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A10 Game 5 - At St Bonaventure

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Here are some games Jacob had for us as a freshman PG:

Georgetown: 32 minutes, 0 points, 1 assist, 2 turnovers.
Wake Forest: 29 minutes, 0 points, 3 assists, 1 turnover.
Duquesne, 42 minutes, 0 points, 2 assists, 2 turnovers.

No question we likely need good PG play to win. The position is so important, I would say most teams need good PG play to win, but I think we need to be a little more patient with Nelson. I think he is having a pretty good year so far. He has had a few too many turnovers, so hopefully, he can clean some of those up, but he is a good one, and I'm glad we have him. Our whole team could do better from a turnover standpoint, and many are careless. I like our chances to win when we protect the ball, and I have hope we can clean this up the 2nd half of the season.
Technically wasn’t Duquesne the midpoint of the regular season?

On an overall point, I think Dayton is the end of the first half of the A10 schedule, and the second half seems easier…
 
Here are some games Jacob had for us as a freshman PG:

Georgetown: 32 minutes, 0 points, 1 assist, 2 turnovers.
Wake Forest: 29 minutes, 0 points, 3 assists, 1 turnover.
Duquesne, 42 minutes, 0 points, 2 assists, 2 turnovers.

No question we likely need good PG play to win. The position is so important, I would say most teams need good PG play to win, but I think we need to be a little more patient with Nelson. I think he is having a pretty good year so far. He has had a few too many turnovers, so hopefully, he can clean some of those up, but he is a good one, and I'm glad we have him. Our whole team could do better from a turnover standpoint, and many are careless. I like our chances to win when we protect the ball, and I have hope we can clean this up the 2nd half of the season.
VT, agree with much of your post above, but as with many posts appears to be a tendency to cherry pick statistics to support a (pre-existing ?) view whereas 55% winning percentage in toto over 17.5 years is undeniable. Is what it is. No cherry picked stats.

Does not cut it with a lot of us who witnessed the glory years of Spider basketball and see no reason why we should not all enjoy that once again. Highly dubious we ever get there with Mooney.
 
VT, agree with much of your post above, but as with many posts appears to be a tendency to cherry pick statistics to support a (pre-existing ?) view whereas 55% winning percentage in toto over 17.5 years is undeniable. Is what it is. No cherry picked stats.

Does not cut it with a lot of us who witnessed the glory years of Spider basketball and see no reason why we should not all enjoy that once again. Highly dubious we ever get there with Mooney.
WE JUST GOT THERE LAST SEASON!!!!!!!!! And how could you possibly get cherry picked stats to support our coach out of that post????
 
It will be interesting to see how long it takes to go to the tournament again. CM got a new lease and I really hope he does something with it but we seem to be struggling with a lot of the same old things while adding some new flaws like lots of turnovers.

If the plan is to rebuild for three years to have a shot at a bid every four years then I’d really like UR to reevaluate its goals.
 
WE JUST GOT THERE LAST SEASON!!!!!!!!! And how could you possibly get cherry picked stats to support our coach out of that post????
Sigh

Look at the whole data set whenever you cite statistics. Cherry picking data to support a view is disingenuous.

Point is you have a tendency to cherry pick data to support your view rather than looking at the whole data set regardless of the subject ..as you did on Nelson v Gilly comparison.

As to Coach returning us to glory years, we have 17.5 years of data. Look at it all. 55% = Average!

Thinking maybe you did go to Tech because any Spider would grasp this by now.
 
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Sigh

Look at the whole data set whenever you cite statistics. Cherry picking data to support a view is disingenuous.

Point is you have a tendency to cherry pick data to support your view rather than looking at the whole data set regardless of the subject ..as you did on Nelson v Gilly comparison.

As to Coach returning us to glory years, we have 17.5 years of data. Look at it all. 55% = Average!

