@Villanova, Sat., Jan. 6, 1p, F0X

carmineabbatiello said:
Neptune won at Fordham which is darn near impossible to do. He brought them back from the abyss in his breakout season that won him the Nova job. Perhaps he's not terrible?
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Neptune coached one season at Fordham. He was 16-16, 8-10 in the league, and finished in 8th in the A-10

I would agree he "won at Fordham" if the point of comparison is Norm Roberts "winning" at Queens.
 
carmineabbatiello said:
Neptune won at Fordham which is darn near impossible to do. He brought them back from the abyss in his breakout season that won him the Nova job. Perhaps he's not terrible?
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Definitely not terrible. But being the guy after Jay Wright is a tough tough tough situation.

Nova of course looks more vulnerable now. Even with probably the most talent in the league.
 
Watching Villanova last night I thought they played solid defense. Xavier played very well to stay in the game. We have to be careful with the fouls and keep the turnovers down. Will be a grind it out type of game.
 
lawmanfan said:
Just let Soriano defend Dixon - Dixon is going to get his, but so will Joel and production-wise we probably win that matchup. Key is not letting them use Dixon to pull Joel out too far and open up the lane or create post-up mismatches for Nova. If Luis and/or Ledlum switch with Soriano to pick up Dixon when he is away from the hoop we should be ok.

My concern in this game (other than Nova getting hot from 3) is watching backdoor cuts and post mismatches because nobody is home.
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Other side of coin would be Joel consistently getting ball in the post to get Dixon in foul trouble and kicking to shooters if doubled. Joel’s passing is much improved and we should run a high % of plays through him patiently and consistently.
 
lawmanfan said:
Just let Soriano defend Dixon - Dixon is going to get his, but so will Joel and production-wise we probably win that matchup. Key is not letting them use Dixon to pull Joel out too far and open up the lane or create post-up mismatches for Nova. If Luis and/or Ledlum switch with Soriano to pick up Dixon when he is away from the hoop we should be ok.

My concern in this game (other than Nova getting hot from 3) is watching backdoor cuts and post mismatches because nobody is home.
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But they are going to use Dixon to pull out Joel and Joel sucks in space. Why not let our 6’4 guards deal with him on the perimeter instead? Alleyne and Jenkins are very good at the top of the zone. So is Taylor. This isn’t the typical Nova master class shooting team.
 
Marillac2 said:
You don’t use a box and 1 on a Dixon type. The kid scored 13 points against Xavier😂

Use something resembling more of a standard 2-3 and leave Soriano home in the lane.

He’s a big liability away from the basket. We’ve got tall guards to get a hand in his face.
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Thanks for the reply . I never Coached Basket Ball and never claimed any expertise in tactics and strategy
I think we all agree that whatever RP comes up with to defend Dixon and not get Soriano into foul trouble will be the best game plan .

I think we are all concerned with past history with Dixon as he has invariably had big games against us .

13 points for Dixon on Saturday is likely not a dagger . 26 points would be .
 
lawmanfan said:
Neptune coached one season at Fordham. He was 16-16, 8-10 in the league, and finished in 8th in the A-10

I would agree he "won at Fordham" if the point of comparison is Norm Roberts "winning" at Queens.
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That's not fair at all. Fordham has been an absolutely pathetic team for a long time. 16-16 was very impressive considering they were 2-12, 9-22, 12-20 and 9-22 the four years prior.
 
lawmanfan said:
Neptune coached one season at Fordham. He was 16-16, 8-10 in the league, and finished in 8th in the A-10

I would agree he "won at Fordham" if the point of comparison is Norm Roberts "winning" at Queens.
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16 - 16, 8 - 10 at Fordham is like making the sweet sixteen at a normal program. They've been a toilet team worse than even us for a long, long time. Without having the numbers I would venture a guess that Neptune's one season was significantly better than what preceded him.
 
Marillac2 said:
Alleyne and Jenkins are very good
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We Got Him GIF
 
dk423 said:
That's not fair at all. Fordham has been an absolutely pathetic team for a long time. 16-16 was very impressive considering they were 2-12, 9-22, 12-20 and 9-22 the four years prior.
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We shall see. Neptune did not get the Nova job on the strength of being a world-beater in his 5 minutes at Fordham, he got it by virtue of being Jay's guy. Mahoney got the SJU job by the same method.

My observation of assistant coaches who take over well-oiled machines is that you don't know what you have until Year 3 (sometimes Year 4). The first year the muscle memory of the system in place keeps things going on its own unless the assistant is truly awful (which isn't usually the case). In Year 2 there is still enough carryover from the prior regime that it is still hard to differentiate although you start to see some signs. In Year 3 you usually start to have a good idea of whether the guy can do it in his own right.

Historical example of a guy who you found out couldn't was Mahoney. Historical example of a guy who could was Jamie Dixon. Current example of guys who the jury is still out on are Juwan Howard and Neptune. Neptune was not impressive last year but he lost a lot of talent. This year he brought in a lot of talent and is still not impressive thus far (or at least certainly not consistent). It isn't as though you can look at his one season at a bottom-feeder in the A-10 and draw any real conclusions from that. He may turn out to be all that, or he may turn out to be a latter-day Brian Mahoney. My suspicion is more the latter than the former, just not enough sample size yet. But time will tell.

For the opposite lean, see Shaheen Holloway - Year 2, still not enough talent on that roster, but seems very likely to build a winning program.
 
