Bonnies @ George Mason (Wed. Jan. 8, 7:00)

Costed me at least two at leest five atilla the cosby the gw the hun dred at leesh two grand.

I thought us going +27 when we were down 15 would be the best thing I saw tonight... Lester, like the Bonnies, is BACK!!!

Didn't get to post actual takes in-game, just Twitter nonsense, so here are my observations.

We can't start out that poorly against almost any other team in the A10 again. The GooMoos are TERRIBLE offensively. They hit 5 threes in the first 9 minutes, ended the game with 8 and I'm surprised they ended with that many. Even the middle-of-the-pack teams with good offenses like Davidson or UMass (yes, I'm calling it, UMass will avoid the Pillow Fight) probably won't let us catch up like that.

Schmidt postgame said something to the effect of the guys could have easily packed it in and said, hey we got one road win, nbd... I know @Bonafanatic called out Chuckie for taking Lofton over Osun for player of the game, but I got to agree. Yes, 18 rebounds is extremely impressive and we're in the bottom 7 without Osun. Lofton kept us in the game when our offense was absolutely dead in the first half. When you get into a 12+ point deficit, you need to focus on getting to within 6-8 at halftime. That's what he did. It's all psychological and being down 4 at the half is basically like restarting the game 0-0. If you're down 10+, you start pushing, jacking up dumb 3s, etc.

GMU has a really good band, but I just can't get with them having actual singers with a microphone. It just doesn't feel right. I'm ok with them almost becoming a force-fed rival (how many times have we played them twice in a season?), but while the Twitter guys like Petey are chill, I have no sympathy for a school that size in a major city only drawing 2,511 fans. Last time I checked, Bona's has about 4k fans during winter breaks, and unlike Mason, most of our students are hours from campus.

Finally, Dr. G more than makes up for the annoyance of Stadium. Martucci is solid (cool guy on Twitter), but Dr. G is probably the best college basketball analyst out there. He explains very complicated things in basketball in an easy-to-understand way and isn't full of himself. If only that guy coached at a real school instead of La Salle. I'm shocked ESPN hasn't swallowed him up yet.
 
Great start to the A10 season, took care of business on the road. Does anybody see some Posley in AJ’s game? Strong dudes built like running backs who have great shot making ability. Obviously we didn’t see Posley as a true freshmen so I’m not saying AJ is Posley yet, but you have to like what you see out this kid, confident player who is learning. Let’s take care of business and get to 4-0 before a real tough 3 game stretch!
 
Great start to the A10 season, took care of business on the road. Does anybody see some Posley in AJ’s game? Strong dudes built like running backs who have great shot making ability. Obviously we didn’t see Posley as a true freshmen so I’m not saying AJ is Posley yet, but you have to like what you see out this kid, confident player who is learning. Let’s take care of business and get to 4-0 before a real tough 3 game stretch!

There’s a little Marcus there, yep. If/when he learns how to use his shoulders on drives, he’ll be a good option for some of those plays we set up for Posley (strong right hand... ask Allie-Cox).
Dom is the key to wins. I’m liking his true toughness on rebounds. Glad Court showed him the way.
Kyle has been the best player on the court (both sides) for multiple games this year. He has worked on his high dribble from last year and can beat presses with it better than most D1 guards.
Alpha didn’t hurt us and had energy when we really needed it. The team was happy for him (because, again, he is a great teammate).
Agreed on the three point barrage early on. Basically every other A10 team 1-9 would beat us as mentioned above. GM has some major flaws, though, and we played harder than they did in the second half.
 
There are so many things to like about Kyle, but my favorite is his ability to finish. Nothing has been more frustrating in recent years than seeing our inability to finish at the rim. Oh yes, and when you have 12 more second chance points and you win by 12 you feel good about our hoop warriors. These kids have grit.
 
