Chris Datres

The article says he graduated from Rutgers?

That's the first name on this whole thread that I'd genuinely want to see in black and gold. With the signing/commitment of Allen, that probably takes anybody else out of the running. Minlend's dad was a hell of a player at St. John's and son is pretty damn good in his own respect. I would expect a P5 team will snap him up as soon as they can.

The Wiggity Wiggity WAC (way too much Kris Kross in rotation in my college days) was New Mexico State and that was it. The Aggies cruised to an undefeated record in conference and for the most part, they weren't really challenged. This is a conference that had a 4-25 Chicago State team (perennially a doormat) and all but 2 other teams below .500 for the season and one of those was 16-14. So there wasn't going to be much of a threat for any of them to pull of a non-conference upset.

I've been lucky enough to attend games at all 4 locations. History oozes from the floorboards of all 4 places. Cameron and Palestra are very similar in the way the 'concourse' (more like 1960's school hallways) are constructed. It was a vast difference going to Cameron one day and then going to the Dean Dome the next. As far as crowd atmospheres, the game I saw at Cameron was a December non-con blowout and the games I've seen at the Palestra haven't been all that exciting so I haven't gotten the true feel for either place from a crowd standpoint. The one game I went to at the Phog was the last Kansas-Missouri game in the rivalry and that was off-the-charts good. It was the #1 game I'd attended up until a couple of years ago. As for Hinkle, I made sure to take a picture of the basket from floor level, just to show that they're 10 feet just like the ones back at our home gym. The game I saw at Hinkle also was a tight, loud affair and if I lived anywhere in the Indianapolis area, I'd be in that place as much as I could.

Tigers in St. Pete? *perk* Hopefully I'm still in the area at that time.

Justyn Hamilton needs A LOT of work. If you think Alex Thomas was rough to watch on offense, you should see Hamilton play. He was actually starting for Temple at the end of last year and then the beginning of this season but regressed so badly that he was hardly seeing any time by the end of the season.

One of my friends has a daughter who is a senior at a D2 school and was captain of her softball team. Last night was her final game. Fortunately, the tournament they were playing in was very close to her hometown so her family could attend it. Had it been a home game, they likely wouldn't have been able to make the trip to see her. I hope that the NCAA will be able to find a way to extend the eligibility of those in the spring sports who had their seasons ended before a quarter of it could even be played. The sports landscape across the country is going to be incredibly odd over the next 30 days and who knows how much longer if things can't be contained.

Credit @RundaPower for the 'bad hedging' post in the postgame thread. I don't like how we can't edit posts after we've navigated away from the page after making one.

This 'track record in the CAA Tourney' bit is a bunch of horse hockey and really has zero relevance to this year's edition. I could turn around and say that we won 3 games in 3 days in Ft. Myers two years ago and 2 games in 2 days in Belfast a couple weeks after that. Would that mean anything for this week? Hell no. Different players, different opponents...and hopefully different results. But trying to cite history like that just gives the naysayers their fuel for when things go wrong. You want to live your fandom that way, go for it. But what happened last year or any of the years before that has zero to do with this year's team. Now, what happened 24 hours ago certainly has relevancy and let's hope that we make better adjustments than NE does.

It's right there in front of us. Other than Charleston, who we may never see, we've beaten everybody else in the bracket. Finishing the season 13-3 has to say something for their capabilities in the postseason. But again, game by game basis. Get a better defensive effort against NE this time around (great mention of the bad hedges by someone in the postgame thread) and choke the life out of them. This team is too good to be one and done this season.

13 out of 16 to finish the season. I'd say we're peaking at the right time. They've proven over the second half of the season that they can beat anybody (except Charleston). The games may not be pretty and they may have to really grind them out, but the end results have spoken for themselves. I'm not the biggest fan of playing a team in the tournament immediately after having played them to finish the regular season but that's the hand we're dealt. I thought we could have done a much better job defensively as there were too many open looks in the paint and the defensive boards weren't the greatest. Offensively, we got a number of timely makes, which is something we struggle with at times. I didn't realize Timberlake only had the one make but that pullup elbow jumper was pretty textbook. Gibson plays like a freshman at times and loses control (the failed lob to Timberlake that got him a seat on the bench) but his shots under duress in the 2nd half were pretty key. And I'm really finding a liking with Thompson outside of his free throw shooting. I'd look for big things out of him next year. We need Betrand to get back on track because if Fobbs gets his average and everyone else contributes like they have in this second half of the season, there's no reason why we can't win this tournament.

Play better. Take advantage of the games you do get to play against the higher conferences. Hofstra dumped UCLA early in the season and that's been a zit on UCLA's resume if you listen to the talking heads. W&M had a chance at Oklahoma and didn't do much. We had an opportunity at Florida and let it slip away. Charleston beat Providence, a team that looks like they're headed to the Dance. The opportunities are few but each team in the CAA gets them in the early part of the season. Just have to have more conversions.

Some of us will be working at 2:30 on Sunday so that 8:30 start (or later given the length of the 6pm game) would be very helpful.

There may have been a message sent after losing to W&M last Thursday night where all we did was settle for jumpers and try to dribble through everyone. Skerry said so in his postgame that night. These guys definitely responded to whatever was said based on those assist stats from these last 2 games.

