Herndon
All-Conference
Paulsen came in with a reputation as an offencive minded guy, so I guess it's to be expected a little bit, but I agree with you, it's a little worrisome.
Game 18: Saint Louis University, Saturday, January 13th, 2:30 PM, NBCSN
- Thread starter Washingtonian
- Start date
C
Cedric Dempsey
Spectator
Conversely, SLU held opponents to 65.8 per game and you hung a number on them. I went and watched a pack line man, packed in zone and other mixed looks due to their dribble drive scoring wants. DP seemed to challenge their recognition and welcome risking the 3 from everyone outside of Roby. Sometimes you do what you need to do to win. Good debate.
I've posted the numbers before, but Paulsen's defenses routinely have ranked in the top 100 and his better teams in the top 50 on defense and defensive rebounding.
KAOriginal
All-American
From day 1 this season...personnel available, maturity and composition---this team was only going to be a bunch of scrappers. No way they could "impose their will" on either side of the ball. Some nights we might be good on offense, some nights maybe better defense. Sometimes BOTH would be awful.
But it was going to take most of the season to find their identity. So it is what it is.......
Given our extremely short bench, Paulsen may be coaching to our situation. Maybe the defensive style/intensity is designed to prevent us getting in foul trouble? Just a thought.
FreeGunston12
All-American
You could hear him yelling “G stay in! Stay in G!” at Calixte in the second half, directing him to not leave the defensive post. It lead to some open 3’s, but Paulsen knew the strategy he wanted to play, and the guys executed the game plan as it was asked of them.
Quentin Daniels
Hall of Famer
You know the St. Louis players are on scholarship too right? And that their head coach has had a little A10 success in the past?
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masonjoe
Starter
Theres like 10 teams in the nation who have a worse 3 point shooting % but yea sure great argument.
Agree our defense needs to improve overall. But, surprsingly we have crept up the 3pt% rankings and are now #147 of 351 according to Kenpom.
masonjoe
Starter
Not Mason's shooting, I was talking about SLU's
Most of the damage done from SLU was Robey's (6-8) from 3. But prior to playing us, he was shooting a respectable 37% from 3. The rest of his team is indeed terrible from 3 and only shot 5-22 against us. To Paulsen's credit, he went to a box and one in the second half and limited Robey's opportunities.
Quentin Daniels
Hall of Famer
329th. A few more than 10 but not off by much.
http://stats.ncaa.org/rankings?sport_code=MBB&division=1
So wow, hadn't realized they were that bad a 3pt shooting team.
Digging into that number then, SLU shot 36.7% for the game against us which is significantly above their average of 30.3%.
As a team, they shot 11-30 but Roby was 6-8. He came in averaging 38% from behind the arc but went 75% yesterday.
He also went 4-5 from inside the arc though, so maybe he just had a great day. It happens sometimes. Players sometimes get into a rhythm and it doesn't necessarily mean the defense was crappy, just that sometimes a shooter gets hot and is going to beat you.
UPDATE: Whoops - Psyclone beat me to it.
Thanks, this makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I've been dealing with some life stuff (apartment got destroyed in a flood a couple weeks ago) but we're slowly getting settled back down. Living in hotels, moving into a new apartment, dealing with insurance and the apartment complex, not having furniture, etc. has been a mess.
Hoping to get a new column out tomorrow and get back into the routine through the rest of the season. My basketball-watching has been severely lacking but I did make it to the St. Joe's and St. Louis games. In the meantime you can always follow me on twitter for shower thoughts.
Quick thoughts on SLU:
- I didn't think we did anything wrong on Roby. He hit a few of those threes right in Otis's grill. St. Louis has been doing this to Otis since he was a freshman since they always have those long shooters. What Roby did is a risk when Otis is guarding a shooter who's 5" taller - good position doesn't mean as much as we want it to.
- Can only echo all the praise Calixte is getting. Usually if you chart out a freshman big's progression throughout the season it looks like an EKG - in Greg's case it's just a staircase, and that's rare. Hasahn French is very legit and Greg did well against him. Greg's post moves aren't super polished yet but he's flashing some serious skill - with the game tied late in the second half he got the ball on the block and hit a turnaround with his left. Very impressive.
- Coaching/tactics/strategery - it was clearly a point of emphasis to get Otis switched onto Hasahn French on the perimeter, and Otis kept torching him. Loved seeing the process of relentlessly creating and exploiting good matchups and hope I can go back to rewatch, because it felt like it happened four or five times in the second half and it couldn't have been an accident.
- Otis is playing out of his mind right now. In the last four games he's 36-61 from the floor for 104 points, and he's got 22 assists to 9 turnovers. He has entirely taken over the role of creator/facilitator and our offense is better for it. Column tomorrow (if it gets out) is probably going to be really heavy on the Otis love. He's playing his way into the A10POY conversation.
- Javon had a strong finish in the paint. I want to see him drive a lot more instead of shooting open 3s. Teams are, um, leaving him open for a reason.
- Getting mildly concerned about AJ/Mar. AJ makes some nice plays but he's very obviously chasing blocks. Left his feet multiple times against SLU when a guy he wasn't guarding pump-faked. It's really easy to pull him out of position. I'm still all-in on Mar eventually being great, but he needs to learn to impact the game when he doesn't have a good scoring matchup. Past two games he has 10 points, 6 rebounds, and zero assists/steals/blocks in 53 minutes.
This week was a lot of fun but I'll still preach caution with this team. The 3-2 record is deceiving as our point differential is really bad, we're about to enter a tough part of the schedule, and we're drawing dead in any game where Otis doesn't go nuclear. Continued development and a reason to be excited for next year is all I'm asking for at this point.
Yeah! Glad to hear you're back! Unfortunately, I'm not a twitter regular.
Real bummer about being flooded out though.
masonjoe
Starter
Such smart, educated fans here! Blast me for a correct statement then look it up! How about that!
George Mason is currently ranked 164th in 3pt FG percentage defense at 34.3 percent. So, you aren't anywhere close to being correct?
Life and Death situation, but does anyone know how long we have to redeem the free Chic-Fil-A sandwich from this game?
You're too late. You get to collect the freebie until the end of the next business day. Saturday game-Sunday C-F-A is closed--end of Monday.
I suppose you could try and see how much they pay attention. When I used the drive-through yesterday nobody checked the date. I just handed over the tickets. I think the deal only works at the Fairfax Circle store (I haven't heard them mention the Fair Oaks one this year).
BTW, it was a free order of wings with any purchase at ANY Glory Days game as well on Saturday. So the ticket is redeemable there for 5 days (would expire on Thursday). The 2 times I've gone there, they didn't check the date, at least not in front of me.
Bummer. Thanks for the info.
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Patriot Brew Blog/Newsletter