Dhall
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Post by Dhall on Jan 13, 2007 23:31:26 GMT -5
Good game tonight--nice effort from the kids. A common theme in all of the games I've seen is this team tends to play better overall without Roy--don't know why, seems like it when I watch and it's a no brainer we're a better defensive team without Roy--he's just not a good rebounder or defensive player. It's going to be tough on III because Roy is a talented kid and a weapon with his size, but I've seen this team function better offensively with him on bench and there is more room to cut/spread court and use entire offense. When you don't have a great shooting team--you need to create room to penetrate and give as many open looks as you can--and it allows Jeff Green to be a threat with drive and not just a passer/perimeter shooter. It's why this style of system doesn't function well with a traditional center. Last year it was easier due to Owens and Cook's outside shooting ability and it'll be easier for Roy next year as well-with Wright and Freeman being the outside threats you can't leave open. Only thing I'd wish we'd have tried tonight was a little pressure in backcourt--but other then that, good game and anxious to see how we adjust as season continues to make Roy more of a factor or if we have to limit his minutes a bit more to make team stronger? It's not a knock on Roy--it's just how this particular team seems to function better--or at least in the games I've watched. More consistent on both ends when he's off the court. We're a better offensive team without Hibbert, but it's hard to see that we're a better defensive or rebounding team without him since Green is a poor defender and rebounder as well. Also, this was the same last year - Roy sat on the bench for long stretches and we played well. Sapp, Wallace, Ewing, Green and Hibbert worked OK tonight.
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SirSaxa
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Post by SirSaxa on Jan 13, 2007 23:32:32 GMT -5
Top Ten observations from tonight's game:
1. Pitt is really good, they shot exceptionally well today, they seemed to get some breaks and they were home.
2. The Hoyas hung in and made a big second half comeback. Says a lot for the team.
3. JT3 should have started fouling earlier in the last 2-3 minutes of the game.
4. Jeff came to play and showed how good he can be.
5. Sapp is really coming on and is a player.
6. Gray is better than Roy at this point.
7. Ewing was awesome -- especially his energy. the way this team has played so soft and unispired at times, maybe it is time -- or soon will be -- to put Pat in the starting lineup. He would fire up the team right at the start of each game to compensate for a weakness we have shown.
8. Coaching staff has to work on defending the dribble drive.
9. This team is going to have a very exciting season!
10. Feb 24, we get Pitt again at our house. I am looking forward to that one.
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Jan 13, 2007 23:35:40 GMT -5
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YB
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Post by YB on Jan 13, 2007 23:38:59 GMT -5
This was a really tough game to watch- I found myself screaming at my TV multiple times during the game, esp first half.
Everything I'm about to say, I'd like to temper by syaing I'm going up to NJ- 2 different times- next week to see the guys, and road tripping out to Cinci to see us play there too.
I think we really undervalued the worth of DJ, Cook, and Brandon (both of them). I'd rather have all three of them than any of the newcomers. The major problem here is TOs. Summers makes lots of ill-advised shots and throws the ball away; it seems like he does not thirve in a team game, his game is still too individual. Ticket will be good but isn't ready yet, and Baby Doc is clearly not ready yet. Sapp is in a new role, and has seemingly gotten worse as the year goes on. I can't get over how he stands around with the clock under 10 and watches time run down without moving. Perplexing.
Ewing has been improving a ton and also has the advantage of practicing last year.
Ultimately, we shouldn't expect anything special from the rest of this year I think. We are an ill-balanced team with not enough quick guards, VERY poor decision makers and reluctant stars in a system that demands quick thinking, ball control, balance, good defense and team play. Too many ill-matching pieces on this team maybe. Too much youth. Not enough experienced parts.
Luckily for us, the rest of our league sucks as well; and we may play better as time moves on, but the arrival of Freeman (especially) next year will really help. We just don't have enough of the right parts this year to compete at the highest level.
