(POST-GAME) @Villanova, Tues., Jan. 8, 7p, FS-1 / 970 AM

[quote="pobee10" post=313839]Team tempo style. Booths 39 minutes are a lot different than Ponds.[/quote]

Don’t buy that for a second, you mean we ran faster, harder and farther than Nova? Why didn’t we get a ton of breakaways then? Both teams play at the same tempo within a given game.
 
Tough loss.

Hope Mullin will learn a lesson here. As mention by many, he has to use the bench more. The issue was painfully obvious tonight.

The good news is that we have an extremely good team and, for the most part, the staff has them playing a good brand of unselfish basketball. Just a few lapses when gassed.

When we're up by 10- 13 points and approaching a media timeout, Ponds must go to the bench. This is common practice and our coach needs to adopt the strategy.
 
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Tonight was not the night to use a 6 man rotation. They just played a hard fought overtime game on Saturday, then only 2 days off which included them having to travel. They were gassed after 30 minutes. Hopefully staff learns from this game. No reason Williams shouldn't have played at all. That's just nonsensical. Keita only getting a few minutes didn't make sense either. That's really the only thing I'm frustrated about. I feel that if we went deeper, we would've been able to make shots at the end and easily win that game. However, on the bright side, we are 14-2. I feel Depaul will feel the wrath of this loss on Saturday. This team will probably be 19-3 after the next 6 games. I'm feeling very confident in that.
 
[quote="sjc88" post=313846][quote="SJU61982" post=313821][quote="sjc88" post=313820]This was a tough road loss in a tough conference. Just a close loss. No real complaints. Effort was there. Officiating was awful once again but I have come to expect that of the Big East and NCAA.
Two things I would hope CM would work on with the team.
1-The moving screen was called on Heron again. Both Clark and Heron have committed this foul on several occasions this season. Especially harmful when they are almost always in foul trouble and we need them so badly.
2- The fouling of 3 point shooters has got to stop. They need to work on it. I wish there was a stat but I would guess we lead the league in this foul. Heck someone even put a 4 point play against us this season.
On to DePaul.[/quote]

Regarding #2, the fouling of three point shooters appears to go hand-in-hand with us guarding the 3 pointer better, in general. I don't want to just say back off, because we've seen what happens when we do that.

It's frustrating, but it's also a slippery slop to just say "don't do it."[/quote]
True but I never said don't do it. I just think it is something that needs to be reinforced as it is hurting us too frequently (or at least it feels that way without numbers). Running through shooters (as has been the case several times) is not a technique. Guys need to identify shooters and stay close enough to them to obstruct not necessarily block. I don't know just think its the attention to details that could make a difference. Oh well let's get DePaul.[/quote]

Ticks me off. This is on Mullin. He’s got to know his guys. He will. He bleeds ‘red ‘n white’ to his core.
 
Three road games against pretty good Big East teams. Each game comes down to a handful of possessions in the last 2 minutes no matter how you analyze how we got to that point in each game.

Both Seton Hall and Nova did a great job of making us take the shots they wanted us to take. Last night it seemed that over the last 5 minutes or so every time we took the ball to the hoop we were stopped or put up highly contested shots. Even our threes looked forced. In short we didn't get many good looks and never were in position for offensive rebounds.

Nova didn't appear to set the world on fire in their offensive possessions down the stretch but they got a few offensive rebounds, a bunch of foul calls on us, and inched ahead.

Very easily could be attributed to tired legs, being out coached by experienced coaches, poor shot sekection, or home court advantage that fuels adrenaline and hometown calls.

Not a big fan on dumping on our players in losses. Kind of like parents dumping on a kid for every bad grade and over celebrating every A.

Panther wrote a great piece on perspective after a big win. Would think we need to keep this loss in perspective and move on.

Team will continue to work on better ball movement late in these games, getting better looks down the stretch, etc

The good news is we played 4 big east games and as every bit as talented as those 4 opponents, and likely more talented.

