Kenner QFs: Turnoverfest! RECAP

[FLHoya]

Garbage time started early tonight.

You know what. I'm gonna try something.

I didn't see the previous Tombs vs. Bulldogs game cause I was in Florida for my birthday. But I read about it thanks to MCIGuy's recap.

So for the next part of this recap, what you see in italics is taken from MCIGuy's recap of the previous Tombs vs. Bulldogs game, and the bold is what I saw tonight.

That's his thread:

hoyatalk2.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1153704467

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.


Eh, I don't watch America's Got Talent so this was the best thing going for me tonight I suppose.

Bulldogs 64 Tombs 63

Bulldogs 65 Tombs 63

Actually let me start off with what is wrong; the bad drugs someone took before designing these uniforms. The ones wore by the four teams in the previous two games weren’t that offensive. But the outfits that players on the Tombs and the Bulldogs were forced (obviously at gunpoint) to put on…well…the horror. Words can’t really explain the garish orange (Bulldogs) and purple [or blue?] (Tombs) colors. Lets just say imagine large Fantaa soda cans with arms and legs.


I imagined them as ten Tootsie Pops. How many turnovers does it take to get to the center of a fan's insanity?

The Tombs got off to a such strong start that you’d thought the team was going to put their opponent away quickly. We’re talking about 22 to 9 here, folks. Game looked over.


17 to 0 here, folks. I was talking with 007 about his taste in print t-shirts at one point this game was so over.

No one passes the “athletic” look test for this KL season like this current Tombs squad. They looked in another league compare to the other teams that I witnessed on Saturday. But they don’t play smart at times, they are often too sloppy and they don’t have a killer’s instinct. By halftime the Bulldogs had closed the score to 29 – 26. I could tell the boys were in trouble.

Summers in particular caught my eye a few times in the first half for brief flashes, he just looks so smooth at times dribbling through traffice. Macklin was having quite a game athletically as well.

But the DO NOT PLAY SMART AT TIMES, they are--what's a word stronger than often?--sloppy, and they play with all the intensity of the Firemen's team deliberately tanking the end of regulation in a charity game to give the fans an extra five minutes of show.

By halftime the score wasn't much closer, 38-23 Tombs. But you could tell the Tombs wasn't into it and might be in trouble.

Macklin tipped in a Rivers’ miss to start off the second half. Shortly after Macklin scored the next two points with a followup dunk. Then the games grows tight with the dogs cutting it to 37-35. As the half progresses the lead starts to change hands.

Green started the second half out with a fierce block. Shortly after the Tombs turned the ball over on approximately the next 23,433,754 possessions. In almost 16 minutes of clock time to open the second half the Tombs only scored 11 points. Then the game grows tight with the Dogs leading 50-49 with 6 plus minutes to go as the Tombs (specifically, Jeff) calls timeout.

As the game’s outcome hangs in the balance, Green, interesting enough, takes over even more of the ball handling responsibilities.

As the game's outcome hangs in the balance, Green, not surprisingly, takes the ball to the post on about 3 straight possessions and Wallace takes over even more of the ball handling responsibilities.

With under two minutes left in the game and the Tombs down 61-59 and the Bulldogs having possession of the ball, Green makes what appeared to be the key play in the game. He steals the ball around halfcourt, drives towards the basket and lays the ball in while getting fouled. 61-59.

With about four minutes left in the game and the Tombs up 52-50 and the Bulldogs having possession of the ball, Green makes what appeared to be the key play in the game. He gets the ball around halfcourt, drives towards the basket and delivers a fierce one-handed monster dunk while getting fouled. 55-50

Not too long later, Jeff breaks a tie game by knocking down both of his three point attempts to put up his Tombs 63-61.

Not too long later (with 1:13 to go) Jeff breaks a tie game with an And-1 in the post.

But with under 20 seconds left someone on the Bulldogs pulls up and take a long three point shot with a defender rushing out on him. Game is now 64-63. On a runout Jeff tries to throw a bounce pass to Wallace for a layup but a defender deflects the ball out of bounds. With little time left Green puts the ball in his hands and pulls up for a jumpshot that just misses. Game over. Another defeat for the Tombs.


But with 12.3 seconds left (and Tombs up 1) someone on the Bulldogs fouls Summers to put him in a 1-and-1. Summers misses the front end. With under a second left someone on the Bulldogs pulls up and takes a long three point shot with a defender rushing out on him. Game is now 65-63. There is no runout. Game over. Suddenly everyone's free for Pizzeria Uno on Friday night.

As mentioned in an earlier post if the Tombs could grab rebounds and loose balls they would have won this game easily.

Consider it mentioned here as well.

