Tribe 3 for 11 and 3 TO's. 22-6 run for Drexel.

2 points from the bench with only 3 mins left in the game. Only 4 shots from the bench. That’s weird.


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Just a very poor performance today on both ends of the floor. We have far too much individual play on the offensive end when we don't have that kind of talent/athleticism. Not sure what the staff is doing with this group. Only 1 total rebound between Wight and Harvey is woeful.

Well I liked the strategy of doubling Butler in the post. I thought we did a good job containing him in the first half. Otherwise there's not much nice to say.

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(01-16-2021 01:36 PM)mrjoolius Wrote:  Hopefully coaches are taking note. Athletically speaking, we are having a hard time dealing with CAA level teams.

This comment actually deserves a Thread of its own, but I think today's performance backs up Mr. J's feelings.

This is not a very talented team (we figured that, coming in). They play hard, but it is, for the most part, offensively challenged and certainly not deep.
It will be up to the coaching staff to step up the recruiting efforts to fill the roster with CAA level quickness (even in a down trending CAA, a team needs to have quickness to compete in the League). Next year's class looks good, but we need to make 2022 another solid year for talent. We can't afford too many misses.

Coach unhappy with the defense, too much individual offense. Focus until tomorrow's game is to watch film and learn plus rest for a better result.

What can you say...this team stinks. For the most part, our players are not CAA level players. Hard to win with no interior game to speak of...rim defense is truly horrendous. Dane and staff better be spending ALL their time recruiting, because what we have now is simply not going to get it done.

(01-16-2021 02:54 PM)billymac Wrote:  

(01-16-2021 01:36 PM)mrjoolius Wrote:  Hopefully coaches are taking note. Athletically speaking, we are having a hard time dealing with CAA level teams.

This comment actually deserves a Thread of its own, but I think today's performance backs up Mr. J's feelings.

This is not a very talented team (we figured that, coming in). They play hard, but it is, for the most part, offensively challenged and certainly not deep.
It will be up to the coaching staff to step up the recruiting efforts to fill the roster with CAA level quickness (even in a down trending CAA, a team needs to have quickness to compete in the League). Next year's class looks good, but we need to make 2022 another solid year for talent. We can't afford too many misses.

Agreed, it just doesn't appear the team has the athletic ability to keep up even what's shaping up to be a horrible year for the CAA. Most concerning, is for all the emphasis on Defense, this team is now 318th of 357 in Defensive Efficiency on KenPom. Defense takes the longest to learn at the collegiate level but I think it's reasonable enough to ask questions of what the team's defensive philosophy is and what will it take to get improvements. Is it just an athleticism/talent issue or is the system structurally flawed (as it was under Coach Shaver)? You can win a lot of games as a run and gun team (like ACC teams ex-UVA have become in the past few years) and can win equally as a team that grinds on defense and struggles a bit on offense (like a good portion of the Big 10), you just can't be a team that can't score and can't defend, which we are now.

For reference on defense numbers: last year we were 244th, and from 2019 working backwards -- 255, 335, 272, 171, 262. At least the 2018 team paired the 27th most efficient offense with the turnstile defense. This team, which was expected to struggle, currently profiles most similarly with the 2012 5-26 team.

Was this the first time we tried a small-ball lineup with Blair as the nominal 5? I'd like to see more of it. Not because anyone outside of Loewe, Kochera, Covington and Blair has, in any way, earned minutes, but just because sometimes you experiment and discover penicillin.

This team actually probably shoots better than its shot profile would suggest, but there's a ceiling to how well you're gonna do in an offense that appears to be mostly twisting fadeaways.

Yuri might be trending ever so slightly to a positive ratio of impressive plays to infuriating plays.

No one else was really worth mentioning. We're by far the less talented team and didn't execute well on either end of the floor and consequently got blown out. We'll see it half a dozen more times this year; I'll wait for the sparks of development in between.

Just finished watching the recorded game due to other obligations. No reason to use DVR space to keep this stinker.

(01-16-2021 03:39 PM)LeadBolt Wrote:  Just finished watching the recorded game due to other obligations. No reason to use DVR space to keep this stinker.

I have a 1TB DVR hard drive and this was deleted immediately.

Thanks to Bubba for posting that this game was on television. It was the first time that I have seen the Tribe this year. What did I learn? This team is not very good.

Too many careless turnovers. Too little defensive rebounding. None of the three freshmen look like the worldbeaters that this board made them out to be.

