Nice to see we can win a game with horrendous shooting from 3. That goes to show you that our other shots must have been pretty good ones (16-22 from 2 according to Yahoo). Now if we can cut down on the turnovers, then we should continue to be dangerous.
Last Edit: Jan 11, 2005 21:32:32 GMT -5 by HOYAPLAYA
With Hibbert struggling since BE play started, we're pretty much playing 5 men. Those five are playing very well, but that will come back to bite us eventually. Reed, Crawford, Ross - someone needs to step us in the backcourt. And we need Roy to cut down on the TOs and be the force on defense that he can be when he's in the game.
This was a good win. The kind of win you get when you're a well coached squad that doesn't panic and believes in itself. I don't think we rebounded well. We shot horrendously in the first half. We turned the ball over. Yet we left with a W - and a pretty comfortable one at that. Nice job guys.
Is it too early to start rooting against other teams? Should I be rooting for Providence to beat Nova and Marshall to beat W. VA? The Marshall/W. VA won't matter much if W. VA turns out to be a bad team, but we damn sure don't want to lose to them if they can't beat Marshall.
Actually we demolished them on the boards. Probably more a function of Rutgers being really bad on the glass, but it's still nice to outrebound ANYBODY.
Otherwise, HUGE win for Hoyas in a game that could have easily gotten out of hand without strong second half play. I am slightly upset that we didn't come out and dominate, but I don't think we can yet determine what kind of team Rutgers is, nor do we realize how good we are, but one thing we do know, we haven't lost two games in a row, and we have performed well in close games, whether coming from behind, or fighting back from almost letting a game slip away.
One last note - everyone is so down on Cook, and although his BE 3 pt. % will take a huge hit, and this was not his best game, for a game that very few people logged on to HoyaChat saw in person, I don't know why Cook is everyone's favorite player to hate. I have confidence in Cook, and while I expect him to be more consistent, I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. He has helped us win several games this season, and deserves a little more respect.
I confess I'm not sure what I'm going to write in the recap tonight about Ashanti Cook as of yet. I'm going to take my time and re-examine the box score on him.
One thing Ashanti has this unusual tendency to do of late is all of a sudden show up very late in the game (of course the last two games, who on our team doesn't do this?). His threes Saturday, his threes and his FT trips tonight, all very late in the game.
I think one of the things the fans at the games are becoming a lot more sensitive to this year are (broadly) silly mistakes and (specifically) poor shot selection. As I've said before, I'm of the school that "sometimes the best shot is the one NOT taken". Ashanti--as I wrote last time--looks for his own shot quite often, but especially in the lane they aren't always the best looks.
What he's sometimes prone to is the silly mental lapse kind of mistake--his consecutive TOs on Saturday, a lazy pass or two tonight. Contrast this with Jonathan Wallace, who everyone gives more leeway to--because he's far steadier and makes fewer mistakes. Until tonight, he also made far fewer creative degree of difficulty shots and was primarily a spot up three guy. But I think people over the past few years have been yearning for the "anti-Braswell" b/c of all the silly turnovers and shots others have committed. And I think people see Jon as the closest thing we've had.
Course, channeling your inner Braswell isn't a bad thing.
"they are calling him "beavis" vasquez on their board and have been Editeding and moaning about him all summer. it makes me chuckle. i told them a g-town education should require a more creative nickname than "beavis"." -TerpSportsReport.com Message Board
He gets props for having the assist on the biggest shot of the night for GU, as well. Hope he regains that shooting touch, because we'll need it, but nice to see contributions in other areas when shots aren't falling. DJ really is starting to look at home in the offense. It's time he put his "disappearing act games" behind him and continue to provide the senior leadership and play we need. Nice shooting and assists tonight from him.
Post by michaelpittman32 on Jan 11, 2005 22:25:57 GMT -5
|-| said:
Ahanti missed 2 ft... more than he had missed in all games prior to this....
he missed one right after the radio play-by-play mis-spoke and said we were 9-9 from the stripe as a team, we were really 8-8, and the FTs went downhill from there ...
great win though, I echo all comments about how this felt exactly like a GU game from the last three years, except we were in Rutgers position ...
Post by BubbleVisionBiff on Jan 11, 2005 22:58:47 GMT -5
SaxaCD85 said:
He gets props for having the assist on the biggest shot of the night for GU, as well. Hope he regains that shooting touch, because we'll need it, but nice to see contributions in other areas when shots aren't falling. DJ really is starting to look at home in the offense. It's time he put his "disappearing act games" behind him and continue to provide the senior leadership and play we need. Nice shooting and assists tonight from him.
Amen. Huzzah for DJ! A clutch, clutch performance. He along with Jeff, absolutely dominated the boards in the second half. Would love to have been a fly on the wall during halftime. JTIII really must have put a charge in them.
Anybody else think DJ and Jeff are starting to work well together?
We calmly grabbed our free beers and sauntered out. To add to the fun, we made T shirts that read "thanks for the memories... of kicking your AS#!" on the back along with a picture of a hand crushing an orange which we calmly unveiled in the final few minutes so the thousands of Cuse fans sitting behind us could enjoy. May have been the perfect day.--DaymondMyles
Post by jerseyhoya34 on Jan 11, 2005 23:02:22 GMT -5
One interesting thing coming out of halftime was how the players stopped their warm-ups with like 2-3 minutes to go and huddled instead. It is as if they were saying that "it is on us" for the next 20 minutes to wake up and ball.
I was not a fan of it at the time, but I liked how we found a way to win in spite of the poor showing in the first half. Also, a shout out to other students who showed up. We filled the student section and generated some pretty good buzz at our end of the arena.
An excellent coaching job by JTIII. The Rutgers guards were again physically superior and played good man defense for most of the game. Rutgers must have watched tapes of the Pitt game because their guards kept up good pressure on the perimeter in the first half and we got few good looks.
With Rutgers still up in the second half, the coach got them to take higher spreads and it opened up some driving lanes for Wallace and Bowman. I was really impressed the way we handled the game in the last eight minutes or so. Over the years we would have tried to turn the game around with defensive intensity that would have lead to players getting beat a lot leading to easy layups, opposing foul shots, and a widening lead. Not so tonight. As it was, the Rutgers guards still beat us a lot but there was more help.
Bowman had a lot of turnovers but played very hard on D and had a lot of rebounds(11). Green didn't have many numbers in the first half but he stuck with the offense, played great defense, ripped down boards-wow. Excluding Reggie Williams who was like a "point forward". Green is the most impressive forwarda I have seen since SkyShelton. Wallace was fabulous. Game turned around when Thompson brought him in off the bench in the second half. The damn kid has ice in his veins and doesn't make mistakes.
All in all, an excellent win and a game we most assuredly would have lost over the last 8-10 years