jumbo_peanuts
Active member
And Georgetown lost to Northeastern at home this year. What's your point?
Up Next- Monmouth
- Thread starter ccnobz
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And Georgetown lost to Northeastern at home this year. What's your point?
Chicken Little is character that always complains about how the sky is falling. The comment was not intended to call anyone a chicken. As for "being critical", suggesting we trade Branch for a big man is interesting since he played 8 minutes tonight with most of those down the stretch when we actually played our best basketball (yes, he was on the court for most of the run that brought us from 2 down to 9 up). Maybe that had something to do with having a real point guard in the game, sort of like last year when our best stretch of games was right before Branch got hurt. Jordan may be better and more explosive, but Branch still has a big role on this team.
I want to agree with you, but my experience from 2010 indicates that's not true.
We looked pretty awful at times during the non conference schedule, with losses to Fordham and St Bonnie's. And the offense really did look atrocious.
And by February we were beating Duke, UCONN and Pit
I have to agree with you on that. That was a highly unusual turnaround. I would be more than happy if we can do the same this year. I just want them to beat Penn State, so that I don't have to watch them at the Barclay's center playing in the consolation game.
Several of 'em barely post during a solid win. If they do post, then you generally get backhanded compliments.
I've also noticed from a couple of posters when a low-tier team play a higher-tier team tough, then the low-level team played well and were coached properly. But when the same scenario happens to us, then we played sloppy and weren't prepared by our coach. LOL Some people are so transparent that they should be made of glass.
Tonight we didn't particularly play well, but I was never worried about the outcome. Regroup and go from there.
Several folks on here are miserable schmucks.
Ray Morgan
Well-known member
The good news is that Dom and Sanchez played what may end up being their worst games of the year, and the team still pulled it together when they had to. The bad news is that Monmouth did not do anything special, shot poorly from 3 and was around or under 30% in the 2nd half, and still was close until the last few minutes. If Obekpa didn't get away with at least 2 non calls on goaltending and an obvious charge, then the game comes down to the final possession. Let's face it, there are real holes in this team. Shooting was better from 3, but overall this is a serious weakness. Hooper wasn't close on his misses. He needs to shoot from the 3 point line, not 4 feet behind the line. Defensive rebounding has been questionable for over a year. This was Monmouth, and they killed us off the glass. We allow penetration as often as the Ladies of Hunts Point. We don't get to the line enough, even when we have an incredible edge in athleticism.
Things are not all bleak. Greene was very good 2 games in a row. Sanchez has to be better than he was today. And he was still good handling and distributing. The pieces are there. They just don't fit together yet. Maybe they never will. It's a tough call, especially with the sour taste of this mediocre performance.
Things are not all bleak. Greene was very good 2 games in a row. Sanchez has to be better than he was today. And he was still good handling and distributing. The pieces are there. They just don't fit together yet. Maybe they never will. It's a tough call, especially with the sour taste of this mediocre performance.
Class of 72
Active member
First, congrats to Monmouth for a well played and executed game plan. They may be the "youngest team" in America but played under control the entire game and had they not thrown up some ridiculous 3s they could have pulled this game out for a win. They penetrated at will and their Soph forward was the best rebounder on the floor.
Now for SJU......we started a front line advertised as 6'9, 6'9, 6'9.
However....we never ONCE utilized our height advantage and were actually out rebounded in the first half. I think I saw the ball go inside but once, from Sanchez to Obekpa for a dunk. A total waste of height!
Our starting guards, Greene and Harrison, made sure no passes were going inside. Zero assists. I am not sure if that was the game plan but it explains many of Phil's points. Harrison came alive with five minutes left in the game.
CO was very impressive and played well except for being out of position for rebounds.
Sanchez played like a freshman. Could have posted against a small team but decided to play 25 feet out to take 3 pointers all night. Jakarr played well and did most things well.
Pointer was MIA. Did nothing well.
Phil had a good scoring game but he always slows the offense. Took more shots than he made passes.
The Max experiment is slowly failing.
Branch was his usual self....no impact on the offense and continues to be a non-factor in scoring.
Gift made a cameo but Lavin must have redshirted for a surprise Big East game yet to be played.
The coaching- Lavin was very animated and it was obvious he felt the heat by not being able to get 5 players to be on the same page with a couple of fans calling him out from the stands. I am trying to figure out if any of these players are developing with sound fundamentals. Tonight with a huge front line Lavin decided not to use an inside game. It is either by accident where players like Karr and Sanchez just go wherever they wish or by design. If by design, it will be pretty hard to get talented big players 6'7 or over to play for him.