Fifth time in the last six games W&M has trailed by double digits less than 10 minutes in. Exception was last week's win over Delaware. - Dave Johnson


Yeah...I think he identified a problem area.

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(01-16-2021 06:09 PM)Tribal Wrote:  Fifth time in the last six games W&M has trailed by double digits less than 10 minutes in. Exception was last week's win over Delaware. - Dave Johnson


Yeah...I think he identified a problem area.

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I agree this is a problem. Today we were losing 47-43 with 15:15 to go in the game. At 4:07 we were losing 79-56. So we were outscored 32-13 in 11 minutes. That's what I call a gut punch. That's a pace to give up 116 points over 40 minutes. We get killed by big stretches of zero defense, turnovers, and poor shooting.

Drexel has two very good players and two good players as starters. We have one very good player (Loewe). We had 20 rebounds for the game. That's a pathetic effort.

Ayesa, Milkreit, and Stone, are a combined 20-70 from the floor this season and average a combined 8.3 points per game. That's our guards/forwards off the bench.

As much trouble as some of us gave Hamilton and Barnes last season, it's obvious they were better than what we are putting on the court this season. Let's hope we grow some of these kids this year and get a cohesive unit that can play together for a while. Right now it's difficult to see that.

(01-16-2021 03:10 PM)Tribester Wrote:  What can you say...this team stinks. For the most part, our players are not CAA level players. Hard to win with no interior game to speak of...rim defense is truly horrendous. Dane and staff better be spending ALL their time recruiting, because what we have now is simply not going to get it done.

I think you said the same thing after we beat Delaware, right?

We have a very young team and the one player who consistently shines, Loewe, is a vet who hardly played a couple years ago.

Throwing in the towel now and having tantrums is bad fandom. No one expects much of this team but us fanatics, at bare minimum, should support them through what is obviously a rebuilding year. I have news for you, if we don't get a solid 6'9 - 7'0 grad transfer or land a "big" recruit, we're going to be at the bottom next season, too. Choices made over the past 2 years, at least partially, put us in this situation...ride out the storm and try to remain optimistic.

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I don't think anyone is really knocking the long-term or even medium-term status of the program, and certainly not the coaching staff (I hope). Dane is, frankly, a no-name guy recruiting to a program which already has a lot of institutional challenges. Our current juniors, and Luke (whose development has been a marvel!), wouldn't be with the program if there had been more serious interest for them on the transfer market; the sophomores (and Wight) are...who was still available in May. Most freshmen are mediocre or worse and that included Marcus, Tarpey, Dixon, Malinowski, Burchfield and Pierce. No promises on that level of development but I'm betting Covington and Kochera wind up being good players. They didn't inherit Audige, Owens and Brown, so I'm very curious to see where they get with four full recruiting classes.

As for the current season, I think it's okay to be matter-of-fact that the current talent level is substandard for the conference and that we're more than a year away from being competitive. To me, it's not the pessimistic approach; it's the most reasonable expectation in lieu of some idea that this team is underperforming/poorly-coached when they're winning single-digit games again next year.

IMO, I think Drexel is better than other teams we've played, and had 2 guards in Winter and Walton that we were not able to defend. Luke can cover one, but not both. Combine those two with the other guard (can't remember his name) and they were really effective at stopping our driving the lane. It's possible this is indicative of a larger problem, but I'll have to see it be an issue against more than one team in order to say it's a real thing and not just a bad matchup. I don't think we're playing outside the range of expectations for a team with 3 starting freshman to play.

For example, Kochera reminds me a lot of how Justin Pierce looked as a freshman, only we didn't have to play Pierce 30 minutes a night. I think we'd be fine if we had experienced players to let the freshmen grow. We have a sophomore class with one rotation player (Stone), and a junior class with one rotation player (Blair). With normal class distribution, Yuri is probably the only freshman that would be getting significant minutes.

Other than a first half spurt when we whittled a 12 point deficit to just one point, this was a very poor game (obviously!). Way too many
unforced turnovers, lazy passes, uncontrolled dribbles, and awful defense, especially under the basket. Covington, despite five turnovers
and some invisible defense in the second half, shot well (15 points) and one day will be a solid star for us. And Loewe scored (16 points)
but had trouble getting into any kind of defensive flow.

Drexel has a smart, veteran team, the kind of aggregation that will spell trouble for a very young team like ours.

And let's hope the 6'9" recruit we've got coming in next year can play right away. Or Dane has to find a solid big man transfer.

We knew it would be tough this year and we'd be having games like yesterday against veteran squads.