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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 12, 2023 10:17:01 GMT -5
For the last several months I've thought a) DeGioia wouldn't pursue Pitino and b) Cooley would flirt with us but ultimately turn us down. While we can't say the second one for sure yet, I still feel reasonably good about both of those predictions. In these coaching searches there ends up being so much noise, but it usually comes back to what made sense all along. I also think that Micah Shrewsberry is probably just going to use us to get a better deal for himself at PSU. And when we whiff on him after a polite decline from Cooley and not engaging Pitino, the fan base will begin to meltdown. We will end up having to choose someone from the next tier of candidates, guys like Devries, Langel, and the guy who I've thought would be the pick all along: James Jones. If we're on that tier, I hope they at least talk to guys like McCasland, Kelsey and May as well. If we're going to miss on our big targets, let's at least interview a bunch of guys on the next tier and pick the one who can best articulate a vision for the future of the program. Agree 100%.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 11, 2023 18:00:16 GMT -5
I read the Fanta tweet as an overly confident person saying, "we have consensus we know who we're going to go get" and to Casuals point, it's unlikely its a done deal. Pitino is the obvious choice. Cooley or the Penn State coach seem like decent alternates. The we didn't take the bird in hand and were now scrambling scenario seems inevitable because well Jack. I think the Cooley/Thompson ties will be too much for him to resist and we will either Overpay Or Stike out Obviously, either the source could be wrong or Fanta got it wrong. But taking it at face value, doesn't it almost have to mean they have an agreement in principle with someone still playing? If it were someone not playing, they would just make the hire official.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 10, 2023 22:29:44 GMT -5
Pitino made the NCAAs twice in his first eight seasons as coach....And Kelsey once in his first seven years..... Cooley zero NCAA Tournaments in his first seven years as a head coach - worse than both of your examples. Want to keep playing? No. I shouldn't have engaged. He could win the national championship this year and you'd think he sucks.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 10, 2023 22:13:03 GMT -5
If you count the Covid year they would have made it, it’s 8 of 12 at PC. Are you really counting 5 years at Fairfield? A good coach makes NCAA Tournaments wherever he is. Look at Pat Kelsey. Look at Rick Pitino. Pitino made the NCAAs twice in his first eight seasons as coach....And Kelsey once in his first seven years.....
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 9, 2023 23:26:00 GMT -5
Tea leaves seem to be reading Pitino to St. John’s, Cooley to Hoyas. It's at least plausible that Pitino may ultimately prefer St Johns all else being equal (NY born and bred, still a BE school, Catholic school, coaching in NY area now). That would be unfortunate. I just have a hard, hard time believing Cooley dumps his hometown school for another BE program -- even given his affinity for the school and Big John. I'd personally be thrilled with either.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 9, 2023 16:56:23 GMT -5
Win or lose, quite a comeback by PC. The sort of in game adjustments and intensity we never see.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 9, 2023 12:12:22 GMT -5
I don't really understand the angst over there not having been an immediate announcement (last night or this morning). For sure, you want to make a move before any current players you might want to retain decide to go elsewhere. And, even more surely, you want to do it so that otherwise viable candidates aren't gobbled up by other programs. And failing to announce it before the season ended? That would only make sense if Ewing were in agreement and he clearly is not. I completely get that people are suspicious based on past experiences with the University but I just don't see it here. I'll join the chorus in a few days.... I get where you're coming from and think I'm generally a pretty level-headed person, but I just think this perspective is backwards. I don't think we should be asking "What's the big deal if we haven't fired him yet, it probably won't change much?", we should be asking "What is the possible upside to continuing this lame duck situation a week, a day, a minute longer?" I can't discern a single reason for continuing this any longer, in fact we've already kept it going way longer than we should have, and have felt that way for months. Our program is a dumpster fire right now. To me, you don't say "Well, so what if it's on fire, nothing too significant will be burnt if we let it go another week." You grab a hose immediately and then get to work on rebuilding.
