Chris Datres

The marketing geniuses should be required to jet to Phoenix and meet with the folks at Grand Canyon University. They're in the WAC and they sell the damn place out for a number of home games. Students show up an hour before the game and have been known to sway a recruit's decision. Dan Majerle (former NBA star of the 90s) is their head coach. They have been D1 for 5 years now and this is their first shot at getting into the Dance and they've got a pretty decent shot at it. So how the heck does a no-name school in a big metropolitan area that's been D1 for such a short amount of time and has a 7200-seat arena that opened in 2011 average 6800+ fans? Leonard and company should take a little field trip and get some pointers.

Likely wouldn't be able to get the Giant Center in Hershey because it hosts high school basketball and wrestling around this time of the year plus a hockey team that occupies the arena for 40 games a year. Plus, I can't imagine there would be any sort of local interest involving schools that aren't really in that area. If you're going to do a tournament involving a conference of this size, you have to play it in a city where there is a school. But then, this is the same conference who couldn't figure out even an online streaming deal with anyone so I wouldn't be surprised if they went to Orono, Maine for the conference tournament.

The envelope please... CAA Awards Zane on the 2nd team. No other Towson players named. If you're in the camp that Morsell has been a disappointment, his exclusion from this list (as it should be) would help your argument.

I'd be encouraged on what I saw on the offensive side of the ball provided that they can cut out all of the stupid passing and turnovers. Woodall is terrific in the X and gets us possession roughly 60-70% of the time. At least they have room to improve that problem. Defensively, and especially in goal, yeeeesh. It sounded like Lochte was doing his best to bite his tongue on the broadcast yesterday commenting about the goaltending play. That and the penalty kill leave a lot to be desired after 2 games.

I totally forgot about this one. That out-of-bounds play has a specific option where the roll man goes to the opposite block and he should be a key. I don't even know if Starr looked at him but I know I screamed 'there he is' at my computer screen when Gorham popped open (if my co-workers didn't think I was crazy, it's cemented now). The problem with most players nowadays is that they don't anticipate a play being open. By the time they see it, coverage has already rotated over. That should have been Starr's first option in his mind so he could have had the ball there when Gorham popped. Would have been an easy layup attempt to tie the game.

I thought I had seen more than the day's share of inexplicable turnovers during the lax game but no. At least with lax, it was just their 2nd game of the season. It was absurd seeing some of the miscues that were made tonite. McNeill throws the ball into the JMU bench in the first half when all he had to do was take one more dribble and he had either a 5-foot pullup or a gliding layup. But he's too weak physically to do anything near the basket (just witness the two layups he was nowhere close on in the first half, though he did get fouled on one of them). Late in the game, it comes to Starr with 4 seconds on the shot clock and he's in the corner so he goes to the basket and rather than just taking it himself to see what happens, he tries to shovel it to Thomas who would have had zero chance of doing anything with the ball before the horn (know your personnel, you are the point guard, right?). And then the free throws. Pathetic. A college team that shoots like that from the line should lose every time. The call against Zane on the steal was questionable but Mosley sold it just enough with his body movement and the ref, who had zero angle to call what he think was contact, was gullible enough to buy it. But you're right, it should have never come down to that. We'll be lucky if we're not only one-and-done in Charleston but if we're even in that game because by that point, I bet these guys check out. As for the final play and the shot being taken by Gorham and not Morsell or Zane, I actually didn't have an issue with it. But I think Starr rushed the pass just a little bit. If he waits another half second, Gorham has a cleaner look. Everyone in purple knew it was going to be 23 or 0 getting that look and with 1.1 left, you don't have much time to do anything and it's tough to get any momentum toward the basket. Gorham likely had the best look for the time on the clock.

The tournament is the mid-major one in the Bahamas that got its start this year. I'd certainly like the second part of that sentence be true as well.