AHEAD: More PLAYER EVALS and less PLAGIARISM and CHEAP RECAP GIMMICKS.

[SFHoya99]

I know it is Summer League and so the turnovers are expected, but I'm disappointed in the lack of rebounding. Jeff, Mack and Summers should own the boards.

[FLHoya]

sfhoya99 said:

I know it is Summer League and so the turnovers are expected, but I'm disappointed in the lack of rebounding. Jeff, Mack and Summers should own the boards.

To be fair, Macklin had a double-double with 20 and 11, and grabbed six boards in the second half. But that six represents over half of the 11 I counted from The Tombs (excluding Weingarten), and to be perfectly objective...it was very latter-era Esherickean in the way it played out, and I'll leave it @ that for a while.

[FLHoya]

PLAYER EVALS (with stats written on a folded up sheet of legal pad in a language indecipherable to everyone around me...call me crazy, but 2 = a basket, 3 = a 3, X = a miss, R = a rebound, and so on seems pretty easy. Although it does end up looking like a Playstation cheat code by the end).

Jeff Green 11 pts, 4-9, 0-1 from 3, 3-4 FT, 6 RBs, 1 A, 1 fierce block.

Jeff missed a large chunk of the second half due to foul trouble (look, I'm not gonna belabor this point and be a sore loser, but one of the refs...has manboobs, and it's still in doubt whether he's capable of raising his arms over waist level. I'm still operating under the theory that he calls fouls to give himself breathers.). It's a rather curious commentary on this game that I only have four notes on Jeff taken during the game, and one of them alludes to him calling the timeout when the Tombs went down 50-49, a move widely seen by the friends with me as the smartest play a Tombs player had made for about half an hour.

In the final minutes when he did return, Jeff decided to put on the go-to-guy cape and go at it from the post, with the And-1 resulting on the first chance and a leaner miss on the second. A little forced for sure, but one wonders if not for a lack of ANY CONSISTENT HALFCOURT OFFENSE in the second half whether Jeff could have used this to advantage all game long.

Not as much ballhandling from him today btw, whether on the point or from the post...in part cause of foul trouble. But that job left to the guards.

Here's one now:

Jonathan Wallace: 18 points, 3-7, 4-6 from 3, 0-1FT, 2 RBs, 1 steal.

As far as his skill set, he hit the same points he's been working on during the summer: mid-range pull-ups, a transition pull-up game, and more aggressive floaters in the lane.

It should be noted however that he was the dominant ball handler throughout the disastrous second half. I didn't keep turnover stats and honestly I stopped counting cause of the horror after a while. Anything's in play guess-wise: I wouldn't say 15 TOs in the half is too far out there. Everyone was an offender, and perhaps Wallace not as badly as others. But there were some critical trouble spots as Bulldogs went hyper-full court press on Tombs in the second half and the Tombs missed several press breaker chances (the diagonal pass extremely lacking, and here Wallace and Rivers are at fault many times).

Dajuan Summers 11 pts, 3-8, 3-5 FTs, 5 RBs, 2A, 1S

This was a tale of two halves. In the first, Dajuan played more under control, as alluded to before showed very fluid movement in transition and in his several opprtunities to explore the dribbling possibilities.

The second half was an absolute train wreck. Everything hoyaboy said in the other thread is true. Nothing going on the offensive end, ugly shots, looked out of control. Lots of turnovers, again too many to count but one of many Tombs victims of poor spacing on 2 on 1 and waiting too long to pass off in the interior game, getting right up into an opponents gut then wussing out and trying the unsuccessful wraparound.

For the SECOND half: 0 pts, 0-4, 0-1 from 3, 0-1 FT.

And oooooooohhhhh the FT. Up 1 with 12 seconds to go and he missed the front end of a 1 and 1. Bulldogs nail the 3 at the buzzer and win.

Vernon Macklin: 20 points, 9-10, 2-6 FT, 11RBs, 1A, 4B.

So here was the player of the night, and really the only one who did much to distinguish himself at times. Reverses and dunks the order of the day for large part, a FIERCE follow dunk off Green's miss in the final minutes. Showed impressive athleticism on both end of the court, if not even close to the polish Dajuan Summers is capable of. Analogies to Roy's developmental curve are appropriate, in that he's a year-plus away from getting to the full potential...perhaps a bit flatter curve with a slightly lower apex though. He's got more polish than Roy at this point, whether his game will ever be as complete as Roy's remains to be seen.

He's a terrible FT shooter though. Sorry. Just is.

Jeremiah Rivers 3 pts, 1-3, 1-2 FT, 0-1 from 3, 3 RB, 3A.

Another 0 for the second half on tonight's team. Something impressive to me on defense early on, and encouraged to see him as primary handler of PG duties early on. But Wallace soon took command and Rivers fell to the background as tends to happen this summer.