Just agree to disagree on this one. There's plenty of reasons possibly to wait just a few days. The league may have asked you to wait. You may have been trying to negotiate a buyout and Ewing said "let's talk after the season about terms" and it's in the school's economic interest to accede to that. You may just want to do it in DC, at the school, rather than away from home in NYC. Those are hypotheticals but reasonable ones in my view.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 9, 2023 11:35:43 GMT -5
If he didn't announce last night, I don't see how this gets announced before Friday at this point, more likely Sunday. Sure didn't seem like Ewing has actually had a conversation with the Admin that he's not coming back next year. He clearly knows it's likely, but saying he'd be honored to be back doesn't project that he officially knows it's done yet. What a mess I would assume Ewing is being careful with his words because he doesn’t want to open the potential argument that GU could make that this decision was “mutual”, insodoing jeopardizing his position that he was fired and entitled to buyout. While extremely unlikely that GU would take that position, I cannot think of any other reason why he would not say “this isn’t working out.” Indeed, he probably thought 24 hours ago that there was a possibility of running the table, qualifying for the NCAAT, and parlaying that into more time. And even after game, isn't the most logical explanation for his comments that he still truly and honestly believes he can turn things around? He knows he's getting canned. That is clear from the way in which he delivered the comments. Nothing he said is harmful; nothing will change the school's ultimate decision (which clearly is going to be to fire him). I mean, AD Reed's comment in the press that he's thinking about the kids because it's been a long year rather than comment on Ewing to me speaks volumes.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 9, 2023 11:30:36 GMT -5
I don't really understand the angst over there not having been an immediate announcement (last night or this morning). For sure, you want to make a move before any current players you might want to retain decide to go elsewhere. And, even more surely, you want to do it so that otherwise viable candidates aren't gobbled up by other programs. And failing to announce it before the season ended? That would only make sense if Ewing were in agreement and he clearly is not.
I completely get that people are suspicious based on past experiences with the University but I just don't see it here. I'll join the chorus in a few days....
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 5, 2023 12:04:52 GMT -5
I think the easiest way to determine how good these guys are and which, if any, will or should be starters next year under a new coach is to ask ourselves, "which of our five starters would be a starter on any of the top five teams in our conference?" My answer? None. Now maybe a new coach and a new offensive and defensive philosophy will allow these guys to flourish. I keep thinking Heath has a greater upside than we've seen this year. And obviously a new coach who can control Spears and Murray's hero ball tendencies might elevate their game. But right now? None. No, that's absolutely not the right way (or easiest) to determine how good these guys are. You can't say "would the Ewing-produced version of these players start on another team" if your goal is to figure out whether a "different coach-produced version of these players would start on another team." Akok in my view would start on most teams. He can defend his position as well as anyone, can rim protect, and has stretch capabilities incredibly useful in today's game. It's hard to see how his skillset wouldn't be highly valued. Q would not. With the three guards it's much harder to tell. I suspect that Primo's offensive abilities are sufficient that a coach providing a tighter leash would find him very useful.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 3, 2023 9:09:26 GMT -5
There's not nearly enough consideration here for the possibility that Pitino wouldn't take it. And, of course, if that happens, we may never even know. Because he would absolutely take it To be clear...I'm in favor of our getting him. And I do think he will take it. I'm just saying that I can't be as certain as you and many others.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 3, 2023 7:56:30 GMT -5
There's not nearly enough consideration here for the possibility that Pitino wouldn't take it. And, of course, if that happens, we may never even know. My fear is that the admin knows that they have to “go for” Pitino but don’t really want him to accept, so they’ll make him a substandard offer. Lowball pay, wrong years, keep Ronny, whatever. Something that will let them say “we talked to Pitino but couldn’t make it happen, so we got Brey instead.” I doubt it. If for some reason they wanted folks to think they tried for Pitino (which I doubt) they would just say so. He may deny (especially if it isn't true!!) but since coaches deny all the time anyways it would work. But...I think that if they don't want Pitino, they simply won't offer. I don't think they'd care about any reaction.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 3, 2023 7:43:27 GMT -5
Every day that passes I get closer and closer to a “Pitino or bust” mentality personally. He is the obvious answer to right the ship. He wants to come here. It’s the equivalent of an alley oop for DeGioia. All he needs to do is go up and slam it home. But this is Georgetown. He’ll blow his Achilles on the jump, the ball will sail out of bounds, and we’ll end up with Mike Brey There's not nearly enough consideration here for the possibility that Pitino wouldn't take it. And, of course, if that happens, we may never even know.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 1, 2023 8:18:19 GMT -5