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Post by RockawayHoya on Jan 13, 2007 23:44:52 GMT -5
Much better performance tonight, but there are certain little things you have to do in order to beat elite teams on the road and we didn't do a few of them well enough (gave up key offensive rebounds, a couple unforced TOs in the first half, etc.) in order to steal the game.
Still, I'm pretty pleased with how we played tonight. True, our defense got broken down pretty badly at times, but I think you have to give Pitt credit; they executed offensively about as well as they possibly could tonight, and there was some defensive sequences in the 2nd half where we stepped up and they just hit a couple of tough shots with the shot clock winding down. Also, we were a bit unlucky with loose balls tonight (they just seemed to not be going our way, the one play that I vividly remember was a tap out on the offensive end that unluckily went to nobody and ended up going the other way for a breakaway dunk by Mike Cook) Just gotta tip your hat to them and move on.
I'm definitely on board with all the posters who have suggested TC needs to see more minutes, and preferably in JR's place. JR offers nothing on the offensive end (which is surprising because he was so good at Duke, why he is all of a sudden rattled now?), and although some posters suggested he was probably in there tonight for extended minutes because of our perimeter defense getting broken down time and time again, I still view him as too much of an offensive liablity to see that much time. TC gave us great energy in the first half and made two terrific cuts for layups. And he gets rewarded for that by sitting on the pine the whole 2nd half? Brutal.
I can't believe Ewing was the one to keep us in the game coming down the stretch tonight. If he can keep the kind of relative headiness and discipline he showed tonight, he'll start seeing more time. It's already hard to keep our biggest energy guy and one of our best rebounder on the bench with Egerson gone. It'll be harder if he becomes a legit consistent 4th or 5th scoring option.
Much better performance tonight from Roy and Jeff, who both had their moments, but consistency is still a major concern. They were basically facing single coverage all night, and I'm surprised they didn't take more advantage than they did. Roy had Gray pinned in the post 5-6 feet from the bucket several times and chose to pass out (against single coverage) instead of going up strong with it. Jeff did the same. The refs were calling the game very loose on the interior all night, and while Pitt's interior guys took advantage almost every chance they got, we missed a few opportunities to do the same, and it killed us in a close game. Entry passes were much better tonight, in my opinion. Our big guys did not do that great of a job getting position and going after the ball in the air; again, something that shouldn't have happened with the game being called so loose.
We had at least 3-4 charges that should've been called for us that ended up being no calls. I'm all for letting the players play, but you shouldn't be allowed to extend your arms out repeatedly to create separation and room to shoot/make a move. Terrible.
At the end of a day, a 5 point loss to a legit top 10 team in their building where they are nearly unbeatable. It hurts, but it just makes the Nova loss sting all that much more. Now we need to take care of the bottom of the league in the next 2 weeks or so.
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RDF
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Post by RDF on Jan 13, 2007 23:46:08 GMT -5
RDF you are right on....... JTIII has to figure this out... becuase if it obvious to you and I.... then he must see it..... though Packer the meat head didn't notice..... he was to busy sucking up to Florida Well it's a tough scenario because Roy is a weapon offensively against a lot of teams-how many skilled offensive 7'2 players are there in basketball--let alone college ball? Problem is, he brings nothing to other end of court and PE JR did a better job defensively on Gray--just as Jeff did a year ago--and the lack of reaction time just kills this team--how many shots did Pitt drill right in Roy's face? How huge was that offensive rebound when Hoyas were down 6 after holding them scoreless for over a minute and half and it gave them another 35 and then they score? Roy just kills us defensively and on offense in the games I've watched THIS YEAR--it seems as if this team functions better in utilizing the cutting/movement when he's out and doesn't take up space--it makes Green more effective--although a lot of Jeff's ineffectiveness with Roy is on him--he's got to learn how to step up and take charge--when you are the team's best player you HAVE to behave like it--and not in spurts. Egerson's departure was felt tonight--Mike Cook just killed the Hoyas. He just abused them on offensive