Now for SJU......we started a front line advertised as 6'9, 6'9, 6'9.
However....we never ONCE utilized our height advantage and were actually out rebounded in the first half. I think I saw the ball go inside but once, from Sanchez to Obekpa for a dunk. A total waste of height!
Our starting guards, Greene and Harrison, made sure no passes were going inside. Zero assists. I am not sure if that was the game plan but it explains many of Phil's points. Harrison came alive with five minutes left in the game.
CO was very impressive and played well except for being out of position for rebounds.
Sanchez played like a freshman. Could have posted against a small team but decided to play 25 feet out to take 3 pointers all night. Jakarr played well and did most things well.
Pointer was MIA. Did nothing well.
Phil had a good scoring game but he always slows the offense. Took more shots than he made passes.
The Max experiment is slowly failing.
Branch was his usual self....no impact on the offense and continues to be a non-factor in scoring.
Gift made a cameo but Lavin must have redshirted for a surprise Big East game yet to be played.
The coaching- Lavin was very animated and it was obvious he felt the heat by not being able to get 5 players to be on the same page with a couple of fans calling him out from the stands. I am trying to figure out if any of these players are developing with sound fundamentals. Tonight with a huge front line Lavin decided not to use an inside game. It is either by accident where players like Karr and Sanchez just go wherever they wish or by design. If by design, it will be pretty hard to get talented big players 6'7 or over to play for him.
I can also name a couple of other St. John's teams. The 1992-1993 team didn't particularly look good in the early season non-conference schedule (remember them losing to Fordham at home) and the '97-'98 team looked a bit up-and-down during the early season schedule (remember them getting housed by 20+ points to Niagara and struggling against a poor DePaul team).
I also remember the 2000-2001 Providence team looking rather blah during the early part of the season (losing to either Maine or Brown and struggling against a couple of other mid-major squads), and then went on to finish in the upper half of the Big East and ended up in the NCAA Tournament.
I know each situation is different, but giving examples that one is not necessarily doomed due to their play in November and December.
Ray Morgan
Well-known member
Monmouth shot 11% from 3, 34% from the field, and 54% from the line. It's not like they had a lucky shooting night. They had 12 offensive boards and had 12 turnovers, as did SJU. It would be nice to shrug this off as a flat game, but this team can't afford to be flat against anyone. The way Monmouth played, they would have been blown out by an awful lot of division 1 teams. You could see Lavin's frustration during a timeout late in the game. Instead of giving in game instructions, he appeared to be demonstrating how to move your feet on D. How can these guys be so far behind the curve in their fundamentals? A very ugly game.
Class of 72
Active member
Ray, I agree this game was plain ugly but other than hoisting some stupid 3s I think their offense actually had a better flow than ours. Their little 5'8 guard was running circles around our guys and they were always well positioned for rebounds. The Hall beat them by 18 but our offense is still not organized and guys like Sanchez and Jordan do not understand their roles as yet. The one constant on this team is when Harrison is not playing well, the entire team seems to lose focus. On a positive note, Phil can be counted on to score ....... But he will never be able to run the offense and that also made us look worse than what we are against a team that played a little harder than us for 30 minutes.
Jim Spanarkle, game analyst, with a backhanded compliment to the new Big East stating that teams like St. John's and Seton Hall now have a chance to be
in the top half of the conference whereas before they could not with the juggernaut at the top in a sixteen team league.
in the top half of the conference whereas before they could not with the juggernaut at the top in a sixteen team league.
Man, credit to Monmouth. They played at such a slow tempo 1st half and it dulled us down bigtime. That is the recipe for 20 point underdogs. For as long as you possibly can slow the game down and make it possession-by-possession warfare. Once they had to effectively bail and pick up the pace we were able to come out with the W.
A win is a win. Nobody here should be that worried just yet. But the issue for me is where would we be without Obekpa. 9 freakin blocks is absurd. Without his ability to alter shots I'm not so sure we win this game. The one downfall is his shot blocking does lead to offensive rebounds which we give up in bunches.
Offensively I'm not going to knock the guys too hard since Monmouth was dragging the pace early and often. Our ball movement was the best I've seen all year despite the lackluster 64 point total.