Thinking maybe you did go to Tech because any Spider would grasp this by now.
Hey, my daughter goes to Tech and she gets it.
 
Sigh

Look at the whole data set whenever you cite statistics. Cherry picking data to support a view is disingenuous.

Point is you have a tendency to cherry pick data to support your view rather than looking at the whole data set regardless of the subject ..as you did on Nelson v Gilly comparison.

As to Coach returning us to glory years, we have 17.5 years of data. Look at it all. 55% = Average!

Thinking maybe you did go to Tech because any Spider would grasp this by now.
Sigh. I think you need to read your earlier post again. Maybe that will help explain my reply a little better. As for my post, how is it cherry picking when we are talking about Nelson struggling, and I point out games where Jacob struggled as a freshman? Uh...yes, I would need to find a few games to make my point that even Jacob struggled some as a freshman.

And, looking at your post, I guess you would think it is "highly dubious" Georgia ever wins another title in football. After all, the whole data says they have only won 2 in 40 years.
 
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VT, I am curious. Realizing you feel many on this board set unreasonably high performance expectations on Mooney, what would be your criteria to evaluate Mooney as having failed to perform? Would it be not appearing in the NCAA tournment for 20 years? Would it be 25% of the players not graduating? In other words, what are your objective measures that say Mooney has not performed?
 
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I think to be fair, it’s an accurate assessment. We have pretty consistent production at the 2-4 spots for the most part, we seem to swing based on how we perform at the PG and C most games. Fairly anecdotal statement, but when we don’t get much production out of one or both of those guys, we don’t seem terribly good at overcoming it.

Objectively, JayNel had a game to forget yesterday. 6pts, 0-4 from 3, 28% overall, 4TO to 2ast, 0 steals. Perhaps to be expected from a freshmen but we won’t many games at that clip. Not sure there’s a much better alternative.
That's fair.

I think I was reacting to the "not been good enough nearly all year" statement. My point is that Nelson is probably outperforming reasonable expectations, given that he is a freshman playing his first meaningful ball in 2 years, and is averaging over 10 a game and will probably be on the all-rookie team. It certainly has been inconsistent, and some games have been bad, but it's also been quite good on a number of occasions.
 
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That's fair.

I think I was reacting to the "not been good enough nearly all year" statement. My point is that Nelson is probably outperforming reasonable expectations, given that he is a freshman playing his first meaningful ball in 2 years, and is averaging over 10 a game and will probably be on the all-rookie team. It certainly has been inconsistent, and some games have been bad, but it's also been quite good on a number of occasions.
He’s definitely had his moments. I know this will create all kinds of consternation from the goose/Dji supporters/detractors, but I’d be super curious to see how we’d be performing if Dji/goose/Randolph were given the minutes at PG that Nelson has gotten.

My guess is that it probably gets worse than better but there are definitely times it feels we handed him the keys and perhaps could be doing equally well or better with someone else at that spot.
 

My guess is that it probably gets worse than better but there are definitely times it feels we handed him the keys and perhaps could be doing equally well or better with someone else at that spot.
Geez, seriously? Just 2 games ago, Nelson scored 16 and went 4-6 from 3 in our win at Davidson. He didn't get keys handed to him. He earned them by being by far our best option at PG.
 
You’re 100% right. For some reason, I’m the idiot who still does get upset because of just how maddening it is to see a talented team hand over four or five clear wins to the opponent. Yesterday was the final straw in that regard for me. A literal brand new team of rejects from places like Hartford, Holy Cross, Morgan State and St. Peter’s assembled a few months ago from scratch kicked our ass. There are no words left to describe this for me. I hope vcu kills us by 50.
So do I.
 
VT, agree with much of your post above, but as with many posts appears to be a tendency to cherry pick statistics to support a (pre-existing ?) view whereas 55% winning percentage in toto over 17.5 years is undeniable. Is what it is. No cherry picked stats.