The bad news is we closed out only 1 of three close games, but also 2 of 3 if you count SH as a win.
 
[quote="pobee10" post=313839]Team tempo style. Booths 39 minutes are a lot different than Ponds.[/quote]


BINGO!!!
We play at a frenetic pace up and down the court for 40 minutes
A fun way to play and to watch but very taxing on the players
They need a blow (even a short one) from time to time
We need to have an eight man rotation to give our starters adequate rest
That didn't happen last night - a major reason for the loss
Before the 4 game stretch, I said I would be OK with going 2-2
In the aftermath, I'm not - we should have won them all!!!!
 
[quote="MarkRedman" post=313858][quote="pobee10" post=313839]Team tempo style. Booths 39 minutes are a lot different than Ponds.[/quote]


BINGO!!!
We play at a frenetic pace up and down the court for 40 minutes
A fun way to play and to watch but very taxing on the players
They need a blow (even a short one) from time to time
We need to have an eight man rotation to give our starters adequate rest
That didn't happen last night - a major reason for the loss
Before the 4 game stretch, I said I would be OK with going 2-2
In the aftermath, I'm not - we should have won them all!!!![/quote]

So while we are playing at a frenetic pace up and down the court Nova is watching us, resting right? They are not playing at a frenetic pace to keep up? Conversely, if they slow the ball down, we are not slowing down on defense to cover our men, but rather running round at a frenetic pace, right? Come on, the lack of use of the bench is legit but this “we are tired” is nonsense because the two players who beat us played the same minutes our players played. And so did Gillespie, who did a great job on Ponds down the stretch. And funny, we never hear a complaint about Ponds minutes when he takes over a game at the end after playing all those minutes. We played poorly for significant stretches of the game and lost, period, end of story. If you want to criticize the lack of bench use, fine,it is a fair criticism but don’t make up reasons that defy logic. Finally, go look up minutes played; our players, individually do not average more minutes than other teams main players. We play our starting five more but all average from high twenties to Ponds at 34 minutes per game, which is exactly what Booth averages, Powell averages more.
 
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[quote="Logen" post=313859][quote="MarkRedman" post=313858][quote="pobee10" post=313839]Team tempo style. Booths 39 minutes are a lot different than Ponds.[/quote]


BINGO!!!
We play at a frenetic pace up and down the court for 40 minutes
A fun way to play and to watch but very taxing on the players
They need a blow (even a short one) from time to time
We need to have an eight man rotation to give our starters adequate rest
That didn't happen last night - a major reason for the loss
Before the 4 game stretch, I said I would be OK with going 2-2
In the aftermath, I'm not - we should have won them all!!!![/quote]

So while we are playing at a frenetic pace up and down the court Nova is watching us, resting right? They are not playing at a frenetic pace to keep up? Conversely, if they slow the ball down, we are not slowing down on defense to cover our men, but rather running round at a frenetic pace, right? Come on, the lack of use of the bench is legit but this “we are tired” is nonsense because the two players who beat us played the same minutes our players played. And so did Gillespie, who did a great job on Ponds down the stretch. And funny, we never hear a complaint about Ponds minutes when he takes over a game at the end after playing all those minutes. We played poorly for significant stretches of the game and lost, period, end of story. If you want to criticize the lack of bench use, fine,it is a fair criticism but don’t make up reasons that defy logic. Finally, go look up minutes played; our players, individually do not average more minutes than other teams main players. We play our starting five more but all average from high twenties to Ponds at 34 minutes per game, which is exactly what Booth averages, Powell averages more.[/quote]

Do the research before stating your opinion
We played 2 subs for a total of 32 minutes
They played 4 subs for a total of 66 minutes
Their bench logged more than twice the number of minutes than ours did
And all 4 of their subs played more than 10 minutes
Only one of ours did
Their bench outscored us 21-5