I know that one of the evergreen topics around here is whether there are any viable alternatives to the Patriot League for Georgetown, but has there ever been any serious consideration of Patriot League expansion? I don’t have any particular candidates in mind, but just having six league games is kind of a pain from a scheduling perspective, I would imagine. As yourself this: Georgetown will accept a gift from a donor to add scholarships to every NCAA sport it runs, except one. Why? The answer "it's too expensive" is a dodge. I have no real knowledge. But I suspect it is simply an example of not doing something that is very difficult, may well fail, and doesn't absolutely need to be done. Raising money for the Thompson center was hard, but it had to be done for our signature sport and the school wouldn't allow it to fail. Increasing scholarships gradually for baseball may be somewhat hard but its no big deal if it fails. Football IS more expensive. That may be a dodge but it's not completely untrue. You raise money for a handful of scholarships, doing even that may be hard, and it may not result in any meaningful improvement, given the number of scholarships at play elsewhere. I'm not justifying the mindset, but if you're an administrator and you want "wins," you may well look to other easier areas of improvement. And steer potential donations accordingly. I don't buy that there's any sort of larger plot to keep football "down." You'd just drop the program if that were the case.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Feb 2, 2023 8:56:18 GMT -5
We finally saw a team defend Primo the way he should be defended. You stay fully connected to him with your primary defender and drill that defender to not react in the least bit to his moves toward the basket. You err on the side of having a taller defender against him even if that means Primo theoretically can blow by him. You have to assume he's going to pull up at some point and shoot and so your defender constantly stays in his grill. If he continues to the hoop -- fine -- your primary defender gets beat, you help, and you trust that he's rarely going to dish and won't be able to make enough driving, contested twos. It's all easier said than done. But....last night that's precisely what they did and it worked very well.
I actually thought the defense has been much better overall the past few games. Is it because Riley is out there? Maybe. But we are more connected. Surely, we still overhelp and dig into the post too often for my taste, but it seems like our recovery and rotations have been better.
The offense is abysmal. It's embarrassing. It would embarrass a JV high school basketball coach. I saw us run a couple of new (and, honestly, inventive and complicated) offensive sets at the beginning of possessions last night. Lots of screen-the-screener and staggered off-ball screens. But the problem is that it never results in a mismatch because when Murray or Primo get the ball at the end of all the action they don't look to quickly make use of any mismatch. Instead, they start dribbling aimlessly, preparing to put a bunch of moves on, and the defense resets and reloads. Eventually the high PNR comes and we end up with the same old action. It's why the offense looked so different a couple years ago with Terrell Allen running it as a ball-moving PG. You need a ball-mover somewhere. All the screens and motion are irrelevant if it just ends with a guy dribbling at the top of the key.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Jan 25, 2023 17:01:25 GMT -5
My favorite play of the season, by far - was the back pick Primo set for Akok at the foul line. With Wahab up at the foul line on the other side of the lane, Primo's good screen freed up Akok to catch a pass on the move to the hoop for an easy basket It was an actual basketball play! I honestly cannot recall one other such play this season, at least one that was successful. It has all been Pick/Roll, drive and shoot/kick (usually shoot!), post ups, and baseline out of bounds plays that free tip 15 foot mid range jumpers. Why we run plays designed to get 15 foot jump shots is a good question, but the play does work sometimes. But the only real play, designed to produce an open shot at the rim through player and ball movement - was this back screen play last night. The other question - why would Wahab's man possibly follow him out to the foul line, rather than lay back in the lane to help defend the exact kind of play we ran? If Wahab could shoot - sure, his man comes out to guard him. But there is zero reason to come up on Wahab there. If he gets the ball - let him shoot the wide open foul line jumper, that is exactly the kind of shot the opponent should want us to take. Most teams try to run plays like this on pretty much every possession. We have executed such a play successfully once all season, at least that I can recall. I wonder what got into Ewing to inspire running this play last night? It's not like we ran many other real plays. Our offense was the same as it always is last night, outside of this one almost stunning exception. Im sure if you looked off the ball there is secondary action akin to this at least at times. But we run it so haphazardly and the guy with the ball (whoever it is) is so ball dominant they it never goes anywhere. The other thing that occurred to me last night is how often Primo gets a screen and ends up with a switch and then they re-screen and his original defender is on him. I realized last night that he doesnt want the big on him because it's harder to get his shot off. If I'm right and if that's the case, why are we doing it?
