Hartford Post-Game Thread

[DFW HOYA]

Early box score from Yahoo.

sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/boxscore?gid=200611110229

[mapei]

Yes, great crowd for an opener, as someone said in the other thread. And it was fun for me to see the new guys. Summers in particular looks really athletic. Jeff looked great at times, as did Jon. We rebounded decently, including quite a few by Crawford. We shot FTs pretty well. But . . .

We're *not* a top-10 team just yet. It can come, but a better team would have killed us today. We didn't come close to putting them away, and those "hard cuts to the basket" that I keep reading are the cornerstone of our offense were just about nonexistent. I'm eager to see the turnover count, which I suspect is high for both teams, but way higher than it should be for us. And they shot and made a lot of threes, or so it seemed. We missed quite a few, and Roy must have missed five layups.

Big Patrick has gotten really fat - ack!

[lichoya68]

hartford a well coached team with some great three point shooting very well coached no biggies.. game was close til last two minutes or so score was like two or three ahead with couple of minutes left and they missed a few foul shots at the end after hitting almost all all game.. hibbs got frustrated good game but they bashed him and he missed a few layups jeff great in spurts.. jon very steady and good threes.. eggiee good at the end hustle and one or two outside shots.. tyler alot of energy alot of bounds weak on threes.. ewing energy but a couple of fouls too aggessive.. jesse steady .. jerimah good point till crunch time and jt3 had a frosh thrwo in ball at critical time and he threw it away twice so jesse back in summers looked like a frosh not his potential.. and well thats about it hartford much better than preview theyll beat some.. need more threes maybe eggie the man or summers later.. hibbs gotta be aggressive.. ps we did better in last six minute or so when we penetrated some.. gona see alot of zone gotta solve it some threes .. some quick hits to hibbs and jef and some penetration from jessee and eggie. go hoyas close game but a win ;D

[lichoya68]

ouch ten steals to our three not good i thougth we out hustled them that stat surprised me go hoyas one by one by at least one.. ;D

[mapei]

I bet most of their steals came in the second half and most of ours came in the first.

[RusskyHoya]

Well, I'd love to be able to comment on the game but I'll have to go for a question instead:

So I try to listen to the game through the webcast and it tells me that the feed is unavailable outside the U.S. unless I am a member of the armed forces stationed abroad. Any suggestions? Yahoo gametracker isn't a very good substitute for Dr. Chvotkin's voice...

[IlladelpHoya]

First game thoughts:

1) Dajuan Summers is HUGE.
2) Our shooting is not where it needs to be at all.
3) Hibbert looks good, but MUST finish stronger. He had a handful of missed 2 footers off the glass that could have easily been slammed home.
4) No Ticket ... looks like he's number 10 on the bench right now.
5) We will not have a winning record in the Big East if Jeff Green has 6 TOs per game. He was strong on the boards, though.
6) Wallace looked very good for the first game ... if he can continue to keep the TOs down and shoot well, we will be in good shape (because Rivers is not there yet)
7) Great crowd for a game against an America East team.
8) Patrick Ewing Jr's jersey says "Ewing Jr." Hilarious. Did he lose a bet?
9) His dad stole Cliff Huxtable's sweater.

[kchoya]

From the AP story:

Hartford led 39-38 on Alex Zimnickas' drive with 13:56 remaining and then was within 54-53 with under seven minutes left, before Georgetown began to take control.

It wasn't supposed to be that close. As one courtside Hoyas fan yelled, "This is Hartford, guys!"

Any one on this board?

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

To be a champion at anything you need to have a knock-out punch. We need to develop that - if we can't put lesser teams on the canvas they're going to be counter punching us all day long.

[DanMcQ]

Photos:

sports.espn.go.com/espn/apphoto/photo?photoId=1353978&sportId=41

sports.espn.go.com/espn/apphoto/photo?photoId=1353973&sportId=41

sports.espn.go.com/espn/apphoto/photo?photoId=1353971&sportId=41

...this one answers why Roy missed at least one layup - Glowiak was trying to poke his eyes out

sports.espn.go.com/espn/apphoto/photo?photoId=1353918&sportId=41

[DanMcQ]

GUHoyas.com coverage:


Game Story


Complete Box Score


Post-Game Quotes


Photo Gallery linked from recap page.

[FLHoya]

stpetersburghoya said:

To be a champion at anything you need to have a knock-out punch. We need to develop that - if we can't put lesser teams on the canvas they're going to be counter punching us all day long.

One of the things I'm including in the recap is chances we had for potential knockout blows. Beginning in the first half, I wrote down plays that were potential momentum changers/run starters, making sure to note the time and score. None of them resulted in a sustained run; the closest case saw Georgetown go on a 7-0 spurt but Hartford answer with 7 straight points of their own. The final "run" that saw Georgetown finally reach a double digit lead was as much self-inflicted stuff on Hartford's part as anything we specifically did.

All this being said, this will turn out to be a tremendously useful game for the team in the long-term.

[PopeJohn2]

I think the pre-season fears about the weaknesses of this team were well placed (i.e. outside shooting). If 2 reliable outside shooters do not develop to replace Cook and Owens, it will be a tough season falling well short of the huge expectations of this board.