Does not cut it with a lot of us who witnessed the glory years of Spider basketball and see no reason why we should not all enjoy that once again. Highly dubious we ever get there with Mooney.
Unfortunately half of us on this board will be dead before Richmond gets a new head coach.
 
VT, agree with much of your post above, but as with many posts appears to be a tendency to cherry pick statistics to support a (pre-existing ?) view whereas 55% winning percentage in toto over 17.5 years is undeniable. Is what it is. No cherry picked stats.

Does not cut it with a lot of us who witnessed the glory years of Spider basketball and see no reason why we should not all enjoy that once again. Highly dubious we ever get there with Mooney.
But you’re cherry picking by including all losses instead of omitting the close losses where we competed and couldn’t have expected to win. Without those it’s more like a .850 win percentage
 
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Isn’t the most telling thing of all that our biggest rivals want us to extend our coach? For a decade now VCU’s running gag has been for us to extend and keep Mooney. That says a lot more than anything else
 
What a disappointing loss with a chance to have some real momentum going into the rivalry week. As many here predicted and have discussed we could see this loss coming from a mile away. Way too careless with the ball from our main ballhandlers - on a team that struggles to score we just can't be giving the ball away 15 times and expect success.

Also, I love Goose but the lack of scoring is really hurting us this year. I think in past years it hasn't hurt at much because we've had so much offensive firepower. But with Burton being our only real consistent scoring threat this year we just can't afford to have a 30+ minute guy that isn't scoring.

I remember some discussion on here before the season about him maybe increasing his scoring with our increased need for scoring. Through 18 games it is pretty incredible to see that he is nearly exactly where he has been the previous 4 years:

- 2018-2019 - 4.8 ppg
- 2019-2020 - 4.4 ppg
- 2020-2021 - 4.4 ppg
- 2021-2022 - 4.5 ppg
- 2022-2023 - 4.6 ppg

Again, I love him and what he's done for our program. There's no denying he's been a solid player for us for his time here and a big contributor to our NCAA run. But this year I really think we would benefit from him playing 10-12 minutes less, and that time going to Roche and Bigelow.
 
In terms of transfer portal - is the consensus that Mooney did well in the portal compared to others in the league? i.e. - we had some of the best transfers into the A10 compared to other A10 teams/transfers. Or is it simply we think Mooney did well compared to previous years and transfers.
 
I just noticed the RTD stated DJI was available to play in the Bonnies game? If that was the case - and given all thr turnovers we had and poor shooting, why not give him a shot and play him 2-4 minutes and see if he provides a spark? Maybe not in shape to play yet?
He was available but had not fully practiced until Friday. We didn’t expect him to play Sat but do starting Tues. But I def hear you…The question Trap is “but were they “bad” TOs” 🫣
 
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In terms of transfer portal - is the consensus that Mooney did well in the portal compared to others in the league? i.e. - we had some of the best transfers into the A10 compared to other A10 teams/transfers. Or is it simply we think Mooney did well compared to previous years and transfers.
I don't think there is any question we did great with transfers this year. Every team in our conference would have Roche, Bigelow, and Quinn part of their rotation. These are all impact transfers who have each been keys to winning games for us so far. And, we have them for more than just this year, so even better when you consider that.
 
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What a disappointing loss with a chance to have some real momentum going into the rivalry week. As many here predicted and have discussed we could see this loss coming from a mile away. Way too careless with the ball from our main ballhandlers - on a team that struggles to score we just can't be giving the ball away 15 times and expect success.

Also, I love Goose but the lack of scoring is really hurting us this year. I think in past years it hasn't hurt at much because we've had so much offensive firepower. But with Burton being our only real consistent scoring threat this year we just can't afford to have a 30+ minute guy that isn't scoring.