Marillac2 said:
But they are going to use Dixon to pull out Joel and Joel sucks in space. Why not let our 6’4 guards deal with him on the perimeter instead? Alleyne and Jenkins are very good at the top of the zone. So is Taylor. This isn’t the typical Nova master class shooting team.
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Don’t think I missed your complimenting Jenkins. I have an alert on my phone that goes off whenever you do.
 
lawmanfan said:
We shall see. Neptune did not get the Nova job on the strength of being a world-beater in his 5 minutes at Fordham, he got it by virtue of being Jay's guy. Mahoney got the SJU job by the same method.

My observation of assistant coaches who take over well-oiled machines is that you don't know what you have until Year 3 (sometimes Year 4). The first year the muscle memory of the system in place keeps things going on its own unless the assistant is truly awful (which isn't usually the case). In Year 2 there is still enough carryover from the prior regime that it is still hard to differentiate although you start to see some signs. In Year 3 you usually start to have a good idea of whether the guy can do it in his own right.

Historical example of a guy who you found out couldn't was Mahoney. Historical example of a guy who could was Jamie Dixon. Current example of guys who the jury is still out on are Juwan Howard and Neptune. Neptune was not impressive last year but he lost a lot of talent. This year he brought in a lot of talent and is still not impressive thus far (or at least certainly not consistent). It isn't as though you can look at his one season at a bottom-feeder in the A-10 and draw any real conclusions from that. He may turn out to be all that, or he may turn out to be a latter-day Brian Mahoney. My suspicion is more the latter than the former, just not enough sample size yet. But time will tell.

For the opposite lean, see Shaheen Holloway - Year 2, still not enough talent on that roster, but seems very likely to build a winning program.
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Glad to see you slowly regaining your posting stamina. 😉
 
kranmars said:
Don’t think I missed your complimenting Jenkins. I have an alert on my phone that goes off whenever you do.
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😂 As bad as he is at stopping the ball in man, he’s that good in zone. Active as hell and no true position can be a positive on defense. Plus he flies in for rebounds.

And then Alleyne is the best team defender you can ask for in a zone.

We looked wildly good against UConn that first half.
 
lawmanfan said:
We shall see. Neptune did not get the Nova job on the strength of being a world-beater in his 5 minutes at Fordham, he got it by virtue of being Jay's guy. Mahoney got the SJU job by the same method.

My observation of assistant coaches who take over well-oiled machines is that you don't know what you have until Year 3 (sometimes Year 4). The first year the muscle memory of the system in place keeps things going on its own unless the assistant is truly awful (which isn't usually the case). In Year 2 there is still enough carryover from the prior regime that it is still hard to differentiate although you start to see some signs. In Year 3 you usually start to have a good idea of whether the guy can do it in his own right.

Historical example of a guy who you found out couldn't was Mahoney. Historical example of a guy who could was Jamie Dixon. Current example of guys who the jury is still out on are Juwan Howard and Neptune. Neptune was not impressive last year but he lost a lot of talent. This year he brought in a lot of talent and is still not impressive thus far (or at least certainly not consistent). It isn't as though you can look at his one season at a bottom-feeder in the A-10 and draw any real conclusions from that. He may turn out to be all that, or he may turn out to be a latter-day Brian Mahoney. My suspicion is more the latter than the former, just not enough sample size yet. But time will tell.

For the opposite lean, see Shaheen Holloway - Year 2, still not enough talent on that roster, but seems very likely to build a winning program.
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I agree with everything you said. My only slight disagreement was saying Neptune's won as much as Norm did. Norm went 24-82 at Queens College, Mahoney went 16-62 at Manhattan College. These guys were also historical losers as head coaches, and that should've been a huge red flag.

Neptune's 16-16 is a galaxy's away from those win-loss records and Fordham's program is a dumpster fire. I absolutely agree we need to wait and see until next year & the year after to see if he has the chops for a big time program.

I got heat a few weeks ago for saying I'd have no interest in having Mas take over for Pitino afterwards, and that spells it out my rationale better than I did.
 
carmineabbatiello said:
Neptune won at Fordham which is darn near impossible to do. He brought them back from the abyss in his breakout season that won him the Nova job. Perhaps he's not terrible?
Click to expand...

I agree his accomplishments at Fordham were far above the mean but the Fordham year didn't win him the Nova job. After 8 years as an assistant to Jay he was already the heir apparent but he took the Fordham job to get Head Coach seasoning before returning to Nova. Not sure if the plan was a one year stint of if Jay decided during the season that he'd had enough of the new look college basketball environment. There wasn't even a coaching search, they announced Neptune's hire at the same press conference.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that Lawman had already pointed this out.
 
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bucketshardy said:
The way we have looked in our 3 BE games so far... winning on the road is tough, but I think we take this one fairly easily.

A win here, and MSG should be Electric for Providence (even though they won't be ranked now with their loss vs Hall + the Hopkins injury- rough)
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Damn, a win here and I think we beat PC. This is a huge opportunity, and 4-1 would be so freaking big. Don't screw this opportunity up guys.
 
lawmanfan said:
Neptune coached one season at Fordham. He was 16-16, 8-10 in the league, and finished in 8th in the A-10

I would agree he "won at Fordham" if the point of comparison is Norm Roberts "winning" at Queens.
Click to expand...

He took over a team that had 2 winning seasons that century to date so that's the point of comparison. Would have done better if the previous year's center hadn't transferred out 3 weeks later. ;)
 
Neptune is off to a bad start at Villonova. I dont see it getting much better. Finishing last in the big 5 is an outright embarrassment for nova.

Jay should have recommended claxton for the job. I am glad he didnt.
 
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