Bonnies vs. Saint Joseph's (Wed. 03/04/20 @ 7:00pm)

I don't even know how much I want to get into actually dissecting this shitshow. This should be a massacre. I want blood. 20+ point win and resting some guys for God's sake.

The last game clearly was two separate performances out of our guys. The Hawks got pretty much every damn rebound in the first half, while we decided to actually attack the rim in the second and ran away with it. I hope Saturday really shows this team that they can't dick around for 30 minutes against even the Pillow Fighters. St. Joe's almost beat Davidson on the road (and did at home), so they can be dangerous every now and then.

Regardless, screw them. SJU is garbage by and large this season. Look at this shit from King Nerd KenPom.
  • 353rd (WORST!) in the country in getting shots blocked on offense
  • 328th in effective field goal percentage
  • 324th in 3-point percentage (we are TERRIBLE at 3-point distribution, mediocre at percentage)
  • 350th in turnover percentage on defense (forcing turnovers)
  • 337th in steal percentage on defense
  • 328th in 3-point percentage on defense
  • 305th in adjusted efficiency on defense
We need to pulverize these clowns.
 
I really thought after the poor showing vs Duquesne that we would come out and put it on La Salle. After that shit show, I dont know I can expect anything out of these guys. We should kill the hawk easily but lately the "should" has not come to fruition. At some point this team needs to bounce back and play like we all know they can so hopefully that is tomorrow.
 
Well, that was a nice first half. Exactly what we needed, now let's have that performance for 40 minutes. Not sure what I learned from that half other than our offense is way better when guys drive/cut into the paint at St. Joe's SUCKS at shooting the 3.
 
Nice game. Good reminder that our guys have some skills. Winston may sometimes look like a lump of coal, but there's a diamond inside that's just about ready to bust out. Also glad to see Amadi have a nice send-off. We're going to need to be banging on all 8 cylinders in the season finale.
 
I think we all, including coach and Amadi understand Ikpeze's strengths and weaknesses on a basketball court. He has always seemed like a good team guy. I remember when he wasn't getting many minutes his freshman year, either the LaSalle or Duq game, he got some time and made a couple of nice moves and all the guys on the bench went nuts. There is something to be said for having guys that the rest of the team loves. Ikpeze is going to be a key factor in whether we get the double bye or not.

One of my favorite Ikpeze related memories and I forget some of the details but there was a home game and maybe it was the LaSalle game I mentioned above, where Schmidt was about to empty the bench with a bunch of time left for a Schmidt team, and Schmidt wanted the starters to execute a play to Ikpeze on the left block and they ran the same play 3 or 4 straight times to no avail. Eventually Mobley or Adams were just done with being in the game realized they had 4 fouls and grabbed a dude to get out of the rest of the game. I don't even think Ikpeze was the one that screwed up the play they just couldn't get the ball to him where/when coach wanted them to.
 
Amadi must have known he wasn't going to get many minutes this year. And yet, look how chiseled he was when he came back from the off-season. I can't imagine how much work he must have put in to get that way -- and this is a man who likes to eat. That sends a message to all the young guys as to how one's got to approach the game. As was said at the time, he was made a captain for a reason.
 
Nice game. Good reminder that our guys have some skills. Winston may sometimes look like a lump of coal, but there's a diamond inside that's just about ready to bust out. Also glad to see Amadi have a nice send-off. We're going to need to be banging on all 8 cylinders in the season finale.

I don't know if I would describe this as a nice win. We played a 2-14 team in the A-10 that's worse than Fordham. They've won six games the whole season. We were at home. We did what a team ranked in the upper tier of the A10 should do.

I'm a little pissed that Schmidt kept Jaren (and others) in as long as he did. Jaren was hobbling pretty badly after the game after a tough drive WITH UNDER 3 MINUTES TO GO AND US UP 20 FUCKING POINTS. I'm a little sick of this whole play your starters till their legs fall off "strategy." It just hurts us in the post-season when we have to string together wins across consecutive days. I think in particular the game against Florida after we beat UCLA when we got in via the play-in game demonstrated that in the long run this approach is not sustainable. I know this has been discussed ad nauseum so please feel free to ignore, but it's going to be a problem moving forward. Will it be good for Kyle to have 39.8 minutes in 2022 - the season we're hoping to make a run in the NCAA tourney?

One positive was that it seemed like a nice day for Amadi for Senior Night. He got some rebounds and had some nice baskets which can't be said for every game this season. Glad to see a high character kid such as himself get a nice sendoff.
 
I'm not so sure the issues in 2018 vs Florida were so much chronic as they were acute. They returned from DC late Saturday night after back to back games, arrived in Dayton Monday, played late Tuesday night, arrived in Dallas in the middle of the night, then played again Thursday night. I could be wrong, but I dont think giving Mobley or Jay a breather a few more times throughout the year would have made all that much a difference in their fatigue by the time they tipped in Dallas.

The other risk you touched on, i.e. injury in those waning useless minutes of a blow out, is what gets me. The better we get, presumably the more comfortable wins we'll have. The more of those we have where we don't appropriately substitute out our core guys, it's a growing numbers game of rolling the dice on suffering an impactful garbage time injury.
 
I say nice win because we beat the spread and slightly improved our power rating. Not perfection, but nice. I know criticizing the coach's substitutions is an ongoing commentary, but I don't participate in that.
 
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