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today may have been the 1st time in the A-10 era that I walked into the Robins Center expecting the Spiders to lose to Fordham...Ha! I should have known better...but what I saw after weeks of mediocre, disappointing basketball was a team that played like they wanted to win as bad as the opponent!

anyone who saw the game in person, or on TV, saw a different Spiders game plan...instead of futilely firing up two dozen threes Richmond decided they would challenge the Bronx Rams in the paint...

it was pretty ugly in the first half as Matt Grace put the team on his shoulders, but we didn't give up on taking it to the rim...in the second half we kept it up and possessions got better and better as the half progressed...eventually Fordham caved under our stifling defense and we won, making 12 consecutive FTs down the stretch!

the highlight clips intentionally show the good, bad and ugly of it all...good takes to the rim for points or fouls, misses at the rim, turnovers and stumbles...but we never gave up on winning it in the paint...Burton, Grace, Quinn and Bigelow drove the Spiders best A-10 win of the season...we only shot 12 threes!...Ironically the highlights clips start with a three, but the only other one you'll find is Burton's to ice the game...

I'm very glad for the players...they needed this win more than we fans...hopefully it wasn't an anomaly...we saw a different style of play today that resulted in a win over a red hot A-10 team...I hope we see more of it Wednesday at GW!

Go Spiders!

I thought we were going to have a good 3 point shooting team, but I was obviously wrong. Apologizes if already mentioned in another post. One of the main reason we have a losing A-10 record is that our 3 point shooting has been horrible in conference play where we have made only 28.9% over past 10 games. Below is a list of shooting percentage for all players with 30 or more attempts during that time:

Burton 22.4%
Bigelow 25.7%
Nelson 29.4%
Roche 29.7%
Grace 35.1

Over the years we have had a very efficient offense, but it doesn’t work if we can’t make our 3s and spread out the defense. I know Roche and Burton can do much better. Not sure what the issue is.

VCU at 5-3 has the 2nd best away game percentage in A10. Number 1 is none other than Fordham at 4-2 going for 5-2

Spiders Field Hockey and Lacrosse, RVA Sports Awards Female Athlete of the Year. Congrats, well deserved, btw she beat out some other amazing female athletes.

Based on the stats 4700 provided on Schmidts time at Bona vs moon here, home game, and the fact that the line keeps moving toward the Spiders (seeing -5 now), this looks like a comfortable win.

Going with 73-67. Bounce back spot for Spiders after seeing how Loyola vs Dayton and VCU vs Davidson went, the players only meeting, etc I think the team realizes they have been playing way below there potential. Now or never moment. Mooney gets the credit if we win, players fault if we lose. Remember pompom showed how Burton misses a lot of bunnies and is really not that great a player, moon is just trying to overcome these guys.

· At least we aren't in last like those losers from Loyola!

· Between and after these Fordham, GW, SLU and VCU games, it will be smooth sailing!

· If it weren't for [people criticizing Mooney/the officials being bad/bad luck/being worse than good teams/players having injuries/losing four games in a row], we'd probably be in like third place!

· We've only played 23 games so far, and it takes awhile for players to get used to playing together in different combinations [except for St. Bonaventure]. Give them some time!

· If you thought it was cool winning four games in four days last year in March, wait till you see Mooney's plans for five games in five days this March! EPIC!!

Unfortunately Covid still causing problems.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-b...land-vs-milwaukee-canceled-due-covid-outbreak

How bad is the Roach’s knee? He is still our best shooter in a wheelchair or on crutches.

Have felt for a bit that this feels like the 2011-2012 season. Quick comparison:

Graduated a big class of prominent players - KA, Harper, Geriot, K. Smith.

Plenty of returning and young players that seem to have great individual skills, including at least 1 Spider all timer (KA0): Brothers, Lindsay, Garrett, Martel, Robbins, D. Williams, Duinker, newcomer K. Anthony.

Couldn't win on road.

Lost a couple baffling OOC games.

In an OOC tourney, lose what seems like a winnable game (vs Illinois) before winning consolation game in an ugly game (vs. Rutgers.)

Get to 11-7 with a nice early conference win vs. Temple to raise hopes of things coming together but then lost 5 of 6 and 7 of 9 to fall to 4-8 in conference.

Finished that season 16-16, 7-9 and 10th in the A10.

Currently 11-11, 4-5 and 10th in the A10.

Click on the links below to get information on the incoming players at each school.

UAlbany

Campbell

Football inks 16 during early signing period - Campbell University

BUIES CREEK, N.C. – Campbell closed the 2022-23 initial national signing period with 16 future Camels inking national letters of intent.

gocamels.com

Delaware

Elon

Hampton

Maine

Monmouth

New Hampshire

North Carolina A&T

Rhode Island

Richmond

Stony Brook

Towson

Villanova

William & Mary

Alex: and the answer is..."Mark Schmidt, Dan Geriot, TJ Cline, Kevin Anderson, Nancy Liberman, Dick Tarrant coming out of retirement...."

You buzzing in: "Who would make a better coach than Chris Mooney?"

Why are we losing?
- most good teams get significant scoring from their guards, Spiders rarely do
- defensively we have trouble guarding the 3 point line
- offensively teams have figured us out and Mooney needs to adjust. Teams are taking us
out of rhythm by applying full court pressure and reducing our time in half court to get movement
- Spiders are poor ball handlers overall
- there is no continuity to the different lineups, meaning Mooney struggles to find a lineup that works
- Quinn is not a threat unless he is on the lower block and then he turns the ball over a lot either dribbling
or getting it knocked way. He needs to be quicker in his decision to pass out of double and triple teams
- we have talent but honestly this team is playing worse now than in December
- when will we finally mesh together, Lost to Bonnie’s twice who have all starters brand new. Is it coaching or what?