Coaching -- There are decent points being made throughout the discussion but the question I ask would be who you would have in mind that could be that extra push. I go back to when Truax was here and we had a number of rollercoaster seasons at the end of his tenure but within those seasons, we had some big wins over P5 schools. The admin at the time decided that he had plateaued and decided to go in a different direction. It took 16 years to dig the ship out of the bottom of the sea. Skerry's not quite done building this yet and I'm sure he'd admit that not having had a decent point guard is a pox on his tenure here but we're in the right direction and I don't see what would cause us to want to change course. Scheduling -- I completely agree with what everyone is saying about the schedule. It's been very discouraging the last couple of years seeing the Gouchers, Gallaudets, and Central Penns of the world in the REGULAR SEASON schedule. You wanna play exhibitions against them, go right ahead. But that's not going to generate any sort of buzz. It seems like we feel like we're 'above' doing 2 for 1s but again, if it gets a bigger name into the house, you have to sacrifice and do it. I think we should still play the city schools and I also think there needs to be a way to always have Maryland on the schedule or at least every other year. And if you have to play them at the Baltimore Arena because they're too scared to come to SECU, then you do it. It's about building the brand. And if you need to expand it so you use the Baltimore Arena to bring in a much bigger name, then maybe you have to do that too. It sucks to have an on-campus arena like SECU but still have to look downtown but sometimes you have to sacrifice there. Temple has been doing it for years...they've got a 10,000 seat arena but have had to play Duke and Kansas at the FU Center instead (and won a couple of those games) because big names are too scared to play in a tough venue. CAA -- the administration really dropped the ball by not having any sort of TV contract, even if it was a digital only deal like what America East has. The Thursday-Saturday conference schedule doesn't help that at all either. They need to go to a Friday-Sunday schedule and take over those nights, which are usually lacking for major college hoops games. Why am I seeing Vermont-Albany on ESPNU one night and then Jackson State-Prairie View on the U the next? It's a total joke that the CAA doesn't have some piece of that pie. As a result, our conference is a ghost town and more people know more about Northern Kentucky than they do about Charleston.

Turnovers and getting outplayed is pretty much my takeaway from that game last night. I understand the potential for turnovers when you're getting pressured but there were a few times when it looked like a routine pass and it went sailing out of bounds. You might be able to get away with that against the Mount but against a team like Hopkins, no chance. I did like the faceoff situation and hopefully, we've found the guy in the X since that's a large component of success. It sucks to lose to Hopkins but the way we played last night, perhaps it was a good wakeup call to the squad that there's a lot of work to do.

If players don't want to be coached, then I'm not sure what else can be done until you have player turnover at the end of the season. I'm guessing the switch was flipped with the attitude on this team when they came off the 4-game losing streak following the 10-1 start. It's easy to get down when you yak at least 2 of those games on that trip that should have been wins. But unlike past years, there's nobody on this team that is a leader on the floor. It should be a senior like Morsell or Morman (before his departure) but they aren't/weren't leader types. As a result, you have the bickering and the angry faces and the frustration that you see on the court every single game. And now, you can see a little bit of selfishness creeping in to the way they play, especially on offense. Rather than trying to work the ball with an extra pass as has been noted by other posters, Morsell and Zane seem to be hellbent on going to the basket or taking whatever shot comes up no matter how trapped they are. And then that trickles down to the rest of the team -- for example, McNeill came down 1 on 3 in the first half yesterday and decided to dribble out to the left wing and chuck up a 3. Completely unnecessary. Where's the leader on the floor to grab him and tell him that's not the shot we take? Unfortunately, we don't have one. JD was the reason they came out of their funk at the beginning of the conference season last year. This year, no one wanted to be the glue and as a result, we're mediocre. There isn't much coaching that can be done when your players want to do their own thing. So, you graduate the seniors and you take a hard look at some of your potential returning players (I'm looking at you, Thomas and McNeill) and if there's a way to make changes there, you do it. But at some point, the players have to want the result for the team (that 'sacrifice' that was talked about so much over the summer) and stop being so damn selfish.

Yep, it's the coach's fault.

One other thing -- if you think we're the only team that has trouble with end-of-clock scenarios, take another look at that garbage that Drexel tossed out there at the end of regulation and OT. A tie game and the best they can do is chuck a 3 with zero ball movement and then down 2, Lee (or Isabell, can't remember which) goes sort of half-heartedly to the basket and never gives his teammates any time to get a potential rebound. It's an epidemic in college basketball and you're going to see more and more of this as the games get more crucial.

