Game Thread: Mason vs LaSalle

[KAOriginal]

But given that we have no real explosive guards who can just blow right to the rim (think Marquise Moore), and we don't have any dominant bigs who can bully their way around the rim (think Will Thomas, Jalen Jenkins, Shevon Thompson), this needs to be a critical part of our offense, but just like the 3, consistency is eluding us -- and we should be much better at taking them: Miller and Kier both have good mid-range games, Hartwell has shown a really nice floater at times, AJ and Oduro should be able to hit them -- we just suck at everything right now on offense.

Paulsen #1 in the A-10 rankings for recruiting and fielding a team of 5th, 6th and 7th man role type players.

 

[Walter]

I'm on TDY, so I haven't been on this board in the past week or so but what it says is a truly great coach, or a truly shity coach can mitigate the effects of spending (McKillop and Hewitt for example), but all things being equal you tend to get what you pay for.

Since great coaches are statistical outliers that you can't count on getting or retaining, your best bet for success is to pay for it.

JFC, Mason has one of the better econ schools in the country, why is this crap so hard to understand?

Some studies say superstar CEOs are worth whatever they are paid. The hunt for the next superstar CEO leads to inflated non-superstar salaries who are not "worth" what they get paid. Yeah, yeah, efficient market and all that. But this seems to apply to college coaches as well.
Unless a school is getting power five money, it can't hire those guys. We, unfortunately, must get lucky on a guy moving up and hope he is waiting for a particular P5 job so he stays around longer than a Rick Barnes.

 

[Herndon]

Some studies say superstar CEOs are worth whatever they are paid. The hunt for the next superstar CEO leads to inflated non-superstar salaries who are not "worth" what they get paid. Yeah, yeah, efficient market and all that. But this seems to apply to college coaches as well.
Unless a school is getting power five money, it can't hire those guys. We, unfortunately, must get lucky on an guy moving up and hope he is waiting for a particular P5 job so he stays around longer than a Rick Barnes.

Yeah, I have read those articles as well. Interesting stuff. Since you can't count on luck, the obvious solution is to spend more on things other than the coach.

 

[GMUgemini]

Or we spend more

Can’t spend what you don’t have. We spend almost what Richmond does (minis coaches’ salary differential). Aren’t we somewhere in the middle of the pack for spending, but yet at the bottom of the pack in terms of success.

 

[JPgmuswim]

George Mason Men's Basketball
@MasonMBB
·
4h

Friday practice at Tom Gola Arena #GetPatrotic

5:46 PM · Jan 10, 2020

I bet it was a real great practice....

 

[gmujim92]

Can’t spend what you don’t have. We spend almost what Richmond does (minis coaches’ salary differential). Aren’t we somewhere in the middle of the pack for spending, but yet at the bottom of the pack in terms of success.

Depends on how you define “success.” If it’s measured strictly by making the NCAA or NIT in a given year, there are 251 unsuccessful Division I teams every season.

 

[Petey Buckets]

In other words, they need to trust Calixte a lot more than they do and get him the ball in good spots.

Idk if it follows that "needs more shots at the rim" = "needs more calixte." Personally I get kind of enraged by how much we play those Goanar-Greg lineups that are offensively bereft. It might only be like four minutes a game but it's pure agony the whole time.

Good teams in college basketball rely on their guards to get to the rim. Jamal and Javon are killing us here:

Jamal: 8.9% FGA at rim, shooting 50%
Javon: 27.1% of FGA at rim, shooting 45.2%

XJ: 43.1% of FGA at rim, shooting 74.2%. Just sayin'.

 

[GMUgemini]

Depends on how you define “success.” If it’s measured strictly by making the NCAA or NIT in a given year, there are 251 unsuccessful Division I teams every season.

I'd say over a 5 year period (the one I cited above was starting with the departure of Coach L, or the last 8 seasons). There was a nice period where every class got to the postseason at least once during their 4 years here. I'm not asking us to become vcu necessarily.

Gunnie, we started Kier and XJ against Bona and XJ took 2 shots in 36 minutes, and Kier took 2 non-3s the entire game.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we aren't using our bigs in a way that forces defenses to pay attention to them (like passing them the damn ball when defenses converge on you).

 

[Mason32]

In other words, they need to trust Calixte a lot more than they do and get him the ball in good spots.

so they should spend time getting Calixte to turn over the ball more?

 

[GMUgemini]

so they should spend time getting Calixte to turn over the ball more?

No. I said good spots, not 8 feet from the basket.

 

[psyclone]

It was one of three tweets and he simply mislabeled the axes. Replace "rim" with "midrange" in the axis labels and it all makes sense.

For added context, here's the chart at the rim (good efficiency, not nearly enough attempts):

https://twitter.com/mattrhein86/status/1215730746377342977?s=19

And here's the 3 point chart (turrible, we're in the Fordham quadrant):

https://twitter.com/mattrhein86/status/1215739468508028929?s=19

I would think the Worst category would be Lo efficiency/Above average attempts. If you don't shoot 3's well, it seems like you're better off not taking a lot of them.

 

[Herndon]

Can’t spend what you don’t have. We spend almost what Richmond does (minis coaches’ salary differential). Aren’t we somewhere in the middle of the pack for spending, but yet at the bottom of the pack in terms of success.

No, I'd say we're middle of the pack for spending, and middle of the pack for success. We're a middle of the pack A10 program, as borne out by the fact the for the past 3 years, we've finished middle of the pack in the A10 standings.

Before that, we had a "left side of the bell curve" coach that was distorting our results.

I don't think Paulsen is a "right side of the bell curve" coach, but I think he's probably about an average A10 coach. With an average a10 coach, and average a10 spending, we should expect average a10 results.

Heading into work, so won't see the game today. Best of luck!

 

[patriotchild]

Same starters as SBU. Do we know if Odoro is sick/injured?

 

[Haxormax]

Im at Tom Gola Arena. Yuenglings and Miller lites are $4, Yards Brawlers and wood Chuck's are $6

 

[GSII]

Yall are missing one thing. Lil Dave is below average recruiter and roster manager. Many coaches, by yr 2, bring in the caliber player needed to win, yet we cannot.

It was like yesterday.......the signings of Miskiri and Herring illustrated, slightly, we had us a real coach. The following yr conf champs...wow....i just went back in time...sugar dropping, need to eat.

Oh yea, Here we are, in year 5, still waiting for the slightest clue we are gonna turn the corner.

 

[GSII]

Same starters as SBU. Do we know if Odoro is sick/injured?

This is interesting. I hope By George ask to explain this strategy.

 

[tblack33]

Im at Tom Gola Arena. Yuenglings and Miller lites are $4, Yards Brawlers and wood Chuck's are $6

Anyone know why we don’t sell beer at games? Is it a VA thing?

 

[GSII]

Anyone know why we don’t sell beer at games? Is it a VA thing?

We need to sell cocaine to our whine and cheezers.

 

[Haxormax]

This is their first game selling beer, pilot program.

 

[patriotchild]

Well this is certainly an even match up. Both teams dribble off their feet