Bonnies @ Davidson (Wed. 02/24/21 at 5:00 pm)

I posted on Twitter that literally every game down the stretch is must-win if the NCAA tournament is the goal. SBUnfurled's graphics show us just on the inside of the bubble and a lot of that has to do with "bracketologists" giving us the auto-bid. I think if the season ended today we'd miss out -- at the very best case scenario we'd be sweating out a Sunday and being content with a play-in.

People keep saying we don't have any bad losses. Well we also don't have a ton of good winns and the ones we have keep getting watered down in A10 play.

As billy boy said, we gotta winn. And after we winn tomorrow, we gotta winn on Friday and then we gotta winn on Monday and then we gotta winn on Friday and then we gotta winn on Saturday.

^^^^that is the only scenario where I'll feel safe about our chances of playing in the tournament without the auto-bid. Anything less and the committee will only see that L and nothing else. Five more victories in a row. Let's do it!
 
I posted on Twitter that literally every game down the stretch is must-win if the NCAA tournament is the goal. SBUnfurled's graphics show us just on the inside of the bubble and a lot of that has to do with "bracketologists" giving us the auto-bid. I think if the season ended today we'd miss out -- at the very best case scenario we'd be sweating out a Sunday and being content with a play-in.

People keep saying we don't have any bad losses. Well we also don't have a ton of good winns and the ones we have keep getting watered down in A10 play.

As billy boy said, we gotta winn. And after we winn tomorrow, we gotta winn on Friday and then we gotta winn on Monday and then we gotta winn on Friday and then we gotta winn on Saturday.

^^^^that is the only scenario where I'll feel safe about our chances of playing in the tournament without the auto-bid. Anything less and the committee will only see that L and nothing else. Five more victories in a row. Let's do it!
I think we would be in if the season ended today, unfortunately, it does not. Like you said, our wins are not too great, so we most likely need to make the finals or semis and have VCU win it all.

So much is still up in the air. Teams will play their way in and out of the tournament and there may or may not be a lot of bid thieves this year.

Just root like hell for these teams to take on more losses:
Syracuse, Michigan St., SLU, Drake, Oregon, UConn, St. John's, Wichita State, Colorado St., Belmont, Minnesota, Maryland and Stanford.

While we think getting an at large with limited quality wins is unlikely, it has been done before. 2019 Belmont received an at large with a putrid schedule and no real eye popping wins.
 
Just win.

We have to expect as few things to correct themselves. Davidson shot the 3 below their average while we above ours, I expect that will flip. Davidson had mild success late in the game attacking the paint; doing this instead of jacking up 3's hoping for a hot hand allowed them to keep the game closer than it was trending. I expect they will do more of that, as a precursor to hoping it opens up their 3's. This is what we should have been prepared for Sunday. anyways. and so we should be again.

Offensively, we cant be taking 7 shots in the first 6:30 of the game like we did Sunday, and seem to do so often. Attack, attack, attack. Good things happen when Kyle drives. Good things happen when we make the extra look underneath. Use our athleticism to keep after the boards.

Get the Winn and exhale, so we can get back home and finish this thing out at the RC.
 
Vasquez has been putrid shooting the ball, but I am just waiting for him to go off.

Although his shooting numbers are low, he's only turned it over six times in nearly 200 minutes. I like his game even though the shots haven't been dropping this year.
 
Vasquez has been putrid shooting the ball, but I am just waiting for him to go off.

Although his shooting numbers are low, he's only turned it over six times in nearly 200 minutes. I like his game even though the shots haven't been dropping this year.
He had some really nice assists on Sunday which has never been a big part of his game. Also, the defense didn't fall apart with him on the court. His shooting has been pretty bad but I like that when he has the ball the defenders know they have to keep on him because he's always looking for his shot. I think the shootings numbers are a result of inconsistent game time and would go up with more playing time.

On another note, Vasquez also looks like he's lost a few lbs and put on some muscle. Whatever his regimen, I could definitely use it after being locked inside for a year quaffing Gennys. (photo from some random place probably shut down now I spotted while walking around my neighborhood).
 

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The fact that we shut them down the last 5 min of the game makes me more confident going into tonight. Like was said, Davidson shot ok but under average and we were over. TBH, we are a better shooting team than our % shows so I think we are getting closer to the mean now. Welch, Holmes and Lofton (lately) have been locked in from 3. Shoot well and defend and the good guys will come out on top.
 
Assuming Welch is healthy, he is our most consistent shooter. I'd love to see us run more sets to give him open looks from deep. The other thing I am looking for has been said above: continued bench contribution.
 
