RE: Tulsa
Overall, despite not getting off the dang Final Five list and not getting that first post season victory, it was definitely a solid year for us, 20 wins, lots of records broken, a person on each All-CAA team, W&M's 1st POY, two 100 point games, 48% shooting on the season, etc, etc...
As Tony said in the pre-season, when we were picked second in the CAA, he thought we might still be too young (10 of 14 players were in their first or second year) for that much praise. In retrospect, he could have been right. We got a share of the CAA title, but couldn't accomplish the two higher goals.
My opinion was that at the end of the season, our biggest problem (other than a lack of defense) was that our bench just flat out disappeared. That disappearance led to a lot of the other problems we encountered. The production we had gotten earlier just dried up when the bright lights came on (end of the season, playoffs, tourney). The shooters, coming off the bench, lost that touch of earlier in the season and the defenders did not defend as well as was needed. That was never more evident than in the Hofstra game, when we got only 36 minutes of bench help and the entire group went a total of 1 for 1, 2 points, from the field for the whole game. That was mostly because no one, who played coming off the bench, ever looked like they were really comfortable out there. That put more pressure on the starters to play extended minutes, especially critical in a tournament situation. The results were evident the night night.
In the last four contests of the year, the Tribe bench supplied a total of 170 minutes of game time out of a possible 850 minutes (10 minutes of OT). In that time they scored 29 total points. To make matters worse, 15 of those points were by Tom Schalk, so the youngsters scored 14 points over 4 games, or 3.5 points per game. Your bench accumulating 3.5 ppg won't cut it very often.
You can chalk a lot of the end of the season bench slump up to youth, inexperience and hitting the proverbial "freshman wall", but it is still a concern.
The youth and inexperience thing may be our biggest concern again next season. We are still going to be very young.
Again, in my opinion, Tot and Schlotman have to get better at running the offense and seeing the floor, Malinowski and Burchfield have to get better on D and Whitman has got to get some confidence...and about 15 more pounds.
We will have a solid nucleus in 2015-16 with Tarpey, Prewitt and Dixon. It will certainly be Tarpey's team. I, too, have great hope that Coen will supply the solid ball handling needed to fill the void and Sean will work on his offensive game (and foul shooting).
It still looks like next season will turn on how much this year's freshman class dedicates itself to improving their games in the off season. Confidence is the new "buzzword" around college basketball in response to what makes a player successful and, seriously, all of our freshmen could use a solid dose of it, not just Whitman.
Many of those guys will still be coming off our bench next season and we need to feel good that we will get the necessary production, both offensively and defensively, from them to be a winning team for the third year in a row.
Of course, a warm salute to Marcus and Tom. Good job. I wish them both much success in their lives and careers ahead.
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