Xavier, Sun. Jan. 29, 6pm, FS1/970AM

I thought we played hard and 2nd half was enjoyable. Xavier is better than us. Was closer than I thought would be. Broken record but need bigs to really compete.
Only somewhat negative thought for me was for next year I don't think you can have both Ellison and Ahmed play a big part. Frustrating having two wildcards. One is more than enough
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I don't know about playing a big part next year but one of them will start along side of Ponds, Lovett, Clark and Owens. And one of them will be the first sub in the game.
 
One of our other big problems is that we still do not have a true floor general. Marcus, for all his talents, is not yet that person. It's almost as though it's floor general by committee. Sometimes it's Malik, sometimes it's Marcus, sometimes it's Shamorie, sometimes it's no one. This really hurts us in half court sets and especially at crunch time.
 
I agree that he is much more involved this year( Mullin), but multiple times during games he will be at half court speaking with a ref, and a STJ player takes his warm up off and checks into the game...St Jean handles the subs? Shouldn't that be the head coaches job
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Could be they had already discussed the substitutions to be used at a certain time of the game.
 
Agree on those Ellison missed opportunities, yet somehow he still had six assists, and I don't remember any of them.

I need to check some clips of his shooting form from last year. Seems like he is now shooting from the far right side of his body near shoulder, even the foul shots to a degree.
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Good observation, just noticed that change while shooting his foul shot yesterday.
 
Obviously as has already been stated, bad defense, slow close outs and very low energy for good portion of game.

This was a winnable game.

In my mind, if we would have forsaken the outside shot earlier and taken it to the basket earlier in the game, we would have won. They had no one who could stay with Lovett or Ponds.
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Especially since we were in the bonus with 11 plus minutes in the first half.
 
I thought we played hard and 2nd half was enjoyable. Xavier is better than us. Was closer than I thought would be. Broken record but need bigs to really compete.
Only somewhat negative thought for me was for next year I don't think you can have both Ellison and Ahmed play a big part. Frustrating having two wildcards. One is more than enough
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I don't know about playing a big part next year but one of them will start along side of Ponds, Lovett, Clark and Owens. And one of them will be the first sub in the game.
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Hoping Simon takes Ellison spot.
 
Xavier recap:http://www.bigeastboards.com/
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Much like the Xavier game was to St. John's, the recap was a blown opportunity to feature a pic of Phoebe Cates exiting the swimming pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. For it was that movie that gave Robert Romanus his 15 minutes of fame as scalper and girlfriend stealer Mike Damone, who had evolved from taking Mindy Cohn's virginity to taking Jennifer Jason Leigh's. For some strange reason, I have this notion that you once featured Phoebe Cates in her wet red bikini. If not, here was a chance. If so, it's worth seeing twice.
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Actually, Stacey (Jennifer Jason Leigh's character) was "with" the guy in his early 20's whose name I forgot at the dougout at the ballpark before she was "with" Mike Damone.at her house.
 
I agree that he is much more involved this year( Mullin), but multiple times during games he will be at half court speaking with a ref, and a STJ player takes his warm up off and checks into the game...St Jean handles the subs? Shouldn't that be the head coaches job
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Could be they had already discussed the substitutions to be used at a certain time of the game.
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Sure that is possible, but it happens all the time.
 
One of our other big problems is that we still do not have a true floor general. Marcus, for all his talents, is not yet that person. It's almost as though it's floor general by committee. Sometimes it's Malik, sometimes it's Marcus, sometimes it's Shamorie, sometimes it's no one. This really hurts us in half court sets and especially at crunch time.
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Great post. One of the problems I have in criticizing Ellison is that I have no idea in what Mullin is telling him to do. If you look at the stats you would think he is the point guard as he leads the team in assists per 40 minutes and is by far our worst rebounder among our three starting guards. At 6'6 on a team like this I would expect him to play as a point forward and hit the boards. If he did he would be on his way to being a useful player. The problem with Ahmed is that he never passes. Mullin needs to get Ellison to rebound and Ahmed to pass more. He then needs to decide on a point guard between Lovett and Ponds. This will only get more complicated when Simon and Clark join the rotation because as someone said I doubt that Ellison is going anywhere next year.
 
One of our other big problems is that we still do not have a true floor general. Marcus, for all his talents, is not yet that person. It's almost as though it's floor general by committee. Sometimes it's Malik, sometimes it's Marcus, sometimes it's Shamorie, sometimes it's no one. This really hurts us in half court sets and especially at crunch time.
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Both are shoot first guards that can pass the ball. I thought we had better ball movement when the offense ran through Ponds when Lovett was hurt.
 