Something I noticed early on with Rivers this summer...still tends to go drive-dish or no-look when it's maybe not the best situation. Lots of missed catches and too hot to handles off of him. He CAN get the drive down, I've seen plenty of that--the dish is what's getting him down. Time in practice gonna learn him some ESP with the teammates I hope, cause there's some room for improvement AND encouragement there.

But he's not there yet and not quite ready to make the leap to the team leader/traffic cop role of the PG in the offense. SG...well, I'd like to see him SHOOT more too.


I left halfway through the Electrolite-2 (Gatorades) vs. DC Jammers (North Carollllllliiiiiinnnnnnnaaaaa...C'mon and Raise Up!) game with EL2 up double digits and the majority of the HB types weary from loudly yelling AND-1 and mocking the Bulldog's coach (Think Avery Johnson doing a Robin Williams routine in either a Pointer Sisters or a Tony Basil video).

The stats as I left:

Crawford: 6 pts, 2-2 from 3 (like it a lot that he's working those 3's big time this summer), 0-2 from 2, 1board, 1steal

Thornton: 3 pts, 1-1 from 3, 2 boards.


I'll see if I can make it tomorrow for the Clyde's (Back in Black) and Myers and Alterman (It's Not Easy Being Green...But It Sure Beats Being Purple) games.

[theEDGEfactor]

macklin sounds like he is coming alive at the end of the summer league

[ColumbiaHeightsHoya]

After seeing the bulldogs by accident earlier in the season, I can say that this is an embarassment. These guys are terrible. We should play them two hundred times and win two hundred times. This sounds pathetic and eliminates my desire to go over to any of the other games.

[hoyaboy1]

ColumbiaHeights, Clyde's never really puts in a bad performance so long as Roy is there, and they are the best team to watch. They don't have the most talent, but they are far and away the best team and probably average 10+ more points a game than anyone else.

Tombs has stunk all summer, and I'm not going to go over why again - did that last week. I have a few comments on Summers though, since I have high hopes for him. He has 2 moves that worry me.

First is a post up move. He gets the ball, lowers himself very close to the ground, and sort of dives at the defender/basket shoulder first. It is sometimes effective, but will probably also lead to a lot of charges. He needs to rework a go-to post move.

The other move is when he gets the ball on the wing in transition (or when he just has some momentum) - if there is a defender in front of him, he pretty much always just tries to do a sidestep to the right, again often leading to contact. He needs to go to a spin or a "pro-hop" a bit more often, or this is another move that it is going to lead to a lot of fouls - he needs to change direction more quickly.

[SirSaxa]

It will be very intersting to see how Macklin, Summers and Rivers develop their games during a year of coaching from our staff. I suspect their development will be substantial, although it is possible this will not become apparent to us due to a lack of PT.

Kenner is a great place to see athleticism, determination and resourcefulness. But it does not translate directly to performance during the season -- good or bad.

That is not to say that everyone's reports have not been greatly appreciated. They have been!
And FLHoya, the juxtaposition of your and MCI's Tombs recaps from several weeks apart was a thing of beauty.
Well done!

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

flhoya said:

to be perfectly objective...it was very latter-era Esherickean in the way it played out, and I'll leave it @ that for a while.

So in order for a team to perform like it did under CE with the players we have now you'd have to add Weingarten to the team, get rid of 6 players, get Jeff in foul trouble, and have no coach? How much things have changed in a couple of years ...

[GIGAFAN99]

I don't expect Summers to be that effective in the post one-on-one. I think he'll get plenty of chances playing within the offense and will help with his outside and mid-range shooting. Also, he's the kind of guy who just by being active pulls down boards by clearing space. But I'm not expecting post magic.

He's kind of Sam Perkins-ish. I think he can score down there when he gets an open look or against a smaller guy but he'll probably pull his man out if it's a bigger guy guarding him and take him off the dribble. It's why I want him at 4 more than 3. I think threes will get in front of him at this level but he can get around fours and face up effectively even as a freshman.

[hoyaboy1]

Summers long term future is definitely at the 3, and IMO that is where he'll see most of his minutes this year. And he is likely to be bigger than most of the opposing 3s (many of which will actually be guards) - which is why I think his post game will be important. He is a freshman, so it's not like I expect him to have fully deveoped skills - but he can't be another Bowman who never uses his height. Summers should be too big for 3s and too quick for 4s, and eventually he should be able to exploit both types of matchup.

As for his rebounding, it has been pretty lousy this summer - clearing space is something he doesn't have much of a grasp of yet. Although Tombs in general rebounded horribly and never boxed out, and I'm sure it will be better with a real coach.