Hold Buie to 6 points. +24 on the boards. 28-6 points in the paint in the first half. Big shots from Fobbs and Betrand late when Hofstra was creeping down to 6-7 points. As Spiro put it, it's the most complete game they've played in forever. Great timing for it, too, with the tournament on the horizon.

Anybody but Charleston for that quarterfinal game. I don't ever wanna see Riller against us again.

Spiro said on the broadcast that they came up just short of the number so I'm guessing that was around a thousand maybe. Certainly would have been nice to pay that off with a win to maybe get more out tomorrow.

Not a whole lot to like about this team so far this year. Can't win faceoffs on an even consistent basis (we'll never have the Woodall domination again). Can't play defense. Can't get many stops in net. Can't get a ground ball. When we get the ball, the offense is pretty blah (though 6 goals on 6 SOG in the first half was efficient). This game changed at 6-6 when we had the ball and then got stripped and the ball got kicked around on the ground for about 15 seconds and 40 yards from one side of the field to the other and Cornell got it and scored. We haven't seen the ball much since. I know this is likely a transition year but given past successes, it's a little mystifying that we can't reload and keep going rather than going downhill so abruptly.

Oh yeah, I was on board with ya.

And what happened when he tried to take it to the basket a few times tonight? He got his shit swatted by Tunstall. Yeah, he's the conference POY by a landslide but he should be owning the paint with his strength and versatility. But hey, congrats, he can audition for the G League slam dunk contest. Now get off my lawn and let me watch my Law & Order.

Very justified on this rant. It's a problem that is plaguing college basketball all across the board. There used to be a rule that got taken off the books a couple of years ago that you couldn't dunk in warmups. It's still that way at the HS level. Ever since they have erased the rule, every game I've gone to, many players will turn warmups into their own personal dunk contest. High bounces off the backboard for slams and other BS that you'll never see in a game. Then, when they get into a game, they miss simple freakin layups. Again, it's not just us. I've been to more than a dozen games across the country this year and I've seen it everywhere I've gone and I shake my head at it every single time. And then when a player has a straightforward take to the rack, or a simple putback, they clank it. Might as well start a hashtag for NCAA Tournament time for every one of those that are missed and call it #layupsarehard. Now I'm sure the young'uns will be like, 'ah come on, Chris, let the kids have some fun in front of their peers and show off'. Well, sorry, kids, but when you consistently get that bounce off the ground to the backboard for the through the legs slam in a game, then I'll let ya get away with it. As for us tonight, I wish there was a shot chart available to show our location of every first half shot. I think Spiro's most used phrase tonite was '18-foot jumper...' and it seemed like all we did was freakin settle. No inside-out from the post and zero ball movement. Of course, it seems that whenever the ball goes to the post, it dies there because it's just back it down, back it down, oh crap, stripped by a doubling guard. That's poor development and a poor offensive scheme. But it's also some very poor basketball IQ. These guys watch other games and they watch NBA games. Don't they see what works out there? Move the ball, keep the defense on the slide, and lanes will open up. But as Pat said in the postgame, we got jump shot happy and that was the death of us tonight. As I interpret the standings, our magic number to stay out of 7-10 night is 1. So we win one of our last 3 or Elon drops one and we're safe. We swept Drexel so they can't jump us. Just cool off Elon and get on with the last 2 games of the season.

What we'd like to have happen tonite: We beat W&M (required) Drexel beats Hofstra (not mandatory but would be extra helpful) NE beats Delaware (not end of world if it doesn't happen)

That should have said we'd give Hofstra their 4th loss in the 3rd point. 🤦‍♂️

The road to the 1 seed and the NIT bid: --Win the last 4 games (anything less than that makes it pretty much impossible). That puts us at 13-5. --By winning all 4 games, we give W&M their 6th loss. It would help if they win their last 2 against JMU & Elon (more on that shortly). --By winning all 4 games, we give Hofstra their 3rd loss. We'd need them to lose one more game (they have at Del/Drexel and JMU left) so they'd need to lose one of those roadtrip games. That would make them 13-5 --Delaware loses one more game (they have home NE/Hofstra & at Charleston/UNCW left). They won't get thru that undefeated. --Charleston loses one more game to give them 7 conference losses (they've come this far with 6, 7 is pretty likely). So that would leave the standings as this: Towson & Hofstra 13-5, W&M & Delaware 12-6, Charleston 7+ losses. W&M swept Delaware so they get the 3 which is important because if I remember correctly, the second tiebreaker after head-to-head is record against the next best team in the standings. So us and Hofstra split. Move down to that next best team which is W&M and we swept them while Hofstra has a loss to them. So there's the map. A tall hill to climb but this conference season hasn't made too much sense much like the rest of the country. Start it with a win over W&M on Thursday night.

No way to sugarcoat this one. This is embarrassing. You don't lose to the Mount. But you also can't score if you don't have the ball and the stretch of time in the 3rd quarter where we couldn't win a faceoff and get the ball back killed us. We got spoiled last year with all the faceoff wins. This year, it seems like we're going to be returning to 3-4 years ago when we couldn't win one to save our life. Good on the Mount for their hard play and not wilting in the final 5 minutes. They deserve the big celebration at the buzzer.