end and took Summers out of his game with his talking. Good learning experience for Dajuan and I hope he remembers what Cook did/said the next time around. Rivers played for his defensive abilities more then anything--you can't outscore people if you continue to trade hoops and Wallace had a tough night on defensive end. Jeremiah played hard and wasn't afraid--which I thought he appeared to be against Nova and the pressure they brought to game. PE JR and Jessie Sapp were best players on court for Hoyas tonight--with Jeff playing well in spurts, but with his ability, I'm going to be much more demanding as a fan and hold him to higher expectations. Would've liked to see a bit more of Tyler Crawford with Sapp running point--due to Tyler's ability to shoot and he gets after it--and any lineup with Crawford and PE JR brings more intensity to court for Hoyas. Not discouraged at all with tonight's game--but going to be interesting to see how Staff reviews this tape and if they are seeing some things that are blatantly obvious in terms of floor spacing, cutting/movement of offense, and more importantly DEFENSE--which is where you have to be strong when you aren't a high powered scoring offense. It may mean a rotation of Roy like he was used his FR season, or it might be a switch at guard spots to avoid penetration--but something has to be done to make this a better team because you can't have guards getting whipped off the dribble and then a big inable to alter/bother the shots. Nobody backs off when driving at Roy--and even when he does stay at home and they miss--he often doesn't own the glass as he's got to. I'd say with Roy--Hoyas have to be a primary ZONE defensive team and when he leaves--they can go more man and utilize their length/quickness and hopefully turn some of their stops into more uptempo play as well with PE JR, Macklin, Summers, and Green all able to get out and run. Just need to find a way that works out best for your team to win--and it changes yearly. Again, it's not a knock on Roy at all--he's an effective player and very talented/skilled on offense but his skills and talent aren't best utilized with his surrounding cast this year from what I've seen. Think it'll change next year for certain but how it changes or if it changes this year remains to be seen.
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YB
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Post by YB on Jan 13, 2007 23:46:50 GMT -5
We needed Ewing to step up; we don't have enough firepower without him.
Defense was AWFUL tonight. Lots of bonehead TOs. The difference between winning and losing is so fine- just ask Craig Esherick- and you have to play with higher hoops IQ to win against good teams.
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sweetness
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Post by sweetness on Jan 14, 2007 0:12:05 GMT -5
Did anyone else notice Green limping around in the 2nd half -- not making excuses, but I think he was nicked up a bit. He started out like gangbusters -- too bad it wasn't sustained.
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CO_Hoya
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Post by CO_Hoya on Jan 14, 2007 0:17:53 GMT -5
I feel much better about this game than the 'Nova game. Not really good, but not psychotically angry. Pitt looked like a quality team tonight, and with Summers, Macklin and Rivers combining for 4 pts on 1-5 shooting and 4 of the team's 10 TOs, G'town is not going to beat a top 10 team on the road.
FWIW, this is the first time in a while that I thought Pitt played as good as their rank.
And lost in the, well, loss was a great moment in gambling history:
The line for the game was Pitt (-7), according to their Rivals message board. Jessie Sapp hit a meaningless 3 as time expired to cut the final score from 74-66 (-8) to 74-69 (-5). I hope Pitt fans lost a lot of money on that shot.
Edited to add: Looking at the box score, I think the 9 ORs allowed was likely as important as anything in this loss. Second game in a row that G'town was out-hustled, to my eye.
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Post by daytonahoya31 on Jan 14, 2007 1:33:07 GMT -5
1) I think the team really showed something by fighting their way back into the game.
2) I hope this puts the rest the notion that it's impossible to rally from a large deficit when employing the princeton offense.
3) PEII played out of his mind tonight. I hope he can find some consistency.
4) Did anyone notice how easily Jeff blew by Levon Kendall during the last minute of the game? Why couldn't he do that all second half?
5) I mean this as a compliment. Jessie Sapp is the best back-up guard in the Big East, and maybe the country. With what he brings to the table, he could be great for 20-25 minutes. But when he has to start, his effectiveness diminishes. I hope Austin Freeman can start next season and then people will see what I mean.
