Conference thread

Bonafanatic

Bonafanatic

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Considering where this team was two games in, they salvaged what they could with a nice little OOC. Unfortunately, that Canisius loss, coupled with no outstanding wins, was the anchor that we all knew it would be and ended any discussion of an at-large, barring ridiculous scenarios not worth the time to type out.

Now it's time to focus on the conference and a double-bye in Brooklyn. This has got to be the most top-heavy conf schedule the Bonnies have had. Through their first nine games they face a Kenpom average of 112 with many of their toughest opponents on the road. Final nine games 148. Get through January with five wins and they'll be in great position down the stretch.
 
I am not sure that Canisius loss is yet an anchor. They're Q3, and you can get in with Q3 & Q4 losses. I think both OK STATE and Akron will be Q2s by year's end, so if that hold true, not too bad.

Like you said, this A10 and the schedule we've been presented could give us a path to an AL, but it'll be tough. Hard to peg this team, as they pound the awful teams, but have clearly struggled when faced with better competition.

At the current moment, we have the possibility of playing a schedule with 2 Q1 games and 6-8 Q2 games. If that happens, we would likely need to win both Q1 games plus one more in Brooklyn to have an AL resume.

Going off the past two year's last four teams in the NCAAs, the magic number for Q1 wins is 3-6 and then the same in Q2. Or you can be like Charleston and win 30 games with a terrible resume or NC State who avoided Dayton with just 1 Q win and 7 Q2s.
 
Agree with 3Shay, Canisius is not an albatross loss. With the MAAC sucking huge nuts, they could fall to Q4 but we'll worry about that later. Missing our 2 Q1 games in the non conference hurts because if we had one of them, we would be in bubble contention. I have us about 20 spots from the cut line right now. So its unlikely but there is a path and it starts tomorrow. VCU should be a Q1 game by the end. They are fully healthy and really have the make of a top 50 team, but they struggled so much early on they are in a huge hole. Beating them now before they completely get it together will pay off big.

Currently we only have 1 Q1 game on the schedule and that is at Dayton. Dug, GM, VCU, SJU road games all could end up Q1 in some combination. This is where I think the A10 messed up. They didnt give us H-H with SJU or Dayton. We will get 0 Q1 home games as a result. Winning on the road is hard, we all know that. I saw this stat today and it proves it out:

"The KenPom Top 10 is a combined 4-10 straight up in true road games at Top 100 opponents so far this season."

So going on the road and getting 2-3 Q1 wins is quite the feat and challenge. Best we can do is hope for that and then get 1 or 2 more in Brooklyn and see where the chips fall.

I really like where we are at defensively and most nights on offense. The Akron game is exactly the type of game we are going to see a lot in the A10 so it was great to gut out a tough one, especially with nobody really having a great offensive game. Barry Evans should play 25 min a night unless we fall behind by 10. I'd love to sees a 1-3-1 zone with him up top.
 
Time for one of my stream of consciousness long posts for any avid readers.

Lack of good wins is always harder to overcome than lack of bad losses. We’d have still been better off by losing to Canisius and beating FAU or Auburn, than by beating Canisius and losing to both FAU and Auburn. Of course, we lost all 3, so moot point.


At this point the focus (stop me if this sounds familiar!) should be continuing to improve, securing a double bye, and be playing our best basketball heading into Brooklyn. On the topic of ‘continuing to improve’, the top areas to my mind, in no particular order:

-More offense from Pride against the better teams. Pride has been no doubt a solid addition, but against Ok ST, Auburn, FAU and Akron he’s averaging just 5.5 per game on just 24% from the field. Not to dismiss all his intangibles and hustle stats, but the DNA of this team is built around him being a scoring threat. He figures a way to do that more consistently, against all competition, we’re in a better position.

-Assa to find whatever it is he’s lost. I’ve posted on the A10 board as well the same sentiments- getting him to be a more consistent scoring threat will push this team forward another half step, if not full step.

-This one might be akin to yelling at a cloud, but getting to the rim. The ability of this team to drive to the hoop for a good look, and get to the line, and even more so to get to the rim without the ball, is often painstaking. It’s honestly astonishing how overall ineffective they are at that, and still sit ~top 75 in all metrics. If they can finally find a way to incorporate slips back door etc, that opens their potential wide open, considering they’re already a solid 3 point squad. As an overarching theme, that’s what separates us currently from a decent team and good team.


I’ll add that I don’t include anything about Banks in my areas to improve. The last 2 games are indicative enough- if he’s being outplayed by Flowers, he won’t be out there. Him going off for 30+ a few times again of course will be welcome, but it’s a blessing that this team is deep enough to not need it, in order to get where we want to be.

All this is to say I’m happy overall with where they are, but not yet satisfied. I see the potential for more, and feel like they’re tapping on the door, trying to figure out how to cross that next proverbial threshold.

Here’s to starting to find their way to it tomorrow, with a second straight win at the Stu. Certainly there is no fan base I enjoy seeing us shut up more.
 
Not that it matters all that much, but Akron is now a Q2 after having jumped from 122 to 92 overnight after winning at Northern Ill. Hopefully OKSTATE can join them in the next few weeks...

No team in the A10 really scares me all that much, but unlike year's past, there looks to be a lot more depth and solid teams this season. 13 of our 15 teams have winning records and nine have 9+ wins.

Our first real tough road match to date against a team finally getting back to full strength will be difficult. Like us, VCU doesn't really have any great wins, but they did beat Penn State and Temple if you're impressed by that.

We've only played 12 games, but our offense has looked pretty bad against heightened competition. To win tonight or against any top A10 program, we will need a much better offense in addition to a strong defensive performance.

