I think our bigs have defended fine this year, with the exception of Whitman taking too many fouls at times. The problem is that we allow dribble penetration way to easy and our bigs have to decide whether to step in and defend or stick with their guy.

Sheldon's passing ability is definitely missed though. Opponents don't have to worry about the back cut baskets that resulted from Rusthoven & Sheldon passing out of the high post the past few seasons and are staying more focused on defending the 3 point line. I still think we need to run less plays out of the post and let our bigs play near the basket and see if they can win 1 on 1 battles. If they can, then the opposing defense will have to collapse and that will free up shooters.

Alright ... time for some historical perspective-

http://www.tribeathletics.com/custompage...ponent.pdf

Check out the road record vs. CAA teams in general, and N'Eastern in particular.

I'll take a 2-1 trip, with road wins at ODU and Hofstra. Here's hoping the shooting touch comes back on Monday.

Monday game another critical one. NJ Alum is right...beat Hofstra and we're 2-2 on this difficult road swing and, additionally, a chance for the team to bounce back and show some grit. No, this certainly isn't a 20-win team (we'd have to go 14-2 to do that!) but there's lots of ability there and the makings of a CAA title competitor.

Don't understand the negativity, too, on Cohn: he's a fine point guard with a very good assists to turnover ration and relentless speed and hustle. With Malinowski and Omar missing almost all their three-point shots recently, Cohn's assists and presence go down because they're missing wide-open three pointers that Cohn has set up (Prewitt and Mal are 7 for 38 shooting recently with only two trifectas between them. When they're scoring Cohn looks great.

And I have no quarrel with the Whitman-Knight combo. They had 19 points yesterday and well into double figures for the season. Jack has shown competitiveness and hustle, while Knight is the most exciting big man I've seen land in Williamsburg in years and years.

Omar has turned into the big enigma on the squad. He is an elite player who, thus far in the season,
hasn't shown up. What happened to his driving scores, like the one where he keeps the ball on his hip
and sort of hooks it in on his drive? I can't remember it once. Sometimes he looks lackadasical
on the court and disappears for long minutes.

For this team to succeed we must see Omar snap out of it and again become the pre-season CAA mvp candidate he was.

Again, win Monday---no easy task at Hofstra, but winnable---and we'll feel OK about the trip. If Omar has a big game we'll feel even better.

(12-31-2016 04:11 PM)zablenoise Wrote:  My buddy made a good point. We ran our offense well. A lot of those 3s were wide open. We just couldn't shoot today

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

This is an underrated reason for bad halfs/games. Some games you just can't make baskets no matter good looks or bad, and it seems like NE is a place that happens for us a lot. When we're not getting stops, it makes it hard to stay in a game.

(12-31-2016 06:07 PM)ocfrank Wrote:  The point guard is usually the leader. We need a new one; badly. The shame of it all is that he's right there on the bench in plain view.

Yeah, please don't tell me you think Oliver or Mike is the answer. Please don't say that.

One Tribe. One Family.

Hard to argue on the loss of Tarpey. He had such a great attitude which often lifted the energy of the whole team. He was a great rebounder and an excellent defender. He was not a good shooter. Cohn is the most likely vocal guy for this year's team. As for Sheldon, he was the most ripped player on this board(look at some of the past comments). Sean worked really hard and made great strides. He really improved his senior year. Frequently, our bigs have generally made great strides as they became upperclassman. Jack has made enormous strides since last season. Nathan is already pretty good, especially for a freshman. It hurt not having Pierce yesterday. Pierce and Rowley give us additional depth and another option when Omar and Greg are not playing well. As for the shooting yesterday, many of the outside looks, especially in the first half were not good looks. They were desperation shots in a lot of instances. In the second half, the effort and the looks were better, but we still made nothing. I cannot see this team doing much unless we have consistent effort and we make shots. Even Burchfield is struggling.

Practice actually is where improvement starts. I do see significant talent on this team. Until yesterday, I thought we were seeing some significant progress in the last few weeks. Hopefully, the first half yesterday can be a reminder that is not repeated for the rest of the season. All the guys played hard in the 2nd half. Hofstra is my least favorite CAA opponent. I don't like much about the way they play and hope we can avenge our worst performance from last season.

(01-01-2017 09:08 AM)Tribal Wrote:  

(12-31-2016 06:07 PM)ocfrank Wrote:  The point guard is usually the leader. We need a new one; badly. The shame of it all is that he's right there on the bench in plain view.

Yeah, please don't tell me you think Oliver or Mike is the answer. Please don't say that.

One Tribe. One Family.

Yep, that opinion is delusional. If it were even remotely likely, they would have both played a lot yesterday, instead of Jamison Glover. Cohn, like or not, is our only hope. His best is definitely good enough.

