Bonnies vs. Duquesne (Wed. 02/26/20 @ 7:00 pm)

The stat sheet has got to be lying because it felt like each team had 20 turnovers last night. Baseline Bobby gets handsy on defense, and even though I think he's a good defender and decent rebounder, other than Richmond, he's hurt us in the majority of the last 6 or 7 games. I hate to see it because the kid obviously wants to succeed. And I don't know how you can say Vasquez has gone backwards. He has a short leash and everyone is comparing him to his RU game which was a statistical outlier. After the initial 2nd half run was squandered, Vasquez came back in and the team immediately pulled back to even. He provides something out there, and we don't have terrible bench. That's a bit of an overreaction.

Last night was a reversion to November Bonnies, too many quick triggers, and not valuing the basketball. If even 2 or 3 of their shots beyond the arc fall it's a completely different game - shooting fixes so much. But on nights you don't have it, go to your bread and butter, which is Shoon. The kid's having a career night and Winston and Dom want to take 23 footers when they've both shown they are more than capable at driving to the hoop. Lofton's runner at the end, while I like him taking that shot, and he's good at that shot, he's got to have the clock and spatial awareness to see he drew 3 defenders and Shoon was right there for the dump off. It would have capped a night for sure, and felt like a steal with very sub-par execution. I think we just ran out of our "get outta jail free" cards last night. Sometimes you lose. And that one just hurts.
 
Lots of good points made. BI, I saw the same thing on Lofton's drive and thought he was going to hit Shoon for a monster dunk. They did use Shoon a lot, he had 23 points.

The most disconcerting thing about the FT's was it was probably our 2 best shooters who missed them. English and Lofton both struggled from the line and it cost us. I was hoping the SLU game would be a throw away at the end but now we will have to win it to get the 3 unless Richmond stumbles twice. I felt like they were going to gut out that win last night in regulation but that foul on English was just crap. He was playing defense with his man and Carry ran out of real estate on the baseline and forced his way back into English. That is nothing. Dr G said it was a foul but I have to disagree.

On To La Salle.
 
Yeah, 03, I didn't even see him body him out or anything. He simply ran around Jaren out of bounds. There were other calls too, when Bobby and Steele? were locked on the rebound they whistled Bobby and it was 2 freebies for Duquesne. English got the 0'fer coming out of timeout, Lofton rarely misses down the stretch and that's a completely different draw-up for DUQ if down 3 instead of 2.

I agree, they did use Shoon a lot, he could have gone for 35 last night if Dom, Kyle, English, Winston, any of them do more driving and dumping last night. Speaking of free throws, his miss on the dunk-and-1 hurt but he'd made 3 for 3 already on the night. A 55% free throw guy is going to miss once in a while. It's when your 77 and 86% guys are laying bricks.. dammit.
 
I mentioned this to someone in the RC last night but I get a perverse enjoyment watching the no Lofton lineups/minutes. I know having Lofton on the court as much as possible is the best thing if we want to win games. However the no Lofton lineup is fun because its different. We survived two stretches last night without Lofton something I wouldn't have said was possible a month ago.Even if the offense with English at PG is mostly him trying to get downhill into the lane and he develops tunnel vision when Lofton is off the floor, I still like it for some reason.

I think we were all relieved when both English and Lofton were able to return to the floor after going down hard. I only partially saw the English play but that looked like a bad collision, anyone know if he was just shaken up or what they were checking him for? I hope its not another concussion situation. Lofton had me worried because it looked like a sniper got him and that is normally much worse than a rolled ankle. From my seat I can see the training table where they re-taped his ankle. The trainer was not moving fast enough for Lofton, who you could tell hated being out of a close game that close to the end.
 
I've been complaining about our FT's for a couple weeks now and just took a look. This month we're shooting 68.3% from the line. If that were our average over the course of conference play, we'd be in the bottom 4.

Over the conference season we're 72.9%: pretty much tied with Duquesne at 3rd.

Historically, Schmidt's teams have always been good from the stripe. I had a feeling this recent trend would catch up to us and it finally did yesterday.
 
I like Lofton having ball at end of games but as in so many cases, including NBA, the other teams know it as well and a big pct. of times it does not work out. He had easy passes to Shoon and game over. For me biggest surprise of season is as recently as a month ago Shoon seemed to have limited potential for offense, at least this year, besides a dunk here and there. Now he looks like complete offensive player around basket and should have had 30 last night. But leads to this key question: anyone afraid that he will bulk up a bit and leave school after one, not two, more years????
 
I like Lofton having ball at end of games but as in so many cases, including NBA, the other teams know it as well and a big pct. of times it does not work out. He had easy passes to Shoon and game over. For me biggest surprise of season is as recently as a month ago Shoon seemed to have limited potential for offense, at least this year, besides a dunk here and there. Now he looks like complete offensive player around basket and should have had 30 last night. But leads to this key question: anyone afraid that he will bulk up a bit and leave school after one, not two, more years????
Osun is a long, long way away from being NBA ready. He needs a full four years of physical and offensive development to get a real shot at the contemporary NBA style.
 
But leads to this key question: anyone afraid that he will bulk up a bit and leave school after one, not two, more years????
There are a lot of things I'm afraid of. Centipedes. Plane crashes. Mushrooms in chili. West Baltimore. Davidson.

I can't say one of those things is our all-conference St. Bonaventure student-athlete adding 20 lbs, becoming an all-American candidate, winning us a bunch of games, and then following his dream 12 months early to get paid comfortable sums of money to play basketball at the highest level. I am not afraid of that.
 
This one rest squarely on the coaching staff. Why wasn't coach playing Anthony Lamb?
Guy's from our own backyard for crissakes.
 
Schmidt has 3 scholarship players that he refuses to play. Johnson, Okoli, and Carpenter. It’s maddening. Every year, we think we have depth, and every year, Schmidt plays the same 6 or 7 guys. Johnson is a useful guard. Carpenter can move laterally, that’s more than I can say for Ikpeze. Find minutes for these guys. Try something new. The bench is giving this team next to nothing. I really wish Vasquez had a longer leash. He’s the only firepower off the bench.
 
We do have depth. We have a solid 8 man rotation who play 15+ min per game. Find me a school who plays 9 guys more than 15 min
Find me a team that played 9+ guys 10 minutes and won games, other than some Paul Westhead teams or his coaching tree, you won't find many.

I do think we could get more creative with lineups for specific matchups. For example a OO/Ikpeze lineup vs Steele/Hughes would be fun old school basketball.
 
Schmidt has 3 scholarship players that he refuses to play. Johnson, Okoli, and Carpenter. It’s maddening. Every year, we think we have depth, and every year, Schmidt plays the same 6 or 7 guys. Johnson is a useful guard. Carpenter can move laterally, that’s more than I can say for Ikpeze. Find minutes for these guys. Try something new. The bench is giving this team next to nothing. I really wish Vasquez had a longer leash. He’s the only firepower off the bench.
I am terrified Ikpeze is going to give us a fitting Kaputo like end of game let down this year in A-10’s. Schmidt needs to stop with the senior class obsession, he has some talent now. Same goes for Bobby over Winston....ridiculous.
 
I am terrified Ikpeze is going to give us a fitting Kaputo like end of game let down this year in A-10’s. Schmidt needs to stop with the senior class obsession, he has some talent now. Same goes for Bobby over Winston....ridiculous.
Senior class obsession?
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