I remember some discussion on here before the season about him maybe increasing his scoring with our increased need for scoring. Through 18 games it is pretty incredible to see that he is nearly exactly where he has been the previous 4 years:

- 2018-2019 - 4.8 ppg
- 2019-2020 - 4.4 ppg
- 2020-2021 - 4.4 ppg
- 2021-2022 - 4.5 ppg
- 2022-2023 - 4.6 ppg

Again, I love him and what he's done for our program. There's no denying he's been a solid player for us for his time here and a big contributor to our NCAA run. But this year I really think we would benefit from him playing 10-12 minutes less, and that time going to Roche and Bigelow.
Yep, said this before the season started because it was obvious. Goose is not an offensive threat and knowing this team is going to struggle to score this year, having your starting shooting guard, not being a good shooter, to the point, where he basically doesn't shoot, is not a recipe for success. Goose could be Tony Dobbins out there and he would still by a liability at times because of the way our roster is constructed this year.

Of course, I knew this as a fan and I also knew that we have Mooney and Mooney is going to be "loyal" to Goose and play him max minutes all year even when situation and evidence dictates otherwise. Same ole, same ole.
 
In terms of transfer portal - is the consensus that Mooney did well in the portal compared to others in the league? i.e. - we had some of the best transfers into the A10 compared to other A10 teams/transfers. Or is it simply we think Mooney did well compared to previous years and transfers.
We did very well in the portal. The problem is outside of Burton are returning roster was pretty weak. Grace is a career back-up, Goose is a really good defensive player, but basically zero offense, starting PG is a freshman who hasn't played ball in 2 years. And the 3 players mentioned are 60% of our starting line up.

One would have to wonder if starting more of these really nice transfers we got might have better results Roche gives us significantly better offense than Goose, although a drop off in defense, Bigelow gives us a ton more athleticism than Grace, although he is way less familiar with our system than Grace.

What we know after 18 games, is that we are essentially a .500 ball club. That fact might cause someone to say, hmmm, I wonder if we tweaked our line-up, we might get a better result. That someone sure as heck isn't Mooney, so we will soldier on with the status quo.
 
In terms of transfer portal - is the consensus that Mooney did well in the portal compared to others in the league? i.e. - we had some of the best transfers into the A10 compared to other A10 teams/transfers. Or is it simply we think Mooney did well compared to previous years and transfers.
I think that Mooney's portal guys have been pretty good. I would say a clear success.

The problem is/was that the team that they joined didn't have enough firepower returning. Too many reserve level players starting to be a realistic NCAA contender.

oops, sorry 97, I didn't see your comment before I posted.
 
We did well in the portal. The problem is that we are not using those three players correctly as often as we should.

And, of course, we also made a mistake by bringing back a bunch of veteran players this year when clearly the proper approach would have been to cut literally all of them and go fishing for more players from Morgan State, Holy Cross, Hartford and St. Peter’s to create an unbeatable team of stars the way St. Bonaventure did.
 
Okay, so if you fire Mooney because he lost to St Bona, should Rhoades be fired for losing to Duquesne? Should Ford be fired for losing to UMASS? Should Dambrot be fired for losing to us? Should English be fired for losing to St Louis? Should Grant be fired for losing to VCU? And, these are only the top teams. Oh, yes, I forgot, we are the one team in the A-10 that "should" win every game. All of those other losses mentioned are more than acceptable, only ours are not. Okay.
 
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We did well in the portal. The problem is that we are not using those three players correctly as often as we should.

And, of course, we also made a mistake by bringing back a bunch of veteran players this year when clearly the proper approach would have been to cut literally all of them and go fishing for more players from Morgan State, Holy Cross, Hartford and St. Peter’s to create an unbeatable team of stars the way St. Bonaventure did.
I never said they were unbeatable. That is just you being you again with the way you post. I said they have talent, which they do, even though you crapped on them pre game like you do with every team we play, and I said they will win plenty of A-10 games, which they will.
 