[Eurostar]

thornton was 1-2 from 3 in the first half... one swish, one airball. crawford really impressed me. ive always liked him because at times he seems like the only one trying (summer league and during the regular season).. actually moving around on offense, fighting for boards and position underneath, going after loose balls, etc. it was good to see him in the 2G spot this game and really show that he is capable of handling the ball up top... he still needs some work up there, but i can see him logging some decent minutes this year as the first guard off the bench. also, his shot is about 100x better than i remember it (form-wise). they were also going in.

to add to what everyone was saying about the tombs game... it was ugly. it seemed like the go-to play in the 2nd half was for the guards to give an entry pass to macklin or summers and for them to drop it. im sure chemistry will help this, but macklin really needs to work on holding onto the ball. also, he and summers seemed to go for the swinging block on defense a lot instead of just going straight up for the block, which caused fouls and buckets. not sure if this is because its a summer game and they were trying to give the fans a souvenir, or if its just bad technique. either way these 2 guys, with some work, could be great players for us down the road... and maybe even this year.

[GIGAFAN99]

hoyaboy1 said:

Summers long term future is definitely at the 3, and IMO that is where he'll see most of his minutes this year. And he is likely to be bigger than most of the opposing 3s (many of which will actually be guards) - which is why I think his post game will be important. He is a freshman, so it's not like I expect him to have fully deveoped skills - but he can't be another Bowman who never uses his height. Summers should be too big for 3s and too quick for 4s, and eventually he should be able to exploit both types of matchup.

As for his rebounding, it has been pretty lousy this summer - clearing space is something he doesn't have much of a grasp of yet. Although Tombs in general rebounded horribly and never boxed out, and I'm sure it will be better with a real coach.

Yeah if his boards are weak, then he'll have to play three and float to the corner for the 3-pointer and look over the defender for a post entry pass. He can do both of those.

I think we'll agree that he'll have to get some 4 though so Macklin doesn't have to shoulder all the 20+ minutes at the reserve 4 especially if other teams can play "hack a mack."

[TrueHoyaBlue]

My prescription for Macklin:
faculty.washington.edu/kepeter/119/images/hand_exerciser.jpg

[hoyaboy1]

Agreed, either Summers and/or Ewing will need at least 5 minutes a game at the 4.

[RusskyHoya]

As painful as this game was from a Georgetown fan point of view, the Bulldogs/Bowie State coach made it all worthwhile. That man deserves his own show, if he doesn't have one already. Seriously, he's like a cross between Steven A. Smith and the Matt Foley character played by Chris Farley...by the end I was watching more of him than of the turnoverfest.

[Eurostar]

russkyhoya said:

As painful as this game was from a Georgetown fan point of view, the Bulldogs/Bowie State coach made it all worthwhile. That man deserves his own show, if he doesn't have one already. Seriously, he's like a cross between Steven A. Smith and the Matt Foley character played by Chris Farley...by the end I was watching more of him than of the turnoverfest.

nice comparison... ill add 2pac into that mix. he was pounding his chest and yelling at his players to "be a man". i wouldnt be suprised if he had a thug life tatoo somewhere.

[JimmyHoya]

The more I watch Crawford the more I think he is his Electro-Lite teammate--Byron Mouton.

Sorry folks, but he's just an athletic, intense workhorse with a mediocre shot, mediocre handle and "BAM-BAM" attitude. His light is just getting dimmer.

[SFHoya99]

jimmyhoya said:

The more I watch Crawford the more I think he is his Electro-Lite teammate--Byron Mouton.

Sorry folks, but he's just an athletic, intense workhorse with a mediocre shot, mediocre handle and "BAM-BAM" attitude. His light is just getting dimmer.

Your two statements are kind of out of whack. If Tyler Crawford was Byron Mouton, he'd start for us. Mouton was a good player.

[FLHoya]

sfhoya99 said:

jimmyhoya said:

The more I watch Crawford the more I think he is his Electro-Lite teammate--Byron Mouton.

Sorry folks, but he's just an athletic, intense workhorse with a mediocre shot, mediocre handle and "BAM-BAM" attitude. His light is just getting dimmer.

Your two statements are kind of out of whack. If Tyler Crawford was Byron Mouton, he'd start for us. Mouton was a good player.

Plus, he'd inexplicably be trying to milk his 2002 National Championship four years later for foul calls in a summer league game.

Not to say he wasn't a GOOD player at Maryland (and an awesome mercenary for Tombs in KL's past), but for goodness sake give it a rest.

Speaking of which, Lonnie Baxter (if you make a list of players who totally wrecked us in a game in the past 10 years or so, his performance in the 2001 Sweet 16 is easily Top 3) and his bald head/facial hair scare the crap out of me.