Game 7: GMU (2-4) vs Queens University of Charlotte (4-1) on Saturday, November 26, at 2:00 PM.
- Thread starter Patriotsince81
- Start date
I agree we are not great defensively. I'm not sure our guys are fast enough to be truly disruptive to what the opposition is trying to do. Outside of Singleton and Polite we do not have great on ball defenders. Dinkins is quick and can be tough on smaller guards, but the rest of our team is pedestrian on the defensive end IMO. It's not like we have a couple of ball-hawking Nate Langley's we can turn loose.
We were lucky to win this game. This was a good team we played (Bill Rohland took note). Queens had a lot of open looks in the 2nd half but thankfully, their shots didn't fall. Give Queens and their coaching staff credit. They made it hard for Bailey, Ticket, and Coop (until late) to get good looks, holding them to 15-16 shots total. Oduro should have had an "easy" 20 as I had hoped but Josh was his own worst enemy in the 1st half. If he has trouble converting bunnies against a small lineup, he's certainly not ready for A10 play.
What's the difference between last year and this squad? Maybe look at Schwartz vs Bailey? Schwartz never had a game when he was limited to 4 shots...or 8 shots, for that matter.
Troubling...
OP
- Thread Starter
- #63
Lol Ronnie Polite and great on ball defenders is an Oxy moron. You miss BC and just happen to tune into the glorified D2 teams we play where he shines?
Resident expert calls Dye legit.
Ronnie is tasked with defending legit player and legit player goes 3-14/0-10.
Reasonable person compliments Ronnies’s defense, which earned him a seat in the post game press conference.
Resident expert can not allow compliment to stand for a player he has labeled not DI caliber (like others) and must downgrade “legit” player to “glorified D2” and reference game in which Ronnie was injured in order to insult Ronnie and reasonable person.
Can anyone find a post from resident expert where he does not insult a player, poster or both?
He was primarily guarding Kenny Dye? We watched different games. I also seemed to have watched different Auburn and BC games as well. It happens from time to time.
The post said outside of Polite and Singleton we don’t have good on ball defenders. Idk how anyone that has watched Ronnie play can call him a good on ball defender. Although any game he gets absolutely abused like BC the insiders say he was injured so maybe that’s it. He’s only really bad when constantly injured. Idk I guess
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Ronnie had a very good game offensively yesterday. Don’t know why that and him not being a good on ball defender can both be true
There were stretches in the second half where the defense looked all-in. That's the effort and energy level that I want to see throughout a game, particularly for the first eight minutes, as opposed to playing catch-up.
Offensively, there is a chemistry issue to be solved. Mason definitely needs someone who can penetrate the paint and either score at the rim or dish it out. I saw plenty of attempts to do this, but it resulted most often in a missed shot or turnover. Mason is still in search of a combo with Josh or an alchemist that makes the offense click in good rhythm. Who's it going to be? Dinkins? RoPo? Saquon? Justyn? Mason needs just one of these guys to start simmering towards a boil.
Saquan seems to have made a crack in his shell during the Queens game. Though, he looks more like a sophomore trying to emerge as opposed to a grad student.
Dinkins has shown marked improvement since day one and I am really on his bandwagon. He plays scrappy D and his shooting is heating up. But will he improve enough during his freshman year in order to lead the entire team? It's not typical for a freshman to pull a team together, but it could happen.
I think Justyn is going to have a coming out party eventually, but most likely not until February. He looks a bit baffled right now.
Ronnie has the tools. Stay healthy and gain some consistency and he can breakout by the end of December. We all want to see it, but will we? Hopefully? Whenever Ronnie seems to have built a foundational game it crumbles beneath him over the next game or two or three. Consistency, man... consistency.
I was hoping to have answers to these questions by now, but, nope. More basketball to be played, that's for sure.
Offensively, there is a chemistry issue to be solved. Mason definitely needs someone who can penetrate the paint and either score at the rim or dish it out. I saw plenty of attempts to do this, but it resulted most often in a missed shot or turnover. Mason is still in search of a combo with Josh or an alchemist that makes the offense click in good rhythm. Who's it going to be? Dinkins? RoPo? Saquon? Justyn? Mason needs just one of these guys to start simmering towards a boil.
