Game 15: GMU (9-5 / 1-0) at St. Bonaventure (7-7 / 1-0) on Wednesday, January 4, at 7:00 PM.

[gmujim92]

Agreed. But Josh has to take it upon himself to realize he's the stud, our superstar, our Batman. He HAS to show up every night whether it be on the road or at home. The Robins/supporting cast can differ each night and complement him but we have to have our stud show up each night and play out his mind.

Look at the passion Will Thomas, Ryan Pearson, Mike Mo, Cam Long, Jesse Young, Erik Herring brought to the games each night..... they had heart and passion and knew they needed to show up each night.

I thought KE can light this fire under Josh but he just hasn't shown up.

Josh had a pretty good game tonight: 14, 6 and 5. Our team has problems but he wasn’t one of them — not having Ticket, being unable to defend Banks and getting a big zilch from Ojiako were far bigger issues.

 

[tblack33]

Josh had a pretty good game tonight: 14, 6 and 5. Our team has problems but he wasn’t one of them — not having Ticket, being unable to defend Banks and getting a big zilch from Ojiako were far bigger issues.

It was okay, but he was 6-14 from the field, including 1-3 from the field. If he’s going to get that kind of volume he can’t be that inefficient. I do not think our offense looks like it’s at its best when josh is shooting the ball 14 times, with 3 of them being from deep.

 

[TweederGMU]

I think Verdad mentioned KE is currently at 5-20 on road/neutral site games since he has been here. That's awful.

Let that sink in for a moment. Good teams find a way to win on the road, not saying we win all the time on the road but need to close out young/inexperienced teams on the road when we have more talent and depth.

Looking at our road games.... we should of won tonight. No excuses, get it done.

With this roster we should be able to beat these road teams: St. Bonny, URI, Loyola, GW, Richmond. Currently 0-1 out of these opponents. These games will make or break our season.

vcu, Dayton, St.Louis are the road games where I wouldn't be upset if we lost these/not expecting us to win.

Duquesne is a toss up, would expect a win but can also expect a loss as they are playing pretty solid.

 

[TweederGMU]

Josh had a pretty good game tonight: 14, 6 and 5. Our team has problems but he wasn’t one of them — not having Ticket, being unable to defend Banks and getting a big zilch from Ojiako were far bigger issues.

He did alright tonight, but I'm mainly talking all season. His resume all season has been mediocre. Averaging 12 points a game, which is 5 points less off his average from last year where he averaged 17 points a game for the season. Only 3 times this year he has scored 20 points or over. 4 games he only scored single digit points.

What's the deal... has his skills regressed.... I don't think so... he should of grown his skills and gotten better. Appears like a lack of want and passion to go out there and dominate each game. He's gotta want it... right now he looks like he is just going through the motions.

 

[gmujim92]

He did alright tonight, but I'm mainly talking all season. His resume all season has been mediocre. Averaging 12 points a game, which is 5 points less off his average from last year where he averaged 17 points a game for the season. Only 3 times this year he has scored 20 points or over. 4 games he only scored single digit points.

What's the deal... has his skills regressed.... I don't think so... he should have grown his skills and gotten better. Appears like a lack of want and passion to go out there and dominate each game. He's gotta want it... right now he looks like he is just going through the motions.

He has had some rough games no question, but @Petey Buckets found a great stat recently that Josh is one of 7 players in the NATION averaging at least 12 pts, 7 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1 block per game. He’s generally done a pretty good job of not forcing a bunch of shots when doubled and is getting a lot better at finding the open man.

The reality is he’s never gonna be one of those warrior types like Pearson or Thomas. If anything VJ is the Batman on this team and Josh is better cut out to play Robin.

 

[mkaufman1]

I agree with regards to Josh and the record in away/neutral games.

With Josh, I thought he looked better at times tonight but he still missed a lot of shots up close if I can remember correctly. He’s the type of player that needs to hit a lot of his shots near the rim. He also did take 1 or 2 threes that were wide open. Not his game but don’t blame him for taking them. I did like that our offense ran through him touching the ball. He’s a decent passer at times so that’s a good thing.

Neutral games and road games are something that drastically needs to improve. Now granted, being 0-6 in MTEs and 0-1 in Brooklyn doesn’t help that record at all. Hopefully Mason can win a game or two Brooklyn so that another neutral win is added. It’s disappointing because I don’t think that many games Mason has been blown out either. Are they on the cusp on the road of figuring it out or is it just more of the same from the last 10 years? Hopefully they are close to figuring it out and will sneak an unexpected road win or two in league play this year.

I will say Mason always plays their butts off, and by no means did we not look like we belonged in the league last night. I’m not one for moral victories or anything, because an L is an L though.

 

[Bricker]

While there are plenty of negatives to discuss, they nailed a circus 3 near the end or it would have been a 1 pt contest... about what was expected heading into any game in Olean. They out-toughed us in the second half, for sure.

It's going to be an interesting (and sometimes maddening) year. We have a team that has a bunch of pieces that could click on any given game. Haven't seen it yet against strong competition. But I'm hoping it happens and we can at least discuss a turning-the-corner moment.

