Game 14: Virginia Commonwealth University, Friday, December 30th, 8 PM, CBSSN

[Jack Strop]

Nice piece by Steve Goff on the game. I understand he'll be at the Wed game as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...917067331bb_story.html?utm_term=.c0fd25ef7377

Very interesting to read Goff taking a shot at the refs for that blown call on the loose ball ending in vcu's 3-point dagger. Pro journalists very rarely call out the refs for bad/no calls. That no call was a huge swing in the game down the stretch. One of three horrible, game-changing calls by my count.

Mason got a make-up call on vcu's next possession, but it didn't help with the 5-point swing that resulted from the botched non-call. It turned a one-and-one opportunity for Mason into three points for vcu. Seems like it's almost always the way it happens when we play those thugs.

Then again, great teams find ways to overcome bad calls. We're just not there yet. Mason is making progress, though. There's definitely promise ahead.

 

[JimP]

We've got good guards - but last night was a reminder that much of the rest of the A-10 does too. Getting ahead of myself, but the two St. Bonnie guards are scoring machines. Just hope Marquise's injury doesn't linger.

 

[Five Two]

My $0.02 from last night-

- next season we need to do a better job of scheduling around the break. We looked rusty in the first 10 minutes and it showed. Can't go 10 days without playing prior to opening A10 play.

-great turnout last night, but the PA guy needs to put "stand a greet.." for intros and "get on your feet..." at certain points in the game. Our crowd has never instinctively stood during intros, etc so the PA guy needs to instruct them to do so.

-I liked the zone for a few possessions. I would have gone back to it once or twice just to throw them off.

-why are we doubling Cox? He is a great rebounder, but is not a back-to-the-basket threat, IMO. a few times in the 2nd half we actually triple-teamed him.

-for me, the difference was that they got to the rim and made those shots. when we got to the rim, we missed.

-refs from our game are working the X-Gtown game this morning.

-our guys showed me a lot last night. I wasn't sure what to expect but they held their own. Now we need to see that every game.

 

[JimP]

Very interesting to read Goff taking a shot at the refs for that blown call on the loose ball ending in vcu's 3-point dagger. Pro journalists very rarely call out the refs for bad/no calls. That no call was a huge swing in the game down the stretch. One of three horrible, game-changing calls by my count.

Mason got a make-up call on vcu's next possession, but it didn't help with the 5-point swing that resulted from the botched non-call. It turned a fast break for Mason into three points for vcu. Seems like it's almost always the way it happens when we play those thugs.

Then again, great teams find ways to overcome bad calls. We're just not there yet. Mason is making progress, though. There's definitely promise ahead.

Thanks for bringing up the botched call. I was wondering what it was when I read Goff's article. I was watching on TV and somehow missed it.

 

[JimP]

My $0.02 from last night-

- next season we need to do a better job of scheduling around the break. We looked rusty in the first 10 minutes and it showed. Can't go 10 days without playing prior to opening A10 play.

-great turnout last night, but the PA guy needs to put "stand a greet.." for intros and "get on your feet..." at certain points in the game. Our crowd has never instinctively stood during intros, etc so the PA guy needs to instruct them to do so.

-I liked the zone for a few possessions. I would have gone back to it once or twice just to throw them off.

-why are we doubling Cox? He is a great rebounder, but is not a back-to-the-basket threat, IMO. a few times in the 2nd half we actually triple-teamed him.

-for me, the difference was that they got to the rim and made those shots. when we got to the rim, we missed.

-refs from our game are working the X-Gtown game this morning.

-our guys showed me a lot last night. I wasn't sure what to expect but they held their own. Now we need to see that every game.

Went to the BU Bearcats yesterday and announcer did the whole "on your feet thing." Nephew next to me asked "do we have to?" but we did. Not a bad idea at GMU games.

 

[Jack Strop]

I can't wait for the day that vcu becomes the A-10 whipping-boy. I think that day may be next season's A-10 opener for them. vcu does not have the "edge" that we saw with Grant/Smart. I am certain that Wade=Hewitt.

 

[GMUgemini]

Thanks for bringing up the botched call. I was wondering what it was when I read Goff's article. I was watching on TV and somehow missed it.

There were two really bad non-calls in the second half: the first was a push in the back to Newman that led to a vcu basket, the other was a trip to Moore who was on a runout, but instead lead to a turnover and a vcu basket.

This is a game where we could have used some extra length at the 4 spot to help with post defense: Burgess and Tillman were killing us with offensive rebounds.

 

[Petey Buckets]

The big takeaway from this game is that we might not have the horses to keep determined teams out of the paint. Prior to this game, our opponents were taking about 38% of their shots from three. vcu was the first team that didn't take the cheese and clearly had a game plan to get their guards in the paint and work the low post. I'm most concerned that nothing we did was able to effectively stop it - for most of the second half it didn't feel like Mason had a legitimate shot at winning because vcu was scoring so easily. We tried throwing a zone at them on a few possessions but I think we went out of it because they got some open corner 3s from it.

