D1 game on our schedule this year in the week between Christmas and New Years. With the long break and a tough OOC schedule, its not the worst time to schedule a confidence booster heading into the conference slate.
Conference wise we draw Delaware, Monmouth, Hofstra, UNCW, Stony Brook, and A&T twice
In easily our most expect down year in a long long time, we have the toughest schedule possibly ever. FSU, FGCU are tournament staples. Buffalo is usually top notch as well. Then in conference we have Delaware and SBU twice which will likely be top teams. Towson is the only in conference team we dont have twice that is historically good. A&T had a great year last year and we have them twice as well. There will be many lumps taken this year, I fear. Hopefully Amy has re-loaded, but there will be many new faces for sure.
this is probably an unpopular opinion and would ruffle feathers in our athletic department if they're still as sensitive as always BUT...
it was time to move on from keishana washington. terrific player. probably a terrific person. i just felt like we put all our eggs in that basket. i'm still getting emails from the women's program about what she's doing. that's nice and everything...but she's not with the program anymore and most of all...there are other players on this team. i felt like the development of the rest of the roster suffered at the expense of keishana getting her shots and points.
it didn't have to be that way and i'm mostly hoping we get back to playing team basketball. maybe we just didn't have the talent and it had to be that way. i didn't think other players really got the chance to prove they couldn't do it though.
this juco transfer amaris baker looks really interesting. obviously the biggest thing we need to replace is scoring. if 27 ppg at that level translates somewhere reasonably close at the caa level...she'll go a long way to helping us with that.
brooke mullin is a big addition if she hits perimeter shots. she might be able to do more offensively against smaller teams too. she's definitely going to give us defense, toughness, and leadership. she was one of the leaders of those villanova teams even with maddy around. i felt like we didn't always play with a lot of energy last year and she's going to help us with that for sure.
Our women start their season on Wednesday at home against Norfolk State. NFSU is projected to win the MEAC this season. They finished the season with a NET of 159 while we finished with a NET of 124. We turned over quite a bit. They are pretty young this year, but they do return one of their top scorers form a year ago in Kierra Wheeler. She's a 6'1" forward. She scored just over 11 a game while grabbing a team high 8.4 rebounds per game. Not sure we have the size to match up well against her. Saatman might be quite busy trying to defend her. They do have a game tonight @W&M so we will have some tape on them prior to Wednesday. Maybe they will be a bit more tired as well. Tough opener without a doubt. So many things to see about this team. We will be better later in the season than we likely will early on
Norfolk State- 62
Drexel- 48
Drexel always seems to struggle against MEAC teams. Their league tends to have shorter players who are very quick and very aggressive on defense. Games tend to be low scoring with a lot of turnovers on both sides. I would expect another game just like that with the winning team scoring in the 50's.
i'm going to be optimistic that we win tonight. amy's playing with mostly her own roster now and i think she'll know what to do with it.
Dragons won 51-49 against NSU on Wednesday. The Spartans also played on the road Monday, against W&M, and won that one, by 2 (in a game the Tribe gave away; they led by 20 in 1H but then brought in 5 fresh faces and NSU promptly went on a 15-0 run; the Tribe couldn’t regain their mojo after that). NSU has got to feel good about going 1-1 on the road against the CAA.
(11-09-2023 08:14 AM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ]Dragons won 51-49 against NSU on Wednesday. The Spartans also played on the road Monday, against W&M, and won that one, by 2 (in a game the Tribe gave away; they led by 20 in 1H but then brought in 5 fresh faces and NSU promptly went on a 15-0 run; the Tribe couldn’t regain their mojo after that). NSU has got to feel good about going 1-1 on the road against the CAA.
You mean Drexel lost.
Norfolk State was projected top team in the MEAC. Their forward is pretty good. We just didnt have enough in a tightly contested game the whole way. I like our balance. We will still need to find the "it" person, meaning when we absolutely need a basket, who do we go to to get it? First game with lots of questions, despite losing, I found it to be a generally positive result. Schedule is tough so we will have to learn some things quickly if we want to stay competitive in some of our other games.
i saw an article on the flohoops front page that picked us 11th in the caa. we were 7th in the preseason poll. i have faith we can develop into a much better team when march comes around. the concern i have is norfolk state ate our lunch in the post where we might have the most experience. we just haven't developed down there the way i thought.
we're playing mostly experienced players too. it's not like we're taking a hit this year for a youth movement. our best hope is that with time somebody like baker really comes into her own. mullin was forcing things since somebody had to try to score. hopefully our ball movement improves as this group gets more time together. that was always one of our trademarks.