My big fear is that our pieces are all a little too flawed to make any major noise. SS: great defender, major FT issues. VBJ: tough sharpshooter, but makes questionable passes and drives that end up as TOs. RP: improved, but can wilt under ball pressure. JO: all the obvious great stuff, but quiet and seems to not have that killer instinct. JF: confident and sweet stroke but can't defend yet. Etc. etc. etc.

There were a couple key moments that (in hindsight) cost us the game. One was that 4 pt swing at the end of the 1st where Malik got blown by for an easy Bonnies bucket, then fumbled what would have been a great pass for an easy 2. Then the ill-advised early 3 attempt from Coop near the end. Ugh.

 

[mason89]

To hell with all this fancy analysis. The reason we lost is plain and simple: those d@mn black uniforms! We've never won with them before and probably won't in the future. Get rid of them.

 

[Five Two]

I keep telling myself- at least we haven't gone 662 days since our last league win or we haven't lost 25 league games in a row.

But since beating Maryland last season, this has been frustrating.

 

[mkaufman1]

I keep telling myself- at least we haven't gone 662 days since our last league win or we haven't lost 25 league games in a row.

But since beating Maryland last season, this has been frustrating.

If that was us I would have completely lost my mind and tuned out by now. Thank god its not.

But yeah, extremely frustrating because there have been so many close calls.

 

[GSII]

Josh with 14pts off 14 attempts is gross.

 

[sleeperpick]

Josh with 14pts off 14 attempts is gross.

especially when 9 of those attempts were from directly under the rim...

 

[Jack Strop]

especially when 9 of those attempts were from directly under the rim...

...and, given how gassed Venning was the last 10 minutes, there should have been some "and 1" opportunities.

 

[EXpatriot13]

Josh with 14pts off 14 attempts is gross.

It's not unique to this game but far too often Josh is willing to wait for the double to come vs. being quick to attack/show more aggression.

Another "we should have won but didnt" game. Happening too often.

 

[GMUSSTN]

It's not unique to this game but far too often Josh is willing to wait for the double to come vs. being quick to attack/show more aggression.

That's his game. All last season he was pretty good at cutting through double teams or exploiting a mismatch with a quick spin move to get a finnesse or euro step roller. It's a pretty lethal way to play but when the light touches don't work and the balls rim out he doesn't have that other element of just muscling his way to some points. Ojiako is almost the exact opposite...all strength but no touch. At times it feels like Josh waits for the defense to get set to see which way he should go. I feel like more dominant and consistent bigs balance their game a little more.

Still love Josh, and he needs to be on the floor a lot because of the attention he gets, but he's playing pretty much the same as he did last year it's just most of the shots aren't falling. How many times has he duffed the ball on the bottom of the backboard when going for a little baseline reverse from under/behind the hoop? Last year he was getting those to go in, but I'm not sure if it ever made them 'good shots' in an objective sense.

 

[gmujim92]

It's not unique to this game but far too often Josh is willing to wait for the double to come vs. being quick to attack/show more aggression.

Another "we should have won but didnt" game. Happening too often.

Could have won, definitely. But unlike the ODU game, I don’t know if we necessarily should have won last night. It felt like we were chasing it most of the second half and just couldn’t get over the hump. Gotta give Bona’s guys some credit even as we rightly pick apart the ways Mason managed to lose.

 

[GMU79]

Is CKE not a good coach? Can he not evaluate talent (ie, we have too many guys that just aren't very good)?
I hate to pile on coach, but this is same old same old going on over 10 years now.

 

[EXpatriot13]

Could have won, definitely. But unlike the ODU game, I don’t know if we necessarily should have won last night. It felt like we were chasing it most of the second half and just couldn’t get over the hump. Gotta give Bona’s guys some credit even as we rightly pick apart the ways Mason managed to lose.

Not sure I can give Bona much credit for our implosion the last 3-4min of the 1st half. Believe we were up 7 and then down 4. Had to play catch up from there on out, but I digress, and generally agree.

 

[psyclone]

Could have won, definitely. But unlike the ODU game, I don’t know if we necessarily should have won last night. It felt like we were chasing it most of the second half and just couldn’t get over the hump. Gotta give Bona’s guys some credit even as we rightly pick apart the ways Mason managed to lose.

The big difference: Bona's 17-0 differential in fast break pts. Although the number of turnovers by each team was about the same, they had 9 steals to our 2, with theirs often leading to runouts. That had to be partially responsible for the Bonnies' strong fg %. Bonnies' turnovers often were dead ball ones--offensive fouls and travelling calls.

One other statistical curiosity--Bailey was a -11 in 36 minutes despite being our high scorer. That means we must have been a +7 in the 4 minutes he was on the bench. Ronnie (+3), Saquaan (+2), and Fernandez (+4) were our only players that had a positive +/-.

 

[psyclone]

Not sure I can give Bona much credit for our implosion the last 3-4min of the 1st half. Believe we were up 7 and then down 4. Had to play catch up from there on out, but I digress, and generally agree.

We gave up a 13-2 run with about 6 min left in the half to the 1:30 min mark. We scored one more 2 pt basket after that and then fouled them on rushed 3 pt shot with only 2 sec left.