You never know how the conference will shake out, but we really need a 3-1 or even 4-0 start because after that, we go @DUQ, Saint Joe's, VCU and @Dayton.
 
Too bad their fans suck so bad because a good VCU is good for the A10. But the fan base thinks BB was invented in 2011 when they made the FF. Suck on our brown 💩 unis for a bit.
 
I think the team maybe read my post about what we need to improve. All 3 things I asked for were there last night. The offense was as crisp as its looked since February of 2022. We've got a real shot to win the league, if we can hold onto whatever it is that we found.
 
Our team 3 pt shooting % is up to top 30 in the country. Not too bad.

We will win a lot of games this year if we can score 75+ PPG. Richmond is no slouch and is another Q2 game Saturday. I don't care to look it up, but they have to be near the top in the country in terms of protecting the ball on O.
 
3rdShayCripSet said:
Our team 3 pt shooting % is up to top 30 in the country. Not too bad.

We will win a lot of games this year if we can score 75+ PPG. Richmond is no slouch and is another Q2 game Saturday. I don't care to look it up, but they have to be near the top in the country in terms of protecting the ball on O.
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Your intuition is accurate. Richmond is 247th in forced turnovers but 40th in margin so that means that dont turn the ball over much at all.
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We have really shot the ball well most of the season, it was just a few games we didnt and they also happened to be the biggest games we played. They were mainly wide open looks too so maybe it was jitters so it wasnt like Auburn forced us into bad shots. We are doing a lot of things well right now and with the veteran guys we have, it should continue mostly. I have been waiting for Pride to get into the swing of things as well as YFAE and Banks to hit some shots and they all did last night.

We are steadily building our resume up now to the point where its OK to think about an at large. Id say we are about 15 spots away right now. Keep winning!
 
Community Bank 3Pt Tee said:
Luc deserves a special nod as well. He played excellent in his limited minutes. All 6 points he scored came at times when we needed a bucket. Especially his lone basket in the 2nd half. Impressive performance and attitude from him.
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Schmidt praised him a few times in his post game with Gary. It was nice to see Luc get that recognition as he definitely deserved it. Has to be tough to be a started and avg 13 ppg and then get relegated to backup minutes the following year.
 
Bona03 said:
Schmidt praised him a few times in his post game with Gary. It was nice to see Luc get that recognition as he definitely deserved it. Has to be tough to be a started and avg 13 ppg and then get relegated to backup minutes the following year.
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I like where Luc's head is at. I saw Adams-Woods make a nice play in the 2nd half and the camera panned to Luc who looked pumped for him. Other, lesser men, might not do that. Luc also comes in the game and in limited minutes he plays confident and loose.

This team is starting to embrace their roles and working well as a team. I am glad it is paying off for them
 
That 10 minute stretch to end the 1st half was just awful and the difference in the game. I dont know how you can score 21 pts in 10 min and then go off a cliff. Richmond played good defense but we struggled to get up good shots. Forcefeeding the ball into Venning was not working. Their bigs, got they pissed me off. Watching 12 ft push shots from a guy who is 6'10 or whatever was infuriating. A split down there isnt the worst thing in the world and now there are winnable games coming up to get things right.
 
Bona03 said:
That 10 minute stretch to end the 1st half was just awful and the difference in the game. I dont know how you can score 21 pts in 10 min and then go off a cliff. Richmond played good defense but we struggled to get up good shots. Forcefeeding the ball into Venning was not working. Their bigs, got they pissed me off. Watching 12 ft push shots from a guy who is 6'10 or whatever was infuriating. A split down there isnt the worst thing in the world and now there are winnable games coming up to get things right.
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Difficult to watch. There was no movement. No screens. Nothing happening off the ball. Not sure what the hell happened and why they abandoned their proven gameplan.
 
The splits our offense encounters when facing real competition is still very alarming. Aside from VCU, we have not played well on offense when facing good teams.

I think many fans, myself included, forgot how average this team is on offense when playing teams that aren't ranked north of 250. We are definitely a much-improved team from last season, but our offense is not our calling card despite the success in the OOC.

I am still hoping this team can be an NCAA tourney team, but we really haven't beaten anyone that makes you confident in that fact. VCU, Longwood, Akron and OK State have a combined ZERO Q1 and Q2 victories. Bucknell is the only team we've beaten that has A q1 or q2 victory.

We really need the next two wins because after that, six of our next seven games are against teams rated top 90 or better.
 
It’s the intuition and movement without the ball. We did that Wednesday night more than we had, maybe ever, with this core group. I thought perhaps we’d turned a corner. Vcu’s poor d helped, but it was more than just nailing a bunch of open 3s. There was a rhythm.

What Richmond did was study the tape of what FAU did excellently, and Akron did relatively well. They got right in our face and dared us to be able to still play that way. Go ahead and stay calm with a person glued to you. Go ahead and try to get off actual, good looks without going full iso ball, while someone is draping you from half court on.

Thats our biggest weakness. We haven’t figured out how to get past that yet. If we do, the ceiling is very high. If we don’t, another respectable, but in the grand scheme forgettable, 21-11/semi final exit/no post season type of year is headed our way.
 
I'm worried about the almost certain regression MAW will face in the coming weeks.

He's been our leading scorer through 14 games, but has significantly outperformed his shooting percentages with overall shooting, 3 Pt shooting and overall scoring.

If this team with all its returning pieces and heralded transfers can't get it done with Schmidt this year, there's no reason to think he will ever get it done again in this new age, but hopefully the Richmond game is just a small blip and we enter the Saint Joe's game at 4-2.
 
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