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I’ve enjoyed the entire year reading the very insightful observations on this board. Thank you to all. And as an alum and college basketball fan (but certainly no guru) I’ve enjoyed even more attending 11 games including Lafayette and Fordham on the road. Reading everybody’s player by player evaluations helps to explain the season to a point I guess, but I think my summary is based on the season’s games in general. When you look game by game the disparity between the highs and lows is pretty dramatic. Quinipiac, Rider, and the two Boston games were impressive. At Holy Cross, at Army , at American, and Colgate at home were disheartening stinkers. Even so, in a league this balanced I think you have to expect a few of these kind of games. Maybe not as many as this year, but you’re gonna have ‘um. To me the ”in between” games tell more of the story. Discounting Minny & Pitt, we were very competitive in the rest. But we could never put someone away, winning narrowly, or could not quite get over the hump after a long slog to overcome an early deficit. And we certainly did not get better as the year went on.
Some generalities; we communicated poorly on defense. The number of times we gave up layups on give and goes after 28 seconds of good defense in close games drove me crazy. Or the number of offensive putbacks we allowed for easy scores made my hair hurt. Meanwhile on offense our point guard often tried to play both the 1 & the slashing 2 at the same time, probably out of necessity. And when the opposition figured out TK was our only consistent offense, they packed it in and made us win from outside. How many times did Mackey (in frustration?) feel it necessary to take it to the rim and then get stuffed ‘cause they had the lane clogged with guys 7 to 8 inches taller than him? In general those two issues made the difference between a very successful year for a very young talented team, and the “didn’t meet expectations year” we ended up with.
Youth of course explains some of this. And maybe we don’t have a CJ in this class. But to me the lack of improvement as the year went on these basic game changing issues should be a serious question for the coaching staff. A number of folks here have expressed this opinion, and I totally agree. The talent is there. And apparently more is coming. Hopeful Doc & friends can figure it out.
Two quick questions for the assembled multitude:
Was Zahir Carrington as raw as Jessie when he came in?
Does Corey Schaefer remind anyone of Johnny Waters(‘71)? (question for old timers)