That worked against us on the other end too - we kept trying to hammer the paint, but Alie-Cox was dominant defensively and our outside shooting isn't reliable enough to keep us in games when the points in the paint aren't there. We'd been getting away with a lot during the winning streak, but vcu is a quality team that exposed some of the cracks in our four-guard system.

A lot of teams are going to try to do what vcu did last night against us. I'm really curious to see what Paulsen pulls out of his bag of tricks. We've played with four guards on the floor for just about every possession of the entire season, but I don't know how viable that's going to be in A10 play.

 

[gmujim92]

The big takeaway from this game is that we might not have the horses to keep determined teams out of the paint. Prior to this game, our opponents were taking about 38% of their shots from three. vcu was the first team that didn't take the cheese and clearly had a game plan to get their guards in the paint and work the low post. I'm most concerned that nothing we did was able to effectively stop it - for most of the second half it didn't feel like Mason had a legitimate shot at winning because vcu was scoring so easily. We tried throwing a zone at them on a few possessions but I think we went out of it because they got some open corner 3s from it.

That worked against us on the other end too - we kept trying to hammer the paint, but Alie-Cox was dominant defensively and our outside shooting isn't reliable enough to keep us in games when the points in the paint aren't there. We'd been getting away with a lot during the winning streak, but vcu is a quality team that exposed some of the cracks in our four-guard system.

A lot of teams are going to try to do what vcu did last night against us. I'm really curious to see what Paulsen pulls out of his bag of tricks. We've played with four guards on the floor for just about every possession of the entire season, but I don't know how viable that's going to be in A10 play.

Fortunately there are only 2-3 teams in the A-10 with bigs capable of punishing us in the paint like that.

We just hung in with one of them despite our best player getting hurt and our PG having what had to be the worst game of his life.

The more I think about it, the more encouraged I am about what Dave is doing here. For a bunch of young kids to be willing and able to play that hard against a senior-laden opponent regardless of score bodes very well for the future.

We're not always going to be the prettiest team, but our guys aren't afraid.

 

[Pablo]

That worked against us on the other end too - we kept trying to hammer the paint, but Alie-Cox was dominant defensively and our outside shooting isn't reliable enough to keep us in games when the points in the paint aren't there. We'd been getting away with a lot during the winning streak, but vcu is a quality team that exposed some of the cracks in our four-guard system.

A lot of teams are going to try to do what vcu did last night against us. I'm really curious to see what Paulsen pulls out of his bag of tricks. We've played with four guards on the floor for just about every possession of the entire season, but I don't know how viable that's going to be in A10 play.

Since the inception of the 3-point shot, I believe that the most underrated shot in basketball is the mid-range pull-up jumper.

 

[GMUgemini]

Fortunately there are only 2-3 teams in the A-10 with bigs capable of punishing us in the paint like that.

We just hung in with one of them despite our best player getting hurt and our PG having what had to be the worst game of his life.

The more I think about it, the more encouraged I am about what Dave is doing here. For a bunch of young kids to be willing and able to play that hard against a senior-laden opponent regardless of score bodes very well for the future.

We're not always going to be the prettiest team, but our guys aren't afraid.

It would be nice, though, to switch it up and get Jenkins/Temara at the 4 in the high post with Relvao taking up space on the low block, especially when Moore is out of the game. Jenkins can easily hit the 18 footer, and Relvao might actually be able to score some easy buckets off the high-low game (if he makes the layup that is).

Not saying we should always play with 2 post players, but when vcu goes with an Allie-Cox/Tillman lineup, we probably shouldn't be telling Kier he needs to be guarding an athletic 6'7.

 

[Petey Buckets]

It would be nice, though, to switch it up and get Jenkins/Temara at the 4 in the high post with Relvao taking up space on the low block, especially when Moore is out of the game. Jenkins can easily hit the 18 footer, and Relvao might actually be able to score some easy buckets off the high-low game (if he makes the layup that is).

Not saying we should always play with 2 post players, but when vcu goes with an Allie-Cox/Tillman lineup, we probably shouldn't be telling Kier he needs to be guarding an athletic 6'7.

Agreed. I've got a recap coming out later that talks more about this - asking a combination of Grayer/Kier/Boyd to box out Tillman was clearly not working. I don't know how we fix the issue of bouncy, athletic 4s without playing Temara or Relvao alongside Jenkins.