6) Tough night for Jon. Levance Fields is one very, very good point guard. The loss of Krauser turned out to be addition by subtraction.
7) I know that Pitt shot out of their minds tonight, but it's easy to shoot well when every shot is pretty much uncontested. This was easily our worst defensive performance of the season. Offensively, it may have been our best.
8) This team has heart. Does it have consistency?
9) DaJuan was very immature tonight. Cardinal rule: NEVER talk junk to a guy who's baking you at the other end. Cook just killed us, and it was mostly because DaJuan couldn't check him.
10) I thought JTIII coached a very good game, and I thought he was prepared. I don't know if anyone noticed, but he put in a few wrinkles. A side pick and roll, a few two-man games. I think the offense will really expand next season with more depth and better talent at the guard spots.
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OldHoyafan
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Post by OldHoyafan on Jan 14, 2007 1:49:48 GMT -5
RDF-"Rivers played for his defensive abilities more then anything--you can't outscore people if you continue to trade hoops and Wallace had a tough night on defensive end. Jeremiah played hard and wasn't afraid--which I thought he appeared to be against Nova and the pressure they brought to game"
I agree Wallace had a rough night. He could not keep his man out of the lane and this put a lot of pressure on the frontline. Last year JT3 could take him out and put Sapp in the game with Cook to shut the lane off. Rivers has better lateral movement than Wallace but is no where close to defensive player as Cook was. Of the 3 seniors who left we miss Cook the most, both on offense and defense. I think Rivers got more playing time than Crawford tonight ,because he has a better handle, not because he is better defensively than Crawford. Though the Panthers did not play a pressing defense they did play an aggressive man-to-man. Crawford would have been limited to just passing the ball as soon as he got it. I don't think the Hoyas would have won this game if Egerson was still here, but his defense, rebounding and dribbling ability sure would have helped. All in all there is no shame in this loss. Pitt is a legitimate top 10 team and we loss to them by 5 at their house.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Jan 14, 2007 1:56:20 GMT -5
RDF -- Roy brings nothing defensively? Ken Pomeroy just did an analysis that compared opponents' FG% with him in versus with him out -- and there was a huge difference. With Roy in, our opponents shot something in the 30%s...out, they were over 40%.
Just because he doesn't block the shot doesn't mean he doesn't bring anything defensively.
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KHoyaNYC
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Post by KHoyaNYC on Jan 14, 2007 2:40:59 GMT -5
I don't know. I was REALLY disappointed in tonight's game. The offense overall was very good --- i give it a B+. I thought the defense stunk. Give it a D+ at best. Too many uncontested shots, too many easy buckets, no forced turnovers, I thought we looked lazy on D. My only other comment right now is that Ewing jr. deserves more PT. A lot of it. He was huge tonight.
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KHoyaNYC
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Post by KHoyaNYC on Jan 14, 2007 2:46:15 GMT -5
I would also add that based on our team's performance year-to-date we are ranked exactly as we should be --- between 25-30. That doesn't mean we cant make a deep tourney run, I just think that's where we fall talent wise.
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Highsmith
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Post by Highsmith on Jan 14, 2007 8:33:25 GMT -5
I agree with most posters so far that this was a much more "tolerable" loss than Nova. However losing this game on top of the Nova loss makes all of our remaining games much more important. We really can't afford any more slip-ups to the next 6-7 teams we play and we need to win a vast majority of our remaining games against UConn, SU, Nova, Pitt, WVU and Marquette.
As far as this game goes, sure, we can nitpick and find all the reasons we lost and things that should/could have been done better. Every team can do that after any loss and probably after most wins. However, I felt a lot better about this game than Nova (that one still makes me cringe whenever I think about it). Against Pitt, we came out playing very well, had a few lapses along the way (how many games does ANY team not have a few lapses) and recovered very well from a large deficit in the 2nd half when we could have folded and lost this game by 20+.
