SFHoya99
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 17,896
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 13, 2024 17:03:44 GMT -5
That's not really true. Aside from that Ohio State game, those early JTIII teams were pretty ice cold. I remember in early 2007-08, when we played a high ranked Alabama and beat them, their players and coach were astounded as how ruthless we were down the stretch. And we might have won that Ohio State game if not for that bull call on Roy on the break. Our biggest disadvantage early was the NCAA tournament's reffing proclivity to limit big men. If people recall correctly, both Roy and Oden were hampered in that game by ticky tack bull by terrible NCAA refs. There's no doubt the slow pace allows for a larger upset chance. But JTIII was a very good coach that Hoya fans couldn't appreciate and actually hurt in local recruiting because they can't seem to understand the '80s are long gone. In the end, it was some poor recruiting decisions, too many transfers and an inability to adjust on defense that got JTIII, and I think a lot of that had to do with changed priorities after his wife's bout with cancer. If your team goes down by ten points in the first half of an NCAA game against an inferior foe (by rank at least) and it’s pretty much “game over” at that point because you cannot do what 99% of other top 25 teams do (go on runs by increasing the pace and forcing the action), then I can’t blame the defense alone. The defense was a symptom of III’s controlled offensive strategy. It was rare for the III teams to be blasted off the court by an opponent’s offensive production. What was more common was for the offense to stall so badly that we could not catch up. Players got tight and that got worse over the years as we started to earn a rep as a team that chokes and presumably the players had that work mentally against them when they fell behind. After this occurring a couple of times under III, one would think he would have been able to come up with strategies to combat this. But, nah, it kept happening under his watch. That is lousy coaching. People forget how dispiriting and gut-punching it was to see us as a #2 to #4 seed being upset time and time again during the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. There were numerous memories of long successful runs in the NCAA tourneys thatHoya fans in the late 70s and 80s had that those of us who arrived later never got to have under III except for a couple of instances. That hurt his legacy and ultimately his recruiting because college basketball had become a sport the public pretty much only consumed during March Madness. And based on what rdf, who was well positioned in the AAU events, told me, the recruiting was also hampered by III’s at times distant behavior and arrogant engagement. Runs and comebacks are generally fueled by defense, not offense. You can't catch up if you can't defend. And simply shooting faster doesn't really help when the opposing teams doesn't need to oblige. We had plenty of comebacks early on with JTIII teams -- the North Carolina game included. Just because you didn't feel we could come back doesn't mean we couldn't. The upsets were a problem. They aren't nearly as tied to the offense as people think. The Ohio loss, for example, was a massive defensive breakdown. They shot nearly 60%.
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vv83
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Posts: 1,333
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Post by vv83 on Aug 13, 2024 17:17:54 GMT -5
If your team goes down by ten points in the first half of an NCAA game against an inferior foe (by rank at least) and it’s pretty much “game over” at that point because you cannot do what 99% of other top 25 teams do (go on runs by increasing the pace and forcing the action), then I can’t blame the defense alone. The defense was a symptom of III’s controlled offensive strategy. It was rare for the III teams to be blasted off the court by an opponent’s offensive production. What was more common was for the offense to stall so badly that we could not catch up. Players got tight and that got worse over the years as we started to earn a rep as a team that chokes and presumably the players had that work mentally against them when they fell behind. After this occurring a couple of times under III, one would think he would have been able to come up with strategies to combat this. But, nah, it kept happening under his watch. That is lousy coaching. People forget how dispiriting and gut-punching it was to see us as a #2 to #4 seed being upset time and time again during the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. There were numerous memories of long successful runs in the NCAA tourneys thatHoya fans in the late 70s and 80s had that those of us who arrived later never got to have under III except for a couple of instances. That hurt his legacy and ultimately his recruiting because college basketball had become a sport the public pretty much only consumed during March Madness. And based on what rdf, who was well positioned in the AAU events, told me, the recruiting was also hampered by III’s at times distant behavior and arrogant engagement. Runs and comebacks are generally fueled by defense, not offense. You can't catch up if you can't defend. And simply shooting faster doesn't really help when the opposing teams doesn't need to oblige. We had plenty of comebacks early on with JTIII teams -- the North Carolina game included. Just because you didn't feel we could come back doesn't mean we couldn't. The upsets were a problem. They aren't nearly as tied to the offense as people think. The Ohio loss, for example, was a massive defensive breakdown. They shot nearly 60%. We looked helpless against Ohio's 5 out spread offense. They were getting great shots on almost every possession, and their two guards were red hot from outside. We actually had to play very good offense to even keep the game from being a complete blowout. We made a late run to at least put on a little pressure, but we never were able to defend them at all. Most of you probably remember the Julian Vaughn story. years later, he said that the night before this game - we ran the Ohio offensive sets in practice, and the D could not stop them. Vaughn said that eventually JTIII just ended practice because he was so frustrated.