New be it youth-ness or new be it lack of production and opportunities, having to perform we are quite new. Drexel has always been weak in the post. With the exception of Tess Brugler transferring for a year, we have always been an undersized team where any forward with height would give us problems. Its why JMU was always a struggle, because they always had height. We found ways to be successful still, and I expect Amy to find a way as well. But post play has never been a strength of our team. We don't have a good plan to cover a 6'1" forward with skill. We used double teams in the past to slow them down, so we shall see how that goes.
Agreed on the ball movement. That has always been the biggest strength that has led to baskets and good shots from 3. We have been blessed to have always had strong point guard play, so hopefully we have someone to fill that role consistently
saatman seemed even more comfortable popping threes. that's not a good thing since they didn't end well. if somebody hits her wide open in the corner with a pass...take it. she shouldn't be trying to create her own three.
i really thought jasmine would patrol the inside for us and at least be a force on defense.
i don't expect us to be an inside out team...but i expected them to at least be solid role players right now. rebound...defend...make some bunnies around the basket...hit a jumper here or there. there is still time for them to figure it out.
(11-09-2023 08:21 AM)J.B. Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 08:14 AM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ]Dragons won 51-49 against NSU on Wednesday. The Spartans also played on the road Monday, against W&M, and won that one, by 2 (in a game the Tribe gave away; they led by 20 in 1H but then brought in 5 fresh faces and NSU promptly went on a 15-0 run; the Tribe couldn’t regain their mojo after that). NSU has got to feel good about going 1-1 on the road against the CAA.
You mean Drexel lost.
Blame the stupid CAA website! Even now it shows Drexel winning 51-49 on the banner with scores at the top of the home page.
(11-09-2023 03:51 PM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 08:21 AM)J.B. Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 08:14 AM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ]Dragons won 51-49 against NSU on Wednesday. The Spartans also played on the road Monday, against W&M, and won that one, by 2 (in a game the Tribe gave away; they led by 20 in 1H but then brought in 5 fresh faces and NSU promptly went on a 15-0 run; the Tribe couldn’t regain their mojo after that). NSU has got to feel good about going 1-1 on the road against the CAA.
You mean Drexel lost.
Blame the stupid CAA website! Even now it shows Drexel winning 51-49 on the banner with scores at the top of the home page.
You're right, they still haven't fixed it. If this happened to JMU, their fans would complain and their AD would petition the NCAA for a win..."The website said it was a win, so you have to give us credit for a win".
(11-09-2023 03:58 PM)J.B. Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 03:51 PM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 08:21 AM)J.B. Wrote: [ -> ] (11-09-2023 08:14 AM)Zorch Wrote: [ -> ]Dragons won 51-49 against NSU on Wednesday. The Spartans also played on the road Monday, against W&M, and won that one, by 2 (in a game the Tribe gave away; they led by 20 in 1H but then brought in 5 fresh faces and NSU promptly went on a 15-0 run; the Tribe couldn’t regain their mojo after that). NSU has got to feel good about going 1-1 on the road against the CAA.
You mean Drexel lost.
Blame the stupid CAA website! Even now it shows Drexel winning 51-49 on the banner with scores at the top of the home page.
You're right, they still haven't fixed it. If this happened to JMU, their fans would complain and their AD would petition the NCAA for a win..."The website said it was a win, so you have to give us credit for a win".
Oh, so true!
In other news, Florida State beat Tennessee last night in a thriller. Not sure our history but I am guessing when they come to the DAC they will be the highest ranked team ever to step foot into the DAC. Hope we are already working on selling that game and having the DAC full and students going crazy (even if the result will be very bad), but showcase ourselves well
Our women have their game against La Salle tonight. Hope to see a good result here. We tend to struggle with them so I expect it to be a low scoring slug it out game. Not sure I have confidence yet in this squad. I think we drop this one by 5
Surprisingly, we are 7.5 point favorites tonight
i was worried the cupboard was getting bare and then amy mallon rolls out laine mcgurk. she's having as good a game as i've ever seen from anybody in our program this early in her career. she does little stuff like rebound too. i'm not dumb enough to call her the next marginean or washington...but she has a chance to makes us forget about lavelle pretty fast.
god bless the women's program. we go up against the preseason #12 in the a-10 as the preseason #7 in the caa...and completely destroy them.
Absolutely great effort. I did not see this coming for sure. Every time we have doubts the women step up and remind us the quality we are used to seeing. Great win all around. So many positives to take from this one and build on
we battled yesterday and got as good a result as we can expect at this point. we were actually more competitive yesterday than we were on hawk hill last year. st. joe's is a really tough matchup with their bigs. one of them #4 let us off the hook by trying to shoot threes. they almost had to delay the start of the second half because she wanted to hit 1 more three before the 2nd half and it took her about 5 tries to do it. once their guards got going with some jump shots we were pretty much finished.