To me, we played a team that is clearly one of the top two teams in the Big East right now (I am still holding out hope we are the other...no one else can really stake claim to it yet) and we played them on their home floor on a night they were playing some great basketball. The majority of teams in the country would have been blown out in this game and we had a chance to win right to the final minute or so. I still think consistency is a big key for us. If we can have an effort similar to this in the majority of our remaining games, we should win them. I think we have a great shot at beating Pitt when they come to Georgetown.
I disagree that we were out-coached in this game. Our offense was very good....we shot a better percentage than Pitt from the field, better from 3pt range and over 70% from the line. We had 3 more TOs than Pitt.....certainly not a killer. I was surprised at how close our shot attempts were- we shot 28-46, they shot 28-47. This game was won by Pitt at the FT line, as they were 15-19 and we were 8-11. This points to the difficulty we have know we've had all year- stopping quick aggressive guards from penetrating, plus the fact that Pitt had incredible ball movement for much of the game, leaving us a step behind on some shot attempts where we ended up fouling the shooter. If anything, the coaching of JTIII was part of what kept us in this game- we easily could have been CRUSHED, but adjustments were made- playing lineup changes, some different looks offensively, etc. I agree the zone was pretty useless, but as the announcers said, this is a different Pitt team than recent years.....they can shoot. And the zone was used pretty sparingly.....just enough to mix things up.
Bottom line, this game was lost on the defensive end. Our offense played as well as we could have hoped, especially against a solid defensive team like Pitt. We were unable to stop their guards, and we know that is going to happen against good, quick guards.....if it happens along with a team shooting close to 60% against us.....we are going to lose. What team isn't? Let's stop blaming the coaching, Jeff, Roy, etc. and just realize we ran into a very good to great team last night that was playing at or near the top of their game for most of the game. We have a defensive weakness that they were able to exploit and shot VERY well for most of the game and we came very close to overcoming that. I'm never happy with a loss, but I am proud of the guys after this game and I think this is the type of play that will win us a lot of games the rest of the way. Now it's time to keep things going and get another BIG winning streak under way.
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HoyaFanNY
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Never throw to the venus on a spider 3 Y banana!
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Post by HoyaFanNY on Jan 14, 2007 8:55:31 GMT -5
the perimeter defense was a mess, but otherwise i thought we played pretty well. the almost 2 minute possession we let them have at the end of the game was a killer. unlike nova, we lost to a better team.
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MCIGuy
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Anyone here? What am I supposed to update?
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Post by MCIGuy on Jan 14, 2007 9:01:03 GMT -5
Agreed. While I do have an issue still with III not using the overall athleticism of his team to its full extent, I can't really make many complaints about his coaching. Not when on offense the team is shooting over 50% and playing good enough defense to hold opponents to a low shooting percentage. All this team needs is to approach every game seriously and be motivated to play at a high level each time out. If we go to Rutgers and Seton Hall and play careless and lackadaisical then we can truly start pointing fingers.
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prhoya
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Post by prhoya on Jan 14, 2007 9:48:25 GMT -5
5-2... no room for error...
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Eurostar
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Post by Eurostar on Jan 14, 2007 10:00:23 GMT -5
i agree with whoever said that pitt got away with too many "cheap" offensive fouls. their guards were getting by ours on the perimeter, but too much of the time they were using their hands to do so. im not angry with the game otherwise, besides two points:
1) More Crawford - he played great in the first half and got rewarded with no second half minutes. he could have gotten some of wallace, summers, rivers minutes who all looked out of it 2) Continued inability to make the right entry pass - it seemed that almost all our turnovers were off bad entry passes. this sequence happened at least 10 times: roy sets a high pick, roy rolls to the basket and creates separation, guard doesnt pass to roy, guard waits till roy is covered again while posting up then trys to feed him "traditionally" with mixed results
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Post by bostonhoya05 on Jan 14, 2007 10:16:15 GMT -5
I don't gamble, especially not on Georgetown games, but I'm glad that those who bet against us last night with a +6 line lost on DaJuan Summers 3 at the buzzer, cutting the lead from Pitt by 8 to Pitt by 5.
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