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore?gameId=401083346
 
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As Jack W & others have said, loss was tough because of way we lost it (blowing several nice leads). Imho reason we lost is too many second chance points allowed Nova due to offensive rebounds and 2 of our 5 starters having off games (Heron & Clark shot combined 6-20 with only 8 rebounds between them). We rely heavily on our core 5 and, while we can survive an off game from one of them, it's tough to beat good teams like Nova when 2 of the 5 have off games. Ponds & Simon playing too many minutes also appeared to hurt us at the end as they both looked tired.
Coach & players all said right things after game, except that Coach really didn't address why he hardly played bench other than to say something like "in game situations, foul trouble and didn't overthink it". Hopefully we'll get back to more of the nice 8 man rotation going forward.

Good news is we have 5 very winnable games coming up before Duke, 3 at home and on the road games against Butler & Creighton. Feel like we should take 4 of 5 which would put us at 6-3 at halfway point with 5 out of last 9 at home.
 
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[quote="Logen" post=313775][quote="Knight" post=313761]Villanova had 22 FTs vs. 8 for SJU.[/quote]

We fouled when we were down late. I realize blaming refs is a popular theme but IMO, like Seton Hall, we lost, we beat ourselves.[/quote]

Refs clearly made some bad calls, specifically in about a five second stretch, when they missed a Nova goal tend, a Nova travel and then a Nova offensive foul. But I agree, that’s not why we lost. And I’m not sure we beat ourselves if Keita and Williams had played more and given our starters more of a blow, especially when we were up in the second half.
 
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No excuse for loss, but Ponds is a bit banged up apparently. Perhaps this is something to keep an eye on for DePaul game.
 
[quote="Logen" post=313838][quote="MarkRedman" post=313836][quote="Paultzman" post=313771]Agree w Zach B
St. John's takeayways:
1. Needed to be 2-2 though tough 4-gm stretch and got that
2. Mullin needs to go deeper into bench. Don't get no Greg Williams at all. Team was clearly gassed late
3. Ball stopped moving like, like against Seton Hall. Fatigue part of that

Chris Mullin said Greg Williams was available tonight but referred to “in-game situations” when asked why he didn’t go deeper into bench. #sjubb
Greg Joyce[/quote]

Zach was spot on - fatigue did us in - ball and players stopped moving on offense late in the game. Need to strategically insert subs around the TV timeouts to give the starters a blow without missing too much game time. Keita should have played more and Williams needed to get some run. Can't get it done against a good well coached team with only 6 guys playing the overwhelming majority of minutes.[/quote]

I guess I will comment again, three of Nova’s starters including Booth, who took over the game at the end, played as much as 4 of our starters. Why wasn’t Booth gassed? He played 39 minutes, as many as any of our players. Paschall played all 40, why wasn’t he gassed?[/quote]

The difference was that for Nova, Bey came off the bench and played 27 minutes, Samuels played 16, Swider played 12 and Quinerly played 11. So even with Paschall playing 40 and Booth playing 39, they had a lot more help off the bench than our guys did.
 
My take - it was a very entertaining game between two evenly matched teams. A big difference was that VU's seniors did what you expect seniors to do, while SJ forgot what gave them the 14-2 lead (and fatigue could have been a factor). SJ will win the rematch at home. The interesting game will be the BE tournament final between these two teams.
 
Feel bad for these kids. They've played so hard in all 3 road games, but the rotation just isn't long enough and largely as a result the execution is just so poor in the last 4-8 minutes of games. It's like watching two different teams, one for the first 30-35 minutes and a totally different one for the last 5-10.

Staff is really coming up short in this regard and this aspect is on them. We are giving wins away. They have their own team so prepared to play to it's strengths and are so prepared on the opposing scouts. Problem is it's 1-2 players short of being a 40 minute winning strategy on the road and we aren't making the critical in-game adjustments to get us there. Not even close. But we aren't adding 1-2 new players this year and should therefore likely adjust the approach to stretch to 40 minutes.