Definitely can't keep starting the way we did against the George's. Hopefully the feeling of being down 19-4 and clawing back is one they learn from. It's been a staple of Schmidt teams to start slow, but a lot of times we do so while also forcing our opponents into a slow start. Last night was great to see a blossoming of defensive development before our eyes.

Bona commenter- interestingly, last year was the first time we played them twice. But since last year there's been a strong emotional attachment to each game, so it makes sense. First game last year, the sky was falling. Second game, you felt a real corner being turned. 3rd was an A10 game, and last night was the giddy comeback that it was.

St Joes and Duquesne on the other hand- in the Schmidt era, only 2007, 2012 and 2013 are the years you'll find where St Joes wasn't scheduled twice. And as for the Dukes, there hasn't been a single year in the Schmidt era where they weren't scheduled twice. I didn't feel like digging further but who knows, it probably extends farther than that. Not sure why.
 
Bona commenter- interestingly, last year was the first time we played them twice. But since last year there's been a strong emotional attachment to each game, so it makes sense. First game last year, the sky was falling. Second game, you felt a real corner being turned. 3rd was an A10 game, and last night was the giddy comeback that it was.

St Joes and Duquesne on the other hand- in the Schmidt era, only 2007, 2012 and 2013 are the years you'll find where St Joes wasn't scheduled twice. And as for the Dukes, there hasn't been a single year in the Schmidt era where they weren't scheduled twice. I didn't feel like digging further but who knows, it probably extends farther than that. Not sure why.

Hmm... definitely recency bias on my part because it feels like we've been paired with them more. Maybe I'm getting it mixed when we were paired with Davidson a few years ago? Idk, we also played them 3 times counting Brooklyn last year, so may also be a factor. Either way, we are 8-1 against them since they joined the A10. From the looks of Mason's board, they aren't excited about the RC next month and think we have a better future than them. They're ready to fire Paulsen...
 
Believe it or not, we Bucknellians weren't overly sorry to see Paulsen go despite the success we had. Like most basketball coaches, he's stubborn as hell and seemed unwilling or unable to adjust his tactics to fit the opponent and his own changing personnel. (Of course, that was in the opinion of all of us bloviating "experts" that never coached, and in some cases, played a lick). His strength was recruiting. He was able to recruit many of the better players with the high academic backgrounds necessary to meet school and PL requirements, in many cases keeping them away from the Ivies, Northwesterns and W&Ms, et. al. That doesn't seem to have translated as well to GMU.

Of course, now that his last recruit is gone from Bucknell, some of us would welcome him back in a minute.
 
I’ve always liked Paulsen. GMU should avoid the quick fix type and let him build. There’s a pretty solid foundation there, but a few high basketball IQ guys are needed to mix in with the über athletes (sort of like SBU).

I wish the Ivy and PL schools would offer scholarships. The non-scholarship approach feels a little dated, but I’m obviously an outsider with respect to that. Schools like Fordham and W&M would be great fits in the PL, but probably wouldn’t want to leave the scholarship athletes behind.
 
Bill, the PL has been a scholarship league for over two decades though some teams didn't offer them until the mid-2000s. For the Ivies, it doesn't make any real difference. Most of them throw around so much money to all students that most of their guys are getting free or nearly free rides anyhow. We offer some braniac baller a ride and then Princeton comes sniffing around. Where do you think he's going to go?
 
Great start to the A10 season, took care of business on the road. Does anybody see some Posley in AJ’s game? Strong dudes built like running backs who have great shot making ability. Obviously we didn’t see Posley as a true freshmen so I’m not saying AJ is Posley yet, but you have to like what you see out this kid, confident player who is learning. Let’s take care of business and get to 4-0 before a real tough 3 game stretch!
He strikes me as more of a Mobley type. The difference being he is more of a shooter and a little more loose with the ball.

Posley had a even or positive Assist to Turnover Ratio and Mobley was even or negative. Mobley and Vasquez are better three point shooters by about 5 percentage points.

Being a comp for either of them is huge for the future of this team if he can even get to 75-80% of what those guys provided.
 
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