Xavier press release
CINCINNATI --- Xavier University team doctor Dr. Robert Burger confirmed today that sophomore guard Edmond Sumner suffered a season-ending torn ACL injury in his left knee in Xavier's game vs. St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. An MRI confirmed the result today.

Dr. Burger said Sumner will be scheduled for surgery in the near future on a date to be determined.

"I am devastated for Edmond," said Xavier head coach Chris Mack. "Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to great people. Through diligent rehab, hard work and prayer I know Ed will return to the court better than ever. He's an awesome kid, a fearless competitor and a terrific teammate. I'm going to miss coaching him the rest of the year. As far as our current team is concerned, our goals have not changed. Next man up."
 
One of our other big problems is that we still do not have a true floor general. Marcus, for all his talents, is not yet that person. It's almost as though it's floor general by committee. Sometimes it's Malik, sometimes it's Marcus, sometimes it's Shamorie, sometimes it's no one. This really hurts us in half court sets and especially at crunch time.
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Both are shoot first guards that can pass the ball. I thought we had better ball movement when the offense ran through Ponds when Lovett was hurt.
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Yes both are good passers, but neither is a floor general. We don't need a true point guard, but we need a true floor general. IE Hatten and Hardy were not true point guards, but both were floor generals and go to guys. At this point not fair to compare those 2, who were upper classman, to Marcus and Shamorie, who are freshman. Just pointing out the fact that we are lacking leadership on the court.
 
Xavier press release
CINCINNATI --- Xavier University team doctor Dr. Robert Burger confirmed today that sophomore guard Edmond Sumner suffered a season-ending torn ACL injury in his left knee in Xavier's game vs. St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. An MRI confirmed the result today.

Dr. Burger said Sumner will be scheduled for surgery in the near future on a date to be determined.

"I am devastated for Edmond," said Xavier head coach Chris Mack. "Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to great people. Through diligent rehab, hard work and prayer I know Ed will return to the court better than ever. He's an awesome kid, a fearless competitor and a terrific teammate. I'm going to miss coaching him the rest of the year. As far as our current team is concerned, our goals have not changed. Next man up."
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Very very sorry to hear this. You don't want to see this happen to any kid, let alone a great kid and great talent like Sumner.
 
Surprised at the negativity on this thread given how our first game with Xavier went.

IMHO Xavier is just a tough matchup for us physically. We give away 4 inches and 30 pounds at virtually every spot on the floor with the exception of Ellison (Owens doesn't give up the height, he just gives up 50 pounds). The stat sheet ended up pretty even with two exceptions: Xavier (unsurprisingly) killed us on the boards, and we (unsurprisingly) turned them over pretty well (I think 19 turnovers for X). Size versus quickness, and size won this one by a couple of buckets.

I thought the team competed for the whole game. Unfortunately a few shots didn't drop, and a few free throws didn't go in (though you can't really complain much about shooting 75% overall from the line). There were a couple of poor decisions, but that happens to every team every game. To his credit, none of the poor decisions were by Ahmed, who played perhaps his most under-control game of the year.

There's no question that the press was effective at the end of the game, and I have been advocating for it since the beginning of the year. However I don't think we have enough horses to run it for 40 minutes, and I thought the staff used it appropriately.

Overall I thought the game was a positive step forward on many fronts, result aside. Now let's see if we can beat Marquette.
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Defensive commitment is the core deficit, still too many end to end lay ups & wide open threes in transition IMO. Young guys will learn the importance of playing both ends of the court sooner than later I hope. Xavier has struggled offensively for a while, last night had it too easy IMO. Oh well, on to perimeter shooting Marquette, who does not defend well either. Also, let's not let Luke Fischer look like Bill Walton.
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No question our D remains atrocious, though I think the open 3s were a result of committing to protect the paint. They just don't have the players to cover both the paint and the perimeter against Xavier. But "stop the ball" said no-one ever in practice, it seems.

I never said this is a flawless Top 5 team. Just saying that if you accept the group for what it is - still young, not enough size, not enough quality depth - I think they are making progress game over game. The job last night was to compete for 40 minutes against a superior opponent and to try to find a way to make up for the physical mismatches. I thought they did that. I'm not really expecting this squad to consistently post wins over top 20 teams. Though it's kind of interesting that some of the same people who think I am overrating us by projecting 7 conference wins are complaining about the loss to Xavier. If you think we are only going to win 4 or 5 games, then you can't really have expected a win last night, right?