There is beginning to be discussion on some of the post about next year. Some of you are comparing it to the 17-18 team and there is no comparison. The team is going to be a lot better than many of you think. I am assuming everybody comes back who is eligible, which means we will have 9 experience players coming back and competing for each position including:

Burton, a potential A10 player of the year,
Goose, terrific defender and solid guard
Grace, who has been playing very well recently
Crabtree, solid 2 or 3
Dgi, very good guard
Marcus Randolph, strong potential

We then have all the red shirts who will have played one year with the system and some of these guys are very good and may start:

Nelson
Dread
Noyes

We also have Walz a 6'11, who had 9 D1 offers


In addition, we have 3 scholarships for a transferor new recruits which might include a potential starter.

It is going to be exciting to see who our starting 5 will be. This will be a good team with a quality bench.

Fordham 75- SLU 65

61-58

Have enough Mooney is in his bank account to just retire. He's been here 18 years, so he has probably averaged about a million per year, less in his initial contracts, but probably more than a million now. So, even rounding down a bit he's probably banked about 15 million dollars of UR cash. You invest 15 million properly, you really don't have to work a day in your life again.

Is that not enough to retire and basically have whatever you want and desire in your life for both you and your kids. Is is worth going out there day after day for something that when you lie your head down at night, you have to admit, I'm really not even that great at this job.

When does that happen? Since we obviously aren't going to firing Mooney in the next few years, thought this might be the next best option. Perhaps a billboard that says "Retire Mooney, you've earned it" would be a bit more positive spin.

At next practice Mooney should announce that starting positions are up for grabs as well as allocation of minutes.

I don’t care that Dayton lost to Rhode Island. We haven’t beaten a descent team all year. We have constantly lost on the road. All the momentum seems lost at this point. Laying an egg in Amherst is totally ridiculous. But hey we got Mooney so who really cares. That tournament run last year seems like a nightmare now. Cause we are stuck with a mediocre and clueless coach. Clearly the players carried this team last year.

This morning I was wondering what type of role we can expect Dji to have when he returns from injury. I don’t know much of the specifics but it sounds like his original 5-7 week timetable would have him back somewhere between Jan 22 - Feb 5. If anybody knows any update timeframe or if I’m just flat out wrong (wouldn’t be the first or last time) let me know.

Right now that date range means we could play anywhere between 4-8 more games until he’s back, and then it may be another few games until he’s back to game speed/close to 100%.

Before his injury (10 games) he was playing 12.6 minutes per game. In those same games Randolph played 12.0 minutes per game. I’m the 6 games since Randolph has played 12.7 minutes per game, but he also only has 14 total minutes the past two games.

So who got Dji’s minutes? These mpg totals are minutes in the first 10 games followed by minutes in the next 6 games

Nelson went from 31.1 mpg to 29.5 (but @ Mason was on outlier because of foul trouble)

Goose went from 27 mpg to 29.8

Roche went from 21.4 mpg to 19.5

Bigelow went from 23.6 mpg to 20.2

Burton went from 35.1 mpg to 37.4

Quinn went from 21.2 mpg to 20.4 mpg

Grace went from 25 mpg (in only 6 games) to 26.7 mpg

Crabtree went from 14 total minutes to 15 total minutes

Now you can take what you will from this but it looks like most of the numbers didn’t actually change once Dji got hurt. A big part of this is because Grace returned for the first game Dji missed, but now we have had 6 games with him back and the minute distribution seems to be about the same for everybody. It looks like Grace’s minutes may have ended up being evenly distributed as whoever took his place was then replaced by somebody else at their position.

My big question is, where does this leave Dji when he returns?

I don’t think Mooney is going to just cut Randolph’s minutes in half and split 6/6 between them, and if the team does start to gel and we pick up some wins it may be even harder to make changes to what (I hope) will be working. I love the energy and defensive intensity Dji brings and ultimately I think that will keep him earnings minutes each game, but with the timing of his injury I think it will be hard for him to work back to where he was pre-injury.

Any thoughts?

Didn't think you could commit as a grad transfer before even starting your last season, but looks like Mathes will be heading to UGA after this upcoming season. Congrats to him!

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We/re second best in our city. We can't compete with VCU due to many factors, but I think Mooney needs to be canned, and its sad because he isn't going anywhere. Lets face it, the players got hot at the right time and carried the team to the round of 32 last year. Chris is not a good coach. Mooney truthes, are you okay will getting embarrassed when we play VCU all the time? Do you enjoy how we were only down 10 at half? Get a grip! This program has the resources to compete for the A10 chip every year but instead chooses to be mediocre year after year. Get a grip, this program will never be consistent with Mooney as coach. Enjoy getting waxed by VCU 2 times a year.

Frank the Tank and Umass went from the darling to the hated, very quickly. Frank was recently having SI articles written about him, now he is battling the interwebs. Guessing Umass will either be fighting mad, or sad and defeated this week.

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58-27 is VCU’s record verse Richmond since the 77-78 season. The great Dick Tarrant also had a poor record against VCU despite playing against them when they had a weaker national program. The best way to evaluate a coach is by comparing how they did to equal VCU quality teams. Over that time period VCU has had 12 years with a SRS of over 8.5. https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/virginia-commonwealth/

Below are our the coaches records verses VCU during those years:

Tarrant 1-8 11%

Mooney 6-20 23%

Dooley, Wainwright and Beilein never faced a VCU team with an SRS over 8.5

Why does VCU have such a good long term record against U of R? It is obviously more than just coaching.

August 24th, conMooniocrity appreciation day.