I really hope our starting lineup Monday is Cohn, Dixon, Malinowski, Rowley, & Whitman to send a message to Omar that his play has been unacceptable.

I wish Rowley had more of a definite position. Unfortunately he is not athletic enough to be a 3 and not strong enough to be a 4.

(01-01-2017 09:08 AM)Tribal Wrote:  

(12-31-2016 06:07 PM)ocfrank Wrote:  The point guard is usually the leader. We need a new one; badly. The shame of it all is that he's right there on the bench in plain view.

Yeah, please don't tell me you think Oliver or Mike is the answer. Please don't say that.

One Tribe. One Family.

Oh yea, thats what I'm saying. It doesn't matter though whatever I say. You're stuck with Cohn until he uses up his eligibility. Omar's production deficiencies may be related to Tarpey's absence. Get ready for a butt kicking tomorrow. I hope it's in our favor.

I like that lineup

(12-31-2016 07:08 PM)WMtribe17 Wrote:  

(12-31-2016 06:07 PM)ocfrank Wrote:  The point guard is usually the leader. We need a new one; badly. The shame of it all is that he's right there on the bench in plain view.

As much as I have been disappointed with Cohn this season, I disagree. Probably the best point guard we have had in quite a while. Unfortunately he is in a shooting slump and teams are just assuming he will always pass when he has the ball.

In terms of the PG being the leader, that isn't always true. Tarpey was a great leader as a forward. It isn't Cohn's (or any leaders) job to tell the other players on the team to stop dragging their asses and show some effort. The players should know by now after a terrible loss to Hampton that if they aren't playing with 100%, just about every team in the country can beat them.

Cohn is also the player that has shown the most hustle on loose balls for majority of the games.

This is a good post. I agree with most of it. Nothing is always true on the basketball court. Speaking generally the point is expected to lead the offense, to see the floor, and to make it work. That said; he's still one of five.
Cohn is a D1 guard. His style throws off the impression of hustle. What we need at that position is someone who will carry the team in terms of playing smart basketball. Run the offense. When you have a blank in the offense; it's five on four. Two blanks; five on three, game over. Unless someone goes wild like DD in Norfolk. We need balance. We need for Knight to have a coming out party. No better chance than tomorrow.

We need people other than Dixon to start driving it to the hoop. This has been a recurring theme for most of the season, except when Cohn drives to the hoop and always looks for the kickout pass.

When Dixon hasn't gone to the hoop, it has pretty much been aimless passing around the 3 point line until the shot clock gets low and we jack up a 3. Malinowski & Prewitt have been very passive on offense a lot of games this season and that has resulted in us going through long scoring droughts. With how bad the defense is, W&M can't recover from these kind of droughts.

I'd be curious to try putting Omar in the post and letting Cohn run pick and rolls or pick and pops with him to see if that can get Omar going, since it seems that for whatever reason he has lost the ability to create his own shots.

I didn't see the Northeastern game, but I know Omar drives to the basket looking for contact. When he's not getting calls, he can go through stretches of bad shots off of drives, and that probably gets him out of his rhythm for the rest of his offense. I wish he would have been able to add Thornton's step-back jumper off a drive; that would give him a second option instead of forcing up shots in the lane.

Cohn is best option at PG by a good margin. Very good assist to TO ratio. Only guard that can consistently break pressure off the dribble and get into the lane of the bounce. He has regressed somewhat on offense , but I recall he had a slow start offensively last year too. I like Tot and think he should continue to get 5-10 minute a game.

I see two issues on defense and they're related.

1) Our guards/forwards can't stay in front of quicker guards on defense and prevent them from penetrating.

2) Overall lack of intensity and effort.

Number one was an issue last year too, but we compensated by playing good help and recover (team) defense. We certainly miss Tarpey's disruptive defensive play and hustle, but the overall athletic ability from last year to this year is similar. I think we need to play as much zone as possible and obviously play with some intensity/urgency.

We took horrible, contested 3-point shots in the first half of NU game after passively passing the ball around the perimeter for most of the shot clock. Here's what I'd like to see on offense.

1) Start games with mindset of scoring in the paint by either playing through the post or driving to the hoop (Daniel and Omar), then start kicking out for uncontested 3-point shots.

2) Seems every year (at least from Rusthoven to present) we have post players that score on 50-60 percent of their shots, but we rarely enter the ball into the low post.

3) First half at NU was some of the worst looking offense I've seen under Shaver. Way too much standing, poor spacing, lazy cuts, and lazy passes. Need hard cuts, strong picks, and be strong with the ball.

Most of this boils down to two words: Intensity and Consistency

If there's any fire in this squad it should be on display today after being embarrassed on Saturday.

Go Tribe!