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Post by aleutianhoya on Jan 25, 2023 16:35:49 GMT -5
I said I wasn't going to post until Ewing was fired, but I actually made sure to watch this game in full as it felt like the best chance for the streak breaker. So lets do some actual old school game recap stuff: - For me the takeaway was Jordan Riley's impact on the game. He was credited with two steals, but also caused two other turnovers by fighting through dribble hand offs to get moving screen calls. He was able to drive and get to the basket and either convert or draw fouls (Free throw shooting aside). We built the lead up with him on the court, and let 9 get back to 1 while he was out and we reverted to settling for jumpers. And then re-established the lead when he was back on the court. The fact that he was buried early in the year was criminal but glad to see him stay engaged and impact the game
- Akok is the other obvious standout. The team actually ran *gasp* off ball screen action to get him some good touches going to the basket. One was a nice cross screen to get him a touch on the block. The other was a nice cut from the top of the key with a back screen from Primo and a lift from Q to vacate. I think it adds to the frustration that these types of actions were always available, but was nice to see them executed. Our attempt at continuity ball screen action? Less so.
- We played our better defenders and our defense was...better? Riley and Bristol getting more minutes than Mozone is almost too logical to work for a team that struggles with defense. 1.09 ppp isn't going to win any medals but its better than what we've done recently.
- There's been a lot of chatter about Primo long 2s...but has anyone actually done the math lately. Primo has shot 46% on longs 2s (very good for long 2s) so that's .92 points per shot. That also makes the breakeven 3 point FG % to be better than that at 30.6%. Want to guess what our season long 3 point shooting is? 31.4%, well within a margin for error where it's indifferent imo. But that includes Heath's 38% (not to mention Murray's 36% so in the Xavier game neither of those guys played). Guys shooting less than or basically same to 30.6% from 3: Primo, Akok, Anglin, Riley, Mozone. So maybe Primo's 2's aren't that crazy for this team given he can create them at will and the 3s are tougher to generate. Just a thought
- Did we get the benefit of the whistle last night? Sure. Does DePaul normally foul a lot (287th in free throw rate)? Yes. Did Tim Donaghy ref last night? No. Did the vegas spread move in hoyas favor? No. Should Ewing still be fired? Yes. Should I stop writing rhetorical questions to make my point? Probably
Hoya Saxa
Great writeup and agree with everything you've said. Couple additional quick thoughts: Really happy for the players. You could see the emotional toll it was taking on the players, even if largely an entirely new group from last year. No one wants to be associated with historical marks for futility, so glad it's over and done with and they can move on with the rest of the season without it continuing to come up in pressers, the media, etc. Agree with RHW that there was considerably less me-first / my-turn play on the offensive end last night. Looked a lot less selfish out there and the shot selection overall was far better than we've seen for most of the year. Last night may have created some trust amongst the players on the offensive end that we've not seen to date. Hoyas repeatedly shot themselves in the foot by losing Gibson in transition (both off misses and turnovers), which is kind of hard to believe considering he had 31 in the first game and lit us up from deep then too. Huge scouting report and preparation fail IMO, which is even more inexcusable since you just saw it 4 weeks ago. We did a better job of it later in the game, but still to allow it as much as it happened in the first place is a primary reason why this team consistently struggles. That graphic showing us at 30% FG and 10% 3PT in the final 8 minutes of conference games is a clear indication of tired legs and not buying enough minutes with the bench during the course of the game. Some guys looked a little fresher towards the end last night. Need to continue leveraging the bench and calling smarter timeouts (and not of the dumb variety to break up 4-0 runs) to steal minutes where possible. Do I have a whole lot of faith this will happen? Not really. But you'd hope that someone makes the staff aware of those stats so that they realize how much damage they are doing by riding the starters to exhaustion every night. Then again, did we look fresher down the stretch because of a more reasonable minutes distribution, or was it because our guys saw some shots finally fall in crunch time? We have a couple of guys who are notorious for allowing their offensive woes impact their defensive intensity and effort. You could see the energy level pick up when we saw a couple of shots go down, which is good. But it can't be acceptable to allow that to drop when shots aren't falling. End-of-game execution. 