Saquan seems to have made a crack in his shell during the Queens game. Though, he looks more like a sophomore trying to emerge as opposed to a grad student.
Dinkins has shown marked improvement since day one and I am really on his bandwagon. He plays scrappy D and his shooting is heating up. But will he improve enough during his freshman year in order to lead the entire team? It's not typical for a freshman to pull a team together, but it could happen.
I think Justyn is going to have a coming out party eventually, but most likely not until February. He looks a bit baffled right now.
Ronnie has the tools. Stay healthy and gain some consistency and he can breakout by the end of December. We all want to see it, but will we? Hopefully? Whenever Ronnie seems to have built a foundational game it crumbles beneath him over the next game or two or three. Consistency, man... consistency.
I was hoping to have answers to these questions by now, but, nope. More basketball to be played, that's for sure.
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On a roster of 13 scholarship players, Saquan is somehow the only one who appears capable of consistently staying in front of his man on defense. He moves his feet laterally very well, has good length and seems to understand defensive principles.
His free throw stroke looked much improved yesterday as well, even though he still only made 1 of 2. Form was just much less shaky than the Auburn game.
Unfortunately like so many of the other pieces on this team, he’s limited. He’s not part of the best offensive 5 because he can’t shoot beyond 12-15 feet, and his FT woes make it hard to play him at the end of close games, so KE has to pick his spots.
Ideally he’d be the starting PG and play 25 mpg because I think he’s a better 2-way player than Polite and Dinkins, but I don’t think that’s doable.
His free throw stroke looked much improved yesterday as well, even though he still only made 1 of 2. Form was just much less shaky than the Auburn game.
Unfortunately like so many of the other pieces on this team, he’s limited. He’s not part of the best offensive 5 because he can’t shoot beyond 12-15 feet, and his FT woes make it hard to play him at the end of close games, so KE has to pick his spots.
Ideally he’d be the starting PG and play 25 mpg because I think he’s a better 2-way player than Polite and Dinkins, but I don’t think that’s doable.
I think it's time to shake up the core five. Coop, Ticket, and VJ all do the same thing on offense - 3pt shooters who rarely drive. Replace any of them with Saquan, and with Ronnie starting at the point, suddenly we have much better balance on offense with two shooters and two guards who can put pressure on the rim. Not sure if this looks like a starting lineup change, or just extended minutes for Saquan off the bench, but he gives us an element we desperately need on offense and is one of our better defenders.
You all know my side in the Ronnie Wars - love how easily he gets to the rim. That's really important for this Mason team, because as we saw last year, we had all sorts of trouble manufacturing buckets in crunch time. KE called Ronnie's number a couple times after Queens rallied to tie it late and he delivered. Glorified D2, yadda yadda, still cool to see. I'm rooting for the kid. He absolutely needs to get a lot better on defense, and quick - he gets screened into the center of the earth way too often. He was a -26 in the BC disaster because Langford was scoring on him at will. Shouldn't happen to a guy as big and strong as he is.
Two glimmers of hope for this team that are worth holding on to:
- Josh can't be this bad all year. When he's awful, it magnifies a bunch of other issues that are legitimate but ultimately surmountable. That's an easy 15 point win without all the missed bunnies.
- KE clearly still throwing spaghetti at the wall with different rotations to see what sticks. The two big has been getting shredded from 3 and we saw a little of that in the first half. Looked like we switched primarily to zone for much of the game with the two big lineup in. I would imagine the rotation looks substantially different come conference play.
We'll see if we learned a damn thing on Wednesday against Hofstra.
You all know my side in the Ronnie Wars - love how easily he gets to the rim. That's really important for this Mason team, because as we saw last year, we had all sorts of trouble manufacturing buckets in crunch time. KE called Ronnie's number a couple times after Queens rallied to tie it late and he delivered. Glorified D2, yadda yadda, still cool to see. I'm rooting for the kid. He absolutely needs to get a lot better on defense, and quick - he gets screened into the center of the earth way too often. He was a -26 in the BC disaster because Langford was scoring on him at will. Shouldn't happen to a guy as big and strong as he is.