It's a learning curve. They were down a dozen a few times last night, and I think 15 at one point. Instead of turning that into 20 or 25, they fought back and kept it a game all the way to the end. A month ago that wasn't the case. Similarly they found a way to (at least partially) offset the size disadvantage by using their quickness.

On my to-do checklist they have made a fair bit of progress on the things that are under their control. The D remains the top item on the list, with sharing the ball better a close second. The rest of the pieces are going to have to wait another year, nothing you can do about that.
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I guess there is just a disagreement on how to analyze what we are seeing. W/L are great; why you play the game but personally I watch the game and react. The fact is this team does not put out the effort on defense one would hope for and, in my case, expect. So, yes, on one hand, losing to Xavier by 5 is far from horrible but IMO, playing 5 minutes hard and the first 35 sporadically hard at best is horrible. I believe we have had one wall to wall concerted defensive effort, against Butler. So yes, the result from a certain point of view could be thought of as "acceptable" but how different might it had been if we played with 40 minutes of urgency instead of 5? My expectations are a product of what I see, I don't adjust what I see by my pre-conceived expectations.
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For the first 30min, they looked like they had no energy. X was shooting wide open threes, they drive to the hoop and put in uncontested layups, and go down 15. Then it looks like they woke, showed energy/emotion and cut it to 2pnts a few times, before losing by 5. Why do they have to go down 15pnts before waking up???

So no, I won't be happy that they cut a 15pnt deficit to 2pnts, I'll be pissed that they have to go down 15pnts before waking up and playing good BB. If they woke up right after halftime, then they win this game.

Now, will this be a learning lesson for the Marquette game, or go down big again before waking up again?
 
One of our other big problems is that we still do not have a true floor general. Marcus, for all his talents, is not yet that person. It's almost as though it's floor general by committee. Sometimes it's Malik, sometimes it's Marcus, sometimes it's Shamorie, sometimes it's no one. This really hurts us in half court sets and especially at crunch time.
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Both are shoot first guards that can pass the ball. I thought we had better ball movement when the offense ran through Ponds when Lovett was hurt.
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I agree 100%. When Lovett was out and Ponds ran the show, it was the best ball movement we had all season. I don't mind shoot first guards who can shoot.
 
Xavier press release
CINCINNATI --- Xavier University team doctor Dr. Robert Burger confirmed today that sophomore guard Edmond Sumner suffered a season-ending torn ACL injury in his left knee in Xavier's game vs. St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. An MRI confirmed the result today.

Dr. Burger said Sumner will be scheduled for surgery in the near future on a date to be determined.

"I am devastated for Edmond," said Xavier head coach Chris Mack. "Unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to great people. Through diligent rehab, hard work and prayer I know Ed will return to the court better than ever. He's an awesome kid, a fearless competitor and a terrific teammate. I'm going to miss coaching him the rest of the year. As far as our current team is concerned, our goals have not changed. Next man up."
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Hard to replace Sumner, but they do have quite a bit of talent at that position. That's two season ending injuries for top tier teams in the Big East (Mo Watson Creighton). Not good for the conference.
 
Our rebounding flat out sucks.

The fact that we played hard at the end on defense drives me even more crazy because we should be doing that the whole game

Shout out to ccnobz because of him I bet the game so big thumbs up for winning me back some of my horrible football losses this year so I'm happy we covered

Great to finally meet Monte and Johnnyfan at the game. Both really good dudes
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On balance you seem to be in a pretty good mood. I guess you didn't see Mullin sit on the scorers table late in the second half. :) ;)
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I like to refer my mood as " taking the points and winning Euphoria "
 
Xavier recap:http://www.bigeastboards.com/
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when I think of certain historic moments in time I can remember exactly where I was at that moment. The OJ car chase, the day Fran got fired and now the day I was mentioned in a Fun recap. :)
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OJ chase was night of my bachelor party. I was at Mickey Mantle's on CPS when they cut away from the knick playoff game to the chase. Without any volume on the TVs, and with me being pretty inebriated(although not nearly as much as I would be a few hours later), me and my buddies were baffled as to why they cut away to a slow moving SUV on a Cal highway.
 
Offense has looked good at times throughout the year with Ellison driving and kicking for open shooters. But he missed Shamorie a few times tonight, one in transition where Ponds would have had a wide open 3. Ellison ended up getting fouled,but Ponds was frustrated and I hope they call Ellison out when reviewing the game tape.
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Ellison is one of the most selfish players we have had in a long time. He's improved this year, but he is less of a player than he thinks. I hope he matures and realizes that he is a member of a team.
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I don't know about selfish or not but I do know he is the only guard with any size
 
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