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jwp91
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 6,193
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Post by jwp91 on Aug 13, 2024 17:47:37 GMT -5
Re-litigating losses from 15 years ago….we have reached the dog days of summer.
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Post by RockawayHoya on Aug 14, 2024 8:35:29 GMT -5
If we're going to talk the Davidson game, we're going to need to talk the 2-3 fouls Roy got for simply being tall. Long time ago so I may be misremembering, but wasn't there one play where one of the other Davidson guards literally ran face first into a stationary Roy's elbow to draw a foul? For a team that was so dependent on the 3, still incredulous that they shot 30 FTs in that game. Maybe one of the worst officiated games I've ever seen at any level, any sport.
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SFHoya99
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 17,896
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 14, 2024 10:25:17 GMT -5
If we're going to talk the Davidson game, we're going to need to talk the 2-3 fouls Roy got for simply being tall. Long time ago so I may be misremembering, but wasn't there one play where one of the other Davidson guards literally ran face first into a stationary Roy's elbow to draw a foul? For a team that was so dependent on the 3, still incredulous that they shot 30 FTs in that game. Maybe one of the worst officiated games I've ever seen at any level, any sport. Yes. IIRC, he also got two offensive fouls, one of which was simply just being taller than the defender.
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Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Aug 14, 2024 20:28:21 GMT -5
If your team goes down by ten points in the first half of an NCAA game against an inferior foe (by rank at least) and it’s pretty much “game over” at that point because you cannot do what 99% of other top 25 teams do (go on runs by increasing the pace and forcing the action), then I can’t blame the defense alone. The defense was a symptom of III’s controlled offensive strategy. It was rare for the III teams to be blasted off the court by an opponent’s offensive production. What was more common was for the offense to stall so badly that we could not catch up. Players got tight and that got worse over the years as we started to earn a rep as a team that chokes and presumably the players had that work mentally against them when they fell behind. After this occurring a couple of times under III, one would think he would have been able to come up with strategies to combat this. But, nah, it kept happening under his watch. That is lousy coaching. People forget how dispiriting and gut-punching it was to see us as a #2 to #4 seed being upset time and time again during the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. There were numerous memories of long successful runs in the NCAA tourneys thatHoya fans in the late 70s and 80s had that those of us who arrived later never got to have under III except for a couple of instances. That hurt his legacy and ultimately his recruiting because college basketball had become a sport the public pretty much only consumed during March Madness. And based on what rdf, who was well positioned in the AAU events, told me, the recruiting was also hampered by III’s at times distant behavior and arrogant engagement. Runs and comebacks are generally fueled by defense, not offense. You can't catch up if you can't defend. And simply shooting faster doesn't really help when the opposing teams doesn't need to oblige. We had plenty of comebacks early on with JTIII teams -- the North Carolina game included. Just because you didn't feel we could come back doesn't mean we couldn't. The upsets were a problem. They aren't nearly as tied to the offense as people think. The Ohio loss, for example, was a massive defensive breakdown. They shot nearly 60%. The Davidson loss is a good example of this. Blaming the offense in that game is silly. With 14:59 left, we were ahead 48-33. So both the offense and defense were good at that point. The game ended 74-70. Meaning, in the last 15 minutes, Davidson scored 41 points, and we scored 22. So yeah, our offense sputtered and wasn't great, but what really blew it was our horrendous defense. And that was a great defensive team. That game was too long ago for me to do a points per possession calculation, but we gave up a lot of points in that last 15 minutes. I am sure some of that was not having Hibbert playing defense for much of the game, but still. But that was a good defensive team. Even a decent defensive performance in the last 15 minutes, and Georgetown would have won the game. (And yes, I realize the retort is that if we scored 5 more points, we would have won, but the bigger point is that we were already ahead by 15. We didn't need to score like crazy, we needed to defend and didn't.)
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