Two glimmers of hope for this team that are worth holding on to:
- Josh can't be this bad all year. When he's awful, it magnifies a bunch of other issues that are legitimate but ultimately surmountable. That's an easy 15 point win without all the missed bunnies.
- KE clearly still throwing spaghetti at the wall with different rotations to see what sticks. The two big has been getting shredded from 3 and we saw a little of that in the first half. Looked like we switched primarily to zone for much of the game with the two big lineup in. I would imagine the rotation looks substantially different come conference play.
We'll see if we learned a damn thing on Wednesday against Hofstra.
Tacking on to this with some absolutely disgusting numbers:
VBJ is 16-40 from 2
Coop 8-22
Ticket 4-10
When the starting 2, 3, and 4 are 28-72 (38.9%) from inside the arc, and all they want to do is launch 3s, the offense becomes just way too easy to defend.
Ronnie is 15-23 and Saquan is 10-14. Need more of that combo to make us more dynamic, and Saquan is the best defender anyway. #StartSaquan
VBJ is 16-40 from 2
Coop 8-22
Ticket 4-10
When the starting 2, 3, and 4 are 28-72 (38.9%) from inside the arc, and all they want to do is launch 3s, the offense becomes just way too easy to defend.
Ronnie is 15-23 and Saquan is 10-14. Need more of that combo to make us more dynamic, and Saquan is the best defender anyway. #StartSaquan
Completely agree. Josh is also 29/57 from 2 which is 51%, but I suspect we need him to be a bit higher than that considering his points come mostly in the paint. It seems like he has missed a ton of easy layups and bunnies this year.
when in the paint he more times than not shoots from directly under the basket so 51% is semi scary to me...
Anyone have a clue as to how/why Josh has regressed so much this season? Is it a product of more double teams, players around him struggling, shift in his approach, pressing...all of the above?
It's the last thing I expected going into this season.
all I have seen is he is not as aggressive, has not dribbled very well (which was one of his greatest improvements last year) and has been doing the AJ Wilson special of fading away vs a smaller person within 6 feet from the basket which is one of Earth's greatest mysteries why we have that going on. (the old sleeperpick would say he has been looking like he runs around with a load of dookie in his pants too... but that is the old sleeperpick)
OP
- Thread Starter
- #76
It could be that since he received so much acclaim last year and going into this year that he is simply a marked man. Other teams are game planning for him. Whether he will adjust and step up remains to be seen.
I've always thought Cooper might be best suited in a 6th man role. Come off the bench firing and giving the 2nd unit an offensive spark. Kinda of hope that's where we go.
Agreed. I think Josh is way too talented and has too high of a basketball IQ to not figure things out. He is probably putting so much pressure on himself to do everything that he forgot how to let the game come to him. He started turning the corner at the end of his sophomore year, and I can't see why he would magically forget how to play basketball now.
Hopefully by the end of conference play we will see the real Josh return.
Teams are gaming for him but there's also no one else on the floor making space. As @Petey Buckets was saying, VB/Coop/Ticket are all mostly doing the same thing. I thought VB would be more of a Schwartz replacement but he is not...Schwartz was excellent at finding a shot where there wasn't one, which would force teams to lighten up on Josh. We struggled mightily last season when EITHER Josh or Schwartz was on the bench. I think since he kinda went cold there in the back half of conference play we haven't given enough credit to Schwartz for making the offense work.
Now teams just need to double Josh and gamble that he can't find the open shooter. Most of the time they're right. When Josh does try and get out of the double himself he can't, or he's out of position and tries to get a shot up from under the backboard.
These are all casual observations...I'm not a numbers/analytics guy but once I saw the theory that we start one of the VB/Ticket/Coop trio on the bench it started to click. Too many guys doing the same thing, Josh doesn't have anyone to lean on and can't make space. He missed some bunnies on Saturday but a lot of his struggles this year stem from us not being able to threaten from anywhere else.
Prob Bc he didn't get drafted. Didn't like what the NBA scouts told him. He is soft so it's gonna take him until mid Feb to recover and grow a set. Hope I'm totally wrong.
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