6 missed FTs (none of them 1 and 1) in the final 2 minutes of the game will usually come back to haunt you. Luckily it didn't. And I think we can scrap that football style inbounds play; its on the opposing teams' radar and isn't fooling anybody at this point. So yes, happy with the result for the players. But still a long way to go to iron out existing issues on a number of fronts, and unlikely they will be. RHW's point on Primo's long 2s is certainly correct -- he's very good at them. I guess the point I'd make is a little more nuanced and that is that I'd still prefer we try to run something that gets an open 3 (which presumably we shoot at a better clip than our overall three percentage) or a layup as a first option. And that Primo's mano-y-mano show always be a secondary option. I have no issue -- none -- with Primo always getting the ball with ten on the shot clock with essentially full authority to do whatever the hell he wants. I just don't want a fadeaway 19 footer with 20 seconds left to shoot. My favorite offensive play of the game was Primo's drive with five minutes or so left and kick to an open Akok for a three to extend our tenuous lead. Simple spacing, unselfish play. It seems silly to complain too much about offensive sets at this point (I mean, it's the least of our problems), but it seems like we either run absolutely nothing. Or....we go to the other extreme and just force a particular action. There were at least two sets in the second half where we tried for ten seconds to get the ball to a particular player to run the action instead of just moving on to something else. It just shows how little overall feel the team has in what they ought to be doing.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Jan 22, 2023 10:08:27 GMT -5
Why would DeGioia want to appease a dozen or so loudmouths on the internet? I know y'all enjoy egging each other on, convinced that your feelings are more important than Brandon Murray's, but make no mistake, the people that matter don't think much of such the kind of garbage that is spewed around here. The "why do we ever want to do something to please / answer a question from / explain something to the fanbase" attitude really has to change with this next hire. In 2022, all of that is part of the job, and doing those things is how you build trust. There's no relationship between the program and the audience because that's been the attitude for 50 years, and maybe it worked in the 1980's - mainly because there was a mutual mistrust of the media that were the middlemen between the program and the audience (Feinstein, Curry Kirkpatrick, etc were all boogeymen then). We're not in the 1980's anymore and you can now have a much more direct relationship with fans. I'd be satisfied with looking around at best practices at other programs and simply adopting some of them. That really shouldn't be controversial. Heck, you can look internally at best practices for some of it. I have supported men's soccer and baseball over the years so I'm on their lists. In season I get an email each week or two from the head coach with a little synopsis on what just happened and what is to come. It usually contains just a bit of inside information although nothing even remotely controversial. The hoops equivalent would be "we've really been working with Q on recognizing and passing out of double teams and he did a good job one possession against Xavier and got a hockey assist on an open three. Hopefully we see more of that.". Shoot, it doesn't even have to be true!!! And neeedless to say, the head coach doesn't actually have to write it or be involved at all.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Jan 22, 2023 9:05:53 GMT -5
The next hire will have the benefit of Ewing have so lowered the bar that improvement will happen by accident. Get a good hire and the improvement could be both vast and fast. I will second the thought in this way: While there are obvious problems with roster construction and overall talent on this team, I firmly believe that if the current roster simply played each game without coaching of any kind, we would have a better record than we do now. Not by much, but better.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Jan 21, 2023 16:03:40 GMT -5
We are a poorly constructed collection of parts. Nothing more. There has never been any thought to roster construction or cohesive recruiting strategy. Remember we signed 3 project centers to the same class?! It’s been throw a ton of offers out there, finish as a bridesmaid, and scramble for the next best thing or transfer. It’s literally been throw s*** at the wall and see what sticks every year. This. And now we have three ball-dominant (to be charitable) smalls that all are dribble-first, time and space to score, guys. You can't really have all three on the court together. And yet we have tried. Probably would have been smarter to have two on the court together at all times and play 30 mins each. But, uh, no. Too simple.
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