Adaway gives us something we didnt have last year vs Davidson and that is someone athletic enough to keep NBY from dominating the glass. Even if Adaway isnt pulling down the boards he is keeping Davidson from getting second chance points which is when their shooting really shines.

Also I think Carter Collins got 2 first half fouls Sunday and never got into the game. Some of that is our defense and some of it was the fouls. This was his first game all year to be held scoreless.
 
A Winn. That defense. Frustrated that we have an HC that didn't learn from the SLU game that you can't play 5 guys for an entire 20 minutes of basketball and expect them to look good down the stretch. How those 5 played the kind of defense they did in the closing minutes when they were gassed? Incredible. You can fritter away a double digit lead riding your 5, or you can blow it using your bench. In one scenario your starters get a breather.

Even though the GW game is the most important game on the face of the earth right now, I'm not sure I like UD marinating on a loss to the Hawks until Monday.
 
I hear you BI, he did space out timeouts and finally took advantage of a media timeout and gave Shoon a breather plus the timeout so he got 6-7 minutes off but only missed 2 of action. This is how we are gonna ride this year. Vasquez made a couple mistakes defensively and spent the rest of the game on the bench. Our defense is our calling card. Its good to see Welch and Holmes bury some 3's when needed. I wish Adaway would just catch and shoot. He looks so tentative and he has a decent shot. Trust it.

I dont care who we play, we are the better team and these guys are laser focused. You can tell in the interviews they have 1 goal and wont let anything get in the way.
 
I like the focus too, and they definitely say all the right things when asked. It's basically one at a time, insert coaching cliche here, but it all rings true. The tired legs will bite us at some point. It got us against SLU. It almost got us last night. It sounds stupid saying it out loud because they still had the energy to play great defense, but there's a technical component to offense, the shooting, and that goes when you're gassed. You're right though - this is a dead horse no longer worth beating because we aren't making $1MM/year in Cattaraugus County to figure this shit out. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the ride.

Adaway is the best athlete on the court, but he seems to think he's the 3rd option to take a shot. He can shoot.

Next up. Hold your collective breath until the clock reads double zeros.
 
Couldn't agree more about how gassed the fellas looked at the end there. I thought Lofton was going to just fall into the sideline for that last timeout. However, I can't argue with the decision-making from Schmidt because our Defense won us that game and anyone off the bench is a potential liability there. I just hope if we can build a lead over GW, we see Creal, Shaw, Vasquez and Alpha get some real minutes.
 
That was masterful defense. Just hope there's enough gas left in the tank to get us through the two remaining games. Kenpom's power ratings, which are a fairly consistent barometer over time (in a relative sense), say this is the best Bona team since his data started in 2002. I believe it.
Did you know that Jaren Holmes is now the second ranked 3-point shooter in the A10 at 45.8% and Dom is fourth at 41.4%? The Bonnies as a team are leading the league in that department with 36.6% accuracy. After a season of hearing so much about Crutcher, Bones, Perkins, Grady and others, it's good to know we've got some guys.
 
Perfect time for these guys to be getting into a groove. The committee likes that kind of thing...part of the eye test I think, how a team is preforming in recent games leading up to the tourney vs a good streak from, say, back in December.
 
On top of just the tired legs thing, we could have used the bench mainly Vasquez to force Davidson to match us. In the first half Welch's explosion came when he had NBY on him because we were playing Vasquez for Adaway and Davidson was in a more traditional lineup. NBY was playing Welch the same way he played Adaway giving him way too much space and time to get his shot off.

Down the stretch McKillop also went with NBY but we stuck with our starting 5. NBY continued to play off and clogged the lane. Which helped to take away Lofton's ability to drive or even get to his pullup jumper without having a guy right in his face. Giving Vasquez a couple minutes around the 4 minute mark when the offense was struggling would have forced Davidson to either take NBY out or shuffle the matchups putting NBY on one of the guards and giving up open looks.

Adaway hit the big shot with NBY playing this style of defense on him, but I think we could have gotten some looks for Welch or Vasquez earlier by exploiting this match up.

Davidson's other option was to put in Mennenga or one of the Jones but they are the help defenders NBY is and would have opened the lane for Lofton.

I'd take our 5 guys against just about anyone but sometimes the bench can create favorable matchups without giving much up.
 
OO two shots last night. I know he had big block at end but can we get him more involved on offense besides screens out of high post. He can learn to play offense without fouling. Shaw has shown more willingness to shoot despite limited time.
 
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