Nice of the Good Mike to show up in the last 5 minutes and OT. Would be nice if he'd hang around for a few more weeks. The key to this game was finally buckling down at the defensive end of the floor. They were getting TORCHED every which way you can think of -- stepbacks, drives, dishoffs. Drexel was doing many things right on the offensive end. As Skerry said after the game, we weren't staying in front of anyone. That and they couldn't get a defensive board when they needed it. It was a pretty frustrating game to watch but again, they figured out a way and it would be nice if the team that played the final 10 minutes of the game would be the one that would play the full 40 minutes of every game. If Zane is going to be a future leader, he's gotta get that intensity under control. He's lucky that T didn't cost them. After he got it, I almost wrote us off, figuring that Drexel would at least get 3 out of 4 FT. Instead, they only got 1 out of 3 and left the door open for Morsell's heroics. As a result of that T, he ends up fouling out with a couple minutes left in OT and again, that could have been the death knell. Channel the intensity elsewhere instead of at the officials.

For high school kids, I think it's probably best to judge them based on seeing their games versus just seeing their stat lines. That way, you can see what kind of teammates he's playing alongside. If his teammates aren't that talented, he probably feels like he has to take over more and be the guy to not just handle the ball but also take the shot. Having reffed HS ball for a number of years, I've seen plenty of games where a kid is pretty good but he has a terrible game with a lot of turnovers because he doesn't trust his teammates and tries to do everything himself. Those who recruit him obviously see the upside and think they can mold him into the type of player that can trust his teammates and doesn't have to do it all himself.

Michigan game -- it was for Louis Bullock who was a local kid that played at Michigan. It also helped that Michigan was coached at the time by Brian Ellerbee, who had previously been the Loyola coach. So Truax knew Brian and they were able to work out a deal. We really should have won that game that night. Raul de Pablo hit, I believe, 7 3's in that game and it was a classic Truax game against a 'name' opponent -- hang in for a long time and then find some way to not come out on top (had similar games against Arizona and WVU (though we did beat them in 94)). Louisville -- We just passed the 23rd anniversary of that game (will always hang on to that ticket stub). Louisville was down but as was said earlier, they were still a name team at the time. Pretty amazing performance by everyone that played that night and you can never forget getting to storm the court after that big win. But, as noted, we fell apart, losing to Radford in the very next game and then getting whacked by 30 in the conference tournament. As for future schedules, I agree on the no D3 stuff. That's preseason material. Skerry seemed pretty adamant about wanting to get teams to come to SECU when I talked to him in November. Schools he mentioned were LaSalle, St. Joe's, Richmond. While pulling in another 'name' team might put butts in the seats, playing a team like ODU or Mason or even VCU will tell you more about your team. Mat's right, though, we do need to have a money game or two in there.

That first half looked like we brought back every team from 1998-2011 -- more missed shots and layups than you could ever remember. Absolutely pathetic. The more this season goes on, the more I realize that this team just doesn't have the mental makeup to get over any championship hump. All Elon is good at is making 3s and yet, we can't seem to find it in our defensive makeup to get out on them or to stop helping off of drivers and leaving guys wide open. Elon had the same exact formula as they did in the first game at their place and we're just not 'there' enough to realize it. Then, as they're mounting a comeback, the little things crush them -- not blocking out down 10 on 2 missed free throws and then fouling the rebounder and letting them get the 2 points anyway. Then, down 9, they come down on a 2-on-1 break and elect to shoot a 3 which naturally ends up missing. Get the 2, maybe you get a foul, but you keep the momentum going. And while Zane did get the ball back off the missed free throw for a layup and got the 3 total points anyway, he has 3 crucial free throws and only makes 1 of them. You can score 30 points a game but if you're clanking free throws when the game is on the line, you're not quite the complete player. We're 5-5 in conference. 4 out of those 5 losses, there's no excuse for (at Charleston the exception). Good teams don't lose those 4 games. This conference is so schizo that we could easily be running away with the regular season. Even when we've been sputtering, we keep missing opportunities. NE gets whacked in OT at Drexel and once again, we miss one. It'll make for a wild 3 days in March in North Charleston but unless we get a collective lobotomy, I just don't see this particular team having what it takes to win it.

I didn’t think 10-1 was fool’s gold at all. Yes, we had wins against 2 D2 teams that were scrimmages. The way they won games against GA Southern, LaSalle, and Manhattan, I thought they were building well. The way we played the last 28 mins vs W&M there and the 2nd half vs Elon at home are glimpses of what they can do. Problem is, we haven’t really put a complete game together in a while. So instead of building on 10-1, we fall on our face at Pitt and Elon and now been stuck in an inconsistent cycle.

When it's written by someone who doesn't do any research. I had never heard of this website before clicking on it and my eyebrows did a lot of arching when I read that statement.