6 players dividing up 195 minutes isn't going to work - rotation has to lengthen and there is obvious opportunity to do it when we build double-digit leads. You don't get to carry your timeouts to the next game - we seem to have leftovers every game which is frankly inexcusable for a team that has been as gassed as this one has late. And playing all out man as impressive as it is just isn't sustainable with this short a rotation - Jay Wright has won 2 of the last 3 national titles and he switched between 3-4 defenses probably 10+ times in this game.

Get that Jay is one of the best in the country but in-game coaching differential was painful in this one. Counted at least 3 different Nova +10 stretches including 14-4 to close game, often prompted by the right buttons being pushed. Tough to get to winner's circle allowing that to happen. We don't even seem to be pushing buttons during the game, we push one button before the tip and see where that takes us.

The gameplan understandably is to overwhelm teams with our first 5 with our spacing and shot-making ability on offense and length and ability to turn them over on defense. But there is nothing overwhelming about what's going on at the end of these games when squad is on empty. So there needs to be some thought about implementing tactics to get us home. That we've allowed this to happen in 3 consecutive conference road games with no noticeable change in approach is at least mildly concerning.

Not sure what's up with Heron but he has not been himself the last 2 games. Made his first two 3's last night and then disappeared for 37 minutes. We don't just need him, we need him to be a #2 with the ability to be a #1 for stretches. This would allow us to at least think about managing Ponds' minutes so that we have him at the end of games. Looks like he's thinking right now on offense and is getting worked on defense.

Really do love Simon, but am a little concerned opposing coaches seem to comfortable having the ball in his hands to make plays. His 4 highest shot totals of the season are in our 4 Big East games. Could be coincidence, but seems like late in games in particular other teams want to try to make him beat them. Exactly nothing against Justin if that's the case, but staff needs to figure out a way to counteract. We had 2-3 possessions in the last 4 minutes where it got under 10 seconds on the shot clock and Simon is dribbling 25+ feet from the basket, with his man way off him and everyone else in deny. That's proven a challenging fact pattern for us to convert.

All fixable but unless something changes it's difficult to see us getting to 5-4 on road, lucky to get to 4-5 just grinding these out as we are now, and there could be diminishing returns from this approach as challenges of long season wears on with thin rotation.
 
Tough loss...credit Nova for coming back after 3 knockdowns essentially as we went on 3 big runs but they got back up and KO'd us at the end. Ran out of steam and kept shooting when we were cold...refusal to drive did us in. Nova essentially has 2 players in Paschall and Booth. Neutralize them and you win the game, but obviously easier said than done. Thought that missed goaltend was a huge moment that totally shifted momentum while we were up 9 and turned into a 5 pt swing for Nova since they made a 3 (of course) right after the missed call. Didn't lose game because of refs to be clear, but they got a bit of home cooking we've come to expect especially with Nova. They got much more FT's because they understood they had to drive on us. In the huddle Mullin was pleading with the team to drive and aside from a few times they really didn't listen. Hope Ponds and LJ are ok, because we need to take care of business at home. DePaul is very tough and I think Strus will give us fits. They're starved for a win too. Hope we play angry as well after giving Nova game away.
 
Anyone who watched the game and could not see our guys were tired leaves me perplexed. I don't care how many minutes Villanova guys played, all things are not equal. If you can't see how tired our players were at the end of the game I have to question any analysis of the game made by you.
 
If Figueroa hadn’t rolled his ankle and sat those crucial minutes in the stretch, we win that game.

We were 6.5 dogs going in and we lost on the road to a team that’s better than everyone thinks. Not the end of the world.

My only concern is why Williams didn’t play even a couple of minutes. That has to mess with his head unless there was a very good reason.
 
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[quote="austour" post=313755][quote="Marillac" post=313722]We need Simon to take more threes and play a bigger role handling the ball.[/quote]


Most of us agree with your point. Your Coach of the Year, however, does not.[/quote]

Sorry I can't find the original post here but Simon taking more 3's?:sick:
 
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