We desperately need a guy who can penetrate the basketball. I watched UMASS earlier today. Chaz Williams is a stud. A point guard who can get in the lane at will makes his teammates around him so much better. We have lacked that for the better part of 3 years now. DLO is crafty but not athletic enough to best guys off the bounce. Greene continues to dribble the ball east-west rather than north-south. I really believe our chances to compete this year hinge on Rasheed.
All of our woes offensively stem from lacking a true point guard. Give the reins to this kid(assuming he won't get suspended again). Our best looks on offense today came on diagonal passes to the FT line extended. Teams are packing it in so deep against us they aren't even defending past the FT line!! I could be way off base with a change in philosophy from side-to-side ball rotation to giving an 18 year old the ball to do whatever he pleases but from what I see this is our best chance to maximize all the talent we have on the floor.
A win is a win. Nobody here should be that worried just yet. But the issue for me is where would we be without Obekpa. 9 freakin blocks is absurd. Without his ability to alter shots I'm not so sure we win this game. The one downfall is his shot blocking does lead to offensive rebounds which we give up in bunches.
Offensively I'm not going to knock the guys too hard since Monmouth was dragging the pace early and often. Our ball movement was the best I've seen all year despite the lackluster 64 point total.
We desperately need a guy who can penetrate the basketball. I watched UMASS earlier today. Chaz Williams is a stud. A point guard who can get in the lane at will makes his teammates around him so much better. We have lacked that for the better part of 3 years now. DLO is crafty but not athletic enough to best guys off the bounce. Greene continues to dribble the ball east-west rather than north-south. I really believe our chances to compete this year hinge on Rasheed.
All of our woes offensively stem from lacking a true point guard. Give the reins to this kid(assuming he won't get suspended again). Our best looks on offense today came on diagonal passes to the FT line extended. Teams are packing it in so deep against us they aren't even defending past the FT line!! I could be way off base with a change in philosophy from side-to-side ball rotation to giving an 18 year old the ball to do whatever he pleases but from what I see this is our best chance to maximize all the talent we have on the floor.
Frankly, a surprising conclusion on your part. I guess I am one of the schmucks because I have been right there being critical of our start. People can analyze all they want but it comes down to effort and basketball IQ, neither of which we display in abundance. Everyone here talks about how many pros we have and top 100 recruits and all the highlight plays we have; very few are willing to talk about what kind of TEAM we have. Yes, we have started to move the ball better and Greene has shot lights out the last two games. Anyone want to bet he won't shoot 80% for the year? And that is in no way a knock on Greene, it's an easy bet because no guard anywhere will. Defense and rebounding are the staples of good teams regardless of talent level. If you play hard on the D end, rebound and chase loose balls with passion and lose, so be it; you had an off-night shooting or the other team was just better. But when you get abused by a team like Monmouth on the boards, and let them take the ball wherever they want whenever they want, that is a problem. We had so much more talent then them it was absurd but we didn't have the "dirty" effort, so we let them stay in the game. Talent being reasonable equal, basketball is about which team gets the easiest baskets and the only way we get easy baskets is by running and you run when you turn a team over or board consistently; we do neither. It would seem we we could get easy baskets by going to Sanchez and Sampson down low but we don't; why, it is a mystery to me. Obekpa's blocks are great, he has a legitimate talent there, but what team that we have played so far is afraid to take the ball to the hole? One of the reasons he blocks so many shots is because our defense gets broken down so often. And players diving for blocks breaks down the structure further and leads to offensive rebounds if people aren't finishing the rotations hard when they see another player leaving their man. At this level of ball, with the amount of games these guys have played now, Lavin has to be exhorting them to move their feet on defense? I have said I have not not been impressed by Lavin so far but maybe these players just don't get it and are uncoachable. That is a huge stretch at this point for sure but anyone who thinks this group of players "gets it" is kidding themselves. Harrison spent a good deal of time on the bench with fouls last night and can anyone point out which of them was a "good" foul? He cheaply reached on his second, tried to block a shot after being backed down low by his man when Obekpa was right behind him to cover up (no communication) and tripped a guy going for a loose ball because he was standing flat-footed watching while the Monmouth player was hustling. I am not picking on Harrison, his shots obviously helped bail us out and he has just as obviously worked on his anger problem and thiat is impressive for sure, but the little things done consistently is what wins consistently and we need an attitude adjustment in our approach to the game quick IMO. One last point, Hooper has a very nice stroke, I hope he gets 10-15 minutes a game so he can relax and let's see if he can do it in a game.