I felt like the minutes where Alie-Cox and Tillman were on the floor together really hurt us. I went through the play-by-play and it looks like they outscored us 22-15 when they were both on the floor. I'm not 100% confident that's accurate, but if it's close, that's basically the losing margin. I agree with Jim that not many teams will be able to punish us the way vcu did, but I can't imagine we go into our next game against vcu with the same gameplan (with the obvious caveat that a lot can change between now and March 4).

 

[gmujim92]

It would be nice, though, to switch it up and get Jenkins/Temara at the 4 in the high post with Relvao taking up space on the low block, especially when Moore is out of the game. Jenkins can easily hit the 18 footer, and Relvao might actually be able to score some easy buckets off the high-low game (if he makes the layup that is).

Not saying we should always play with 2 post players, but when vcu goes with an Allie-Cox/Tillman lineup, we probably shouldn't be telling Kier he needs to be guarding an athletic 6'7.

I think we've established that Jalen does not need to be handling the ball away from the basket. Neither does Troy. vcu would have swarmed both of them.

Honestly, if Marquise didn't get hurt I don't think we would've gotten mauled on the boards like we did.

There's a reason he averages a double-double. Take the best rebounder away from any team and they're going to have problems.

Neither Troy nor Jalen did much to keep Cox and Tillman off the glass when they did play. Plus, you have to consider what we give up offensively playing 2 bigs on a night when we already were struggling to score.

We just don't have a lot of options up front right now. That should change next season.

 

[GSII]

Rebounding. That is all.

 

[GMUSig03]

My silver lining takeaways:

*Otis and Moore both had bad to terrible nights when we needed Moore to be the best player on the court (now we know he was injured)
*Jenkins did not stay out of foul trouble and only played 21 minutes (I'm going to keep saying it, why take players out when they are in foul trouble and guarantee that they will play less rather then at least given them a chance to play without fouling? Will never understand this mentality - with exceptions for defensive possessions and end of half scenarios)
*We were killed on the boards
*We had way too many lazy/sloppy turnovers (they did too)
*We couldn't get to the line
*Several huge mis-calls including the worst I've ever seen in 2nd half when Cox tackled Moore and vcu hit the 3

With all of that, we were in the game the entire night and only lost by 9. We had nearly everything go wrong and were a few plays away from stealing this one. In years past this would have been a 20+ point loss.

Assuming the 9 game winning streak was more emblematic of what to expect from this team, I'm still optimistic that we are top half of the A10 and a top 6 finish is remotely possible. Wednesday may tell us more than last night did.

 

[psyclone]

My silver lining takeaways:

*Jaire, Otis and Moore all had bad to terrible nights when we needed Moore to be the best player on the court (now we know he was injured)
*Jenkins did not stay out of foul trouble and only played 21 minutes (I'm going to keep saying it, why take players out when they are in foul trouble and guarantee that they will play less rather then at least given them a chance to play without fouling? Will never understand this mentality - with exceptions for defensive possessions and end of half scenarios)
*We were killed on the boards
*We had way too many lazy/sloppy turnovers (they did too)
*Terrible 3 pt shooting
*We couldn't get to the line
*Several huge mis-calls including the worst I've ever seen in 2nd half when Cox tackled Moore and vcu hit the 3

With all of that, we were in the game the entire night and only lost by 9. We had nearly everything go wrong and were a few plays away from stealing this one. In years past this would have been a 20+ point loss.
...

Not to quibble, as I mostly agree with what you are saying, but we shot 40% from 3 which is better than our seasonal average and better than the Div 1 average (34%). And much better than vcu shot 3's (23%).

Not getting to the line and getting killed on the boards are spot-on comments as keys to the loss. Both of those had been strengths for the season, especially during the winning streak.

 

[GMUSig03]

Not to quibble, as I mostly agree with what you are saying, but we shot 40% from 3 which is better than our seasonal average and better than the Div 1 average (34%). And much better than vcu shot 3's (23%).

Not getting to the line and getting killed on the boards are spot-on comments as keys to the loss. Both of those had been strengths for the season, especially during the winning streak.

Should have double checked the box score, you are right, 40% is pretty good from 3 - edited post

 

[CHRISTOPHER JAMES JOLLAY]

I didn't go to the game, but I just got an idea for making conversation with vcu roadies next year. I'll get ejected, but it will be worth it.

 

[gmujim92]

My silver lining takeaways:

*Jaire, Otis and Moore all had bad to terrible nights when we needed Moore to be the best player on the court.

Grayer scored 10 points (4-10 FG), hit two 3s, pulled down 4 rebounds and had an assist.

Had he not missed a dunk, he would have made half his shots.

Not terrible, IMHO.

 

[Dawgs99]

On the way home last night I couldn't help think how bad this teams needs Goanar Mar right now. At 6'7 and his skill set he may very well be a day 1 starting next season. Kudos to Boyd though....he battled his a** off against Tillman, he's going to be a special player.