A Tribe win plus Hofstra loss makes the Tribe the 1 seed and regular season champ. Any co champion talk is simply for PR and feeling good. I don't believe the NIT will bend over to reward a CAA Co champ. Pretty sure they would prefer to add in an extra middle tier ACC team.

A Hofstra win or a Tribe loss and they are the outright champ and get the NIT bid. Hofstra loss and Tribe win, W&M gets the bid. That's it.

Just win and let the chips fall where they may. If we end up with the NIT auto great! If not, that's okay as well.

Either way, it is crunch time and time to turn up the effort to emerge victorious, one game at a time. The only easy day was yesterday. Relaxation will be earned after the season. For now it is flat out to go where no W&M team has ever gone before.

I agree with my classmate that my goals for the regular season are met by being able to play rested on Sunday vs a team that had to play Saturday. That is the advantage the season was played to produce.

With our advantage it is time to become 1-9 all time in conference finals. This team is very capable of the achievement of breaking the 0'fer. That is all.

GO TRIBE!

Keys to advancing
- We love to turn the ball over. Can't allow extra possessions and easy run outs. Shoot for >12 turnovers.
- Nate and Andy need to be Nate and Andy. When operating comfortably, no team has an answer. Great players perform in the biggest games.
- Supporting cast needs to consistently score the ball. Aside from a couple standout performances, we haven't shot well in the latter part of the season. The two headed monster inside is at its best when they aren't pressing the because of offensive droughts.
- We've traveled well, and I expect that to continue.

Execute, value the ball, ride the horse's that got us here, survive and advance.

Amazing that with the Tribe's basketball history that anyone talks about the finals when the Tribe hasn't advanced past the quarters. The Tribe has won 4 games in a row, but none of them were easy, including a win at home over a team with one road conference win and another over a team with only 2 conference wins total. I am sure we all recall being confident last season having won five straight to end the season and playing a team that had lost tons of games down the stretch. That quarterfinal turned out poorly in the second half and led our AD to fire the coach and 3/5 of the returning starters plus 2 valuable other members to leave the program.

I hope for the team, former players, coaches, alumni and anyone who has had anything to do with the program that it is a successful 2 weeks upcoming. But, anyone who thinks it is likely to happen is delusional. All the other teams will be trying to win too. Talking about the finals before March 10, 2020 is playing with fire. The Tribe could easily lose tomorrow, much less a rematch with Elon. With our history and lack of successful pedigree, there is no basis to be overconfident. But, since I haven't watched the team play this year(except for the game where Marcus got his number retired), maybe this is the best Tribe team ever and fans have reason to think the tournament is a formality. In the Delaware game I did watch, the Tribe did not look like the better team and was fortunate to win. Winning 3 games in 3 days with the limited number of players we have will be difficult. Not impossible, but very difficult. According only to the stats, the Tribe was blown out at Drexel, at COC,at UNCW. They also were handled easily by Hofstra and Towson in Williamsburg. So, there is evidence to not be overconfident even if they end up with 13 regular season wins. Good luck to the Tribe and the Dukes this weekend.

Scenario:

Tribe wins CAA tourney and FINALLY gets a bid to NCAA tournament.

...but NCAA tournament is then cancelled due to coronavirus epidemic, keeping us from being able to say that we have "made it to the tournament".

(02-28-2020 03:50 PM)nogretheogre Wrote:  Scenario:

Tribe wins CAA tourney and FINALLY gets a bid to NCAA tournament.

...but NCAA tournament is then cancelled due to coronavirus epidemic, keeping us from being able to say that we have "made it to the tournament".

Thanks. One more thing for me to lose sleep over...

(02-28-2020 03:50 PM)nogretheogre Wrote:  Scenario:

Tribe wins CAA tourney and FINALLY gets a bid to NCAA tournament.

...but NCAA tournament is then cancelled due to coronavirus epidemic, keeping us from being able to say that we have "made it to the tournament".

1) Raise a banner anyway, dare someone to make W&M take it down;

2) The NCAA would lose money if they cancelled the tournament. They'll pass out $1.50 masks at tournament sites first.

(02-28-2020 02:29 PM)mrjoolius Wrote:  Shoot for >12 turnovers.

I think you mean turnovers < 12.

(02-28-2020 02:41 PM)TribePride91 Wrote:  According only to the stats, the Tribe was blown out at Drexel, at COC,at UNCW.

Agree with the thrust of your post. If there is any team that should not be overconfident, it is W&M. However - and I am not looking at the stats but, rather, going from memory - I recall that the CofC game was close and competitive until about the last two minutes. Things just spiraled out of control after that and the double digit score may look like a blowout but in reality the game was not. Similarly, at UNCW, IIRC the final score was only 4 points so that is hardly a blowout. It looked really bad out there because of our failure to break the press but we actually made a decent comeback in the last 6-7 minutes (and didn't we even tie the game or briefly take the lead once near the 3-4 minute mark?). Anyway, not a blowout. (In fact, ha ha, by definition that would be one of those "lucky" wins for UNCW, per Kenpom).

---EDIT---
Since memory can't always be trusted, I went back and looked at the CofC and UNCW road games. In the Charleston game W&M had its last lead at 13:03 but it was still competitive until about 7-8 minutes were left. That is when things spiraled out of control leading to the eventual blowout (yes, looking at the scoring, that would be a blowout). In the UNCW game, the final margin was 6, not 4 (it was 4 until 8 seconds were left when UNCW sank two more free throws). It was last tied at 13:37. Interesting that both games went bad at about the same time.

Also interesting that those last two free throws at the 00:08 mark moved the deficit from 4 to 6. So UNCW was "lucky" until those last seconds when they suddenly moved out of the "lucky" status into the "good" or "blowout" status that TITB prefers. Bolsters my point about the randomness of where a "lucky" win is determined and the very use of the word "lucky". To further point out the ludicrousness of it, just say that W&M inbounded the ball at the 00:08 mark with a long pass to Knight for a meaningless thunderdunk or perhaps someone wanted to try a long "Tot" shot and it went in .... then those 2 or 3 points would have moved the margin down to 4 or 3 points and, either way, the result would, again, have made it a "lucky" win for UNCW. So the use of the word "lucky" to describe wins of this margin is both a gross misnomer and, in my humble opinion, just plain dumb.

Hofstra up on JMU 12-6 early.

Hofstra up 25-14 @ 11:46 in 1st half.

Hofstra 36-23 7:49 1st.

Yeah, looks like we're playing for pride today

Hofstra laying the wood on JMU 50-33 with 3:14 to play in 1st half.

Hofstra is on pace to score 100, they’re not losing ...


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Wow, Hofstra has 50 points with 3:14 left in the 1st half


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Hofstra 61-33 @ half

Hofstra is hitting 2/3 of their 3-pointers ... on 24 attempts. Simply unheard of. Get it out of your system now.


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Hofstra up 92-64 with 8 minutes to play. They could hang 115 on JMU if they keep this up

Drexel up 62-61 over COC with 4:20 to go .. Drexel could move up to 7th I think with a win and Elon loss


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COC beats Drexel ... Elon is the 7 seed ... we play the winner of Elon/JMU ... Go Dukes :)


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