Applaud the effort of the players taking the shots even though they did not fall with regularity. This is something only practice and experience can cure. It took Cook and Owens until the end of their Junior years for their strokes to blossom. I hope our squad will develop sooner.

[MJGHoya]

Macklin is probably still injured. He didn't play in the LaSalle scrimmage. I heard he has a bruised tailbone, but I believe someone else reported he has tendinitis in one of his knees.

Whatever the case I expect him to be a part of the regular rotation.

[Highsmith]

Despite the high expectations to start the season, the results of this game doesn't surprise me that much. We've got a number of guys who are working on getting used to new roles. I'd say Roy is really the only one who is in a similar role as last year. Wallace is going to be relied on to do what he did last year, plus take over some of Cook's 3pt shooting/scoring. Green's role is similar to last year, but he is even more of a focal point, whereas last year he could defer to one of the seniors. Everyone else is looking at a big increase in PT or is a freshman and in both cases, those players have a lot of adjustments to make. The guards, especially, need to work out what each of their roles is going to be and build some confidence working together in a game situation. We all would have loved a 20-30 point win, but I think it is reasonable to see that this team has some things to work on that may prevent them from "blowing away" the competition for awhile. (Please note all this is being said without seeing/hearing the game- just based on box scores, other comments and my general impression of the team to start the season).

That being said, I really hope the team has worked out some kinks and will continue to do so, as Vandy will obviously be a much bigger challenge than Hartford (at least than what Hartford was supposed to be). A win is a win and now we can move on to bigger and better things!! BEAT VANDY!!!!!

[Dhall]

All of the preseason analysis was dead on based on today's game: this is the team of Green, Hibbert and Wallace and the rest is up for grabs and questionable. Egerson and Sapp looked the best to me with Summers, Crawford, Ewing and maybe Rivers looking decent enough for the first game.

All players other than Green, Hibbert and Wallace need to (1) try and get one of those three the ball every time before looking for their own shot, (2) not turn the ball over, (3) play good defense and (4) rebound. If they do that and coach emphasizes those things to them and Green, Hibbert and Wallace make an effort to be more aggressive, we will be a great, great team. If we have these second-tier players trying to play first-tier roles (e.g. Tyler Crawford taking more shots than anybody else including pre-season All-Big East and Wooden candidates ... and missing 7 wide open three-pointers) , we are in trouble against good teams. Maybe as the season progresses somebody like Egerson, Sapp or Summers steps up consistently on offense, but all players except the big three need to be patient as do we the fans. All in all, just fantastic to start the season and with a nice win against an opponent who played quite well themselves.

[HoyasSkins]

Thoughts from the game:

I think a lot of the struggles today can be attributed to first game jitters. Obviously Summers, Ewing, and Rivers are playing their first games. But we should also realize that Crawford and Egerson are pretty new to playing meaningful minutes. Some of the sloppy play should improve against Vandy.

Jeff was the best player on the floor today and it wasn't even close. He needs to get aggressive and dominate. When he touches the ball we score.

Roy needs to dunk the ball.

Crawford didn't much of an offensive game. On the bright side, he has confidence in his stroke and will it seems like he could be a good shooter for us. Great rebounding.

Overall I don't think this is anything to worry about. We need to move the ball around better and keep Roy and Jeff involved every play. The defense has the athletes if they can stay disciplined. If our shoots fall we can be a great team.

[Filo]

I listened in. Couple of points:

My reaction during the game was for TC to stop shooting. In retrospect, JTIII does need someone to step up and knock down o/s shots, and the inside game did not sound like it was working all that great -- I guess partly b/c of the doubling up on JG and Roy all game. So maybe it was not a bad thing for him to keep going at it against a lower quality team like Hartford. Not sure why the need for all the 3s though -- weren't mid-range jumpers available?

Other than the shooting, it sounds like TC had a great game. Also sounded like Jessie and Marc had solid second halves.

Of course, I understand the points being made about trying to find some outside shooting to replace Cook and DJ, but I can remember tons of complaints last year about the lack of consistency from the outside, including by Cook and DJ.

Finally, were the Hoyas running any tupe of variation on the princeton offense>

[dikembe]

I'm not even going to bother reading the responses before mine, not because I don't value the opinions of my fellow hoya fans. But because I figure one or two fans have already questioned every aspect of the team..3 point shooting,rebounding, defense... And all I can say is its one game you cannot draw any conclusions from one glimpse of anything from a hot woman to a top ten college basketball team... at least give em a good 5 or 6 ballgames before anyone suggest were not as good as advertised. This team is going to take some time to gel, but in the end I think they will live up to expectations.

[HoyaSinceBirth]

Here are some things that i don't think have been adressed yet. 1. I think we playe d a lot more uptempo earlier on and looked good in transition despite not havign any real fast break oppertunites to score we were outleting and getting down the court very quickly to start out with and later in the game we took the slow down approach. We also did a little pressing. If we can get good at these two things i think it'll be very good for us.

As far as offense went i felt we did not do a good job of attacking their zone. We really didn't have anyone in the high post most of the game like we did when we beat syracuse at home last year. Just run a good old fashioned high low. I think we would've had a lot mroe success if we had done that.