X’s and O’s don’t help you when you miss free throws and commit the dumbest foul this side of Vandy in last year’s NCAA Tournament. They don’t help you when your star guard decides to hoist a wild 3 instead of driving to the basket when down 2 (ODU). They don’t help you when your other guard thinks it’s a good idea to toss up a 3 in a TIE game with 5 seconds still on the clock (Hofstra). And they can’t help you when you’re not smart enough to recognize 3-point shooters (Elon). Bill Parcells famously said that you are what your record says you are. This year, we are a team with a few holes but enough talent and experience to have 14 wins. But despite what they did in Belfast, this team has shown over and over again that they’re just not basketball smart enough to win a tight game (though Starr’s drive at the end last nite was the right play, just didn’t finish). However, I will agree that the decision not to have Morsell on the floor at the end of the Hofstra game was mystifying. Also, it was questionable yesterday not making sure your best free throw shooters receive inbounds passes late in the game. But ultimately, it comes down to the players and these players don’t seem to have that extra push in the final minute of a close game.

About time someone used their head. Also makes for a built-in bye week when you play your road buddy. Can also make for a non-con opportunity if they can find it.

You were able to watch Winthrop(!) on ESPNU last nite. Ridiculous. Another place this league fails is the scheduling. With 5 pairs of teams that are relatively close (NE-Hofstra, Drexel-UD, us-JMU, Elon-W&M, UNCW-CofC), what’s wrong with having road buddies and exchanging games on a weekend like the Pac 12 and Ivy League does? It’s dumb to play home last nite and all the way down at UNCW tomorrow.

Yep, I was told back in November when the hoops team was here that we had just signed to play Florida in 2019.

Amazing what happens when the shots go in and guys step it up an extra notch on the defensive end. For the first 10 minutes, it looked like more of the same -- W&M couldn't miss from 3 and their big guy was torturing us. Then Starr and Zane and Morsell go crazy from outside and guys at the other end are keeping the Tribe off the scoreboard. Great bounceback win here, especially putting 99 on the board. The guys looked like they had a lot more pep on the bench when the runs were occurring. Perhaps there's a bit more spirit within the team. Could be a big turning point if they can maintain the momentum. Nice to get that 2nd road win of the season (bus trips across town still count).

Welp, apparently no one learned from the Old Dominion endgame situation. They have been KILLING Hofstra inside the entire game and yet the shot we get is with 5 seconds left on the clock and it comes from 23 feet out by BRIAN STARR???? It's a tie game, GO TO THE F'ING BASKET!!! But nope, our best driver of the ball is hanging out in the right corner (Zane) and theoretically, our best creator (Morsell) is nowhere around the ball. It's a gross, neverending cycle in the game of basketball that teams cannot figure out how to handle the endgame situation. Here's a tip, everyone -- go back and watch TCU last night and what they did at the end of regulation, the end of the first overtime, and the end of the second overtime. They ran something all three times and although the TCU player missed a wide open layup at the horn, the execution was outstanding. That is the exception rather than the norm. Zero excuse for what we did tonite. That being said, we should have never been in that situation. I left my house to get back to work and Zane hits 2 free throws to go up 10 with 5:00 left. I get to work and we're tied with 90 seconds left. What the hell happened there? Checking the play-by-play...turnover, turnover, turnover...sounds about right. That and not recognizing the only damn shooter that Hofstra has (he only had 35 on the nite) is a bad formula to follow. Yes, we only missed 7 free throws on the night but those misses came at the wrong times. And maybe most egregious and obvious of all was the push off that Wright-Foreman had when he hit the tying 3. The official on that side of the floor had a perfect look at it and either ignored it or is too dumb to understand what it was. A pretty pathetic loss tonite but the one bouquet I will toss will be in Justin Gorham's direction. 20 points on 7 of 7 shooting, most of which being of the layup/slam variety. Great work by the guys finding him inside and really for 35 minutes, we did a real nice job against their defense when we would penetrate. Eddie could have put up 20 himself if he had just shot 11 footers all day from below the foul line instead of trying to force it closer. It's just too bad that no one in black & gold (coaches included?) could figure out that going to the basket was the best option on the last-second play.

The only time you foul when you're ahead is if you're up 3 with under 7 seconds left so you don't give up a tying 3. Unfortunately, Hofstra didn't hang on to the ball that long to put that strategy in place. Playing that hack-a-whoever game is pretty bush league and at the college level, fouling a guy off the ball in a hack-a-player situation could be called intentional and then you're giving up possession anyway.