Okay, so if you fire Mooney because he lost to St Bona, should Rhoades be fired for losing to Duquesne? Should Ford be fired for losing to UMASS? Should Dambrot be fired for losing to us? Should English be fired for losing to St Louis? Should Grant be fired for losing to VCU? And, these are only the top teams. Oh, yes, I forgot, we are the one team in the A-10 that "should" win every game. All of those other losses mentioned are more than acceptable, only ours are not. Okay.
It's not 1 game though. You know that. It's 17.5 years of 55% winning, 0 for 17 A10 regular season championships, 2 for 17 A10 tournament, and 3 for 17 NCAA. People are frustrated because we have not won enough over 17.5 years. We can do better on a more consistent basis. It's that simple. And I will acknowledge the solid 2020 season and the great 2 week stretch last year. But those are the exception, 55% winning is the norm.
 
Okay, so if you fire Mooney because he lost to St Bona, should Rhoades be fired for losing to Duquesne? Should Ford be fired for losing to UMASS? Should Dambrot be fired for losing to us? Should English be fired for losing to St Louis? Should Grant be fired for losing to VCU? And, these are only the top teams. Oh, yes, I forgot, we are the one team in the A-10 that "should" win every game. All of those other losses mentioned are more than acceptable, only ours are not. Okay.
This is politician level whataboutism right here
 
Okay, so if you fire Mooney because he lost to St Bona, should Rhoades be fired for losing to Duquesne? Should Ford be fired for losing to UMASS? Should Dambrot be fired for losing to us? Should English be fired for losing to St Louis? Should Grant be fired for losing to VCU? And, these are only the top teams. Oh, yes, I forgot, we are the one team in the A-10 that "should" win every game. All of those other losses mentioned are more than acceptable, only ours are not. Okay.
55% is the fireable offense. That gets a coach run at any reputable college basketball program in the country.
 
Geez, seriously? Just 2 games ago, Nelson scored 16 and went 4-6 from 3 in our win at Davidson. He didn't get keys handed to him. He earned them by being by far our best option at PG.
So I acknowledge he A) has plenty of upside and B) likely earned the keys.

It doesn’t really diminish my point that it would be an interesting experiment to try something different. If we’re trending towards being mid pack then I think CM should mix things up. While we’re still top4 IC then probably stay the course mostly. Gotta tweak something though.
 
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The Bonnie game also showed our lack of depth, something we thought we had tons of before the season started.
Burton and probably Grace and Nelson are going to play a lot, even if they are having cold nights offensively.

But when they are cold, that is when guys like Quinn, Roche, Bigelow, Goose, Randolph, etc need to step up. Against the Bonnies - Bigelow went cold, Goose only takes 2 shots, Randolph gets 2 shots, and Roche shoots well, 3-6 overall, but on a night like that - can he get more shots? And Quinn - this is the game he should be waiting for. Shots are not falling outside for our shooters - get on the block, and post up - we need close range buckets, so lets feed the 7 footer to get those shots or get fouled.

Our formula for success right now is we need Burton to score 20+ and we need someone else, anyone to have a good night along with him and we need to limit turnovers. That should keep the game close for the most part.
 
Okay, so if you fire Mooney because he lost to St Bona, should Rhoades be fired for losing to Duquesne? Should Ford be fired for losing to UMASS? Should Dambrot be fired for losing to us? Should English be fired for losing to St Louis? Should Grant be fired for losing to VCU? And, these are only the top teams. Oh, yes, I forgot, we are the one team in the A-10 that "should" win every game. All of those other losses mentioned are more than acceptable, only ours are not. Okay.
We aren't fans of those teams so it's up to them.

Besides, (and I think you know this) we aren't looking at last night's loss in a vacuum. It's part of a long term pattern that many fans recognize and want to see changed. We aren't okay with the results and expect them to be better, something any sports fan can appreciate.
 
I will go on the record and say in no uncertain terms, a team in this conference with our resources and history coached by one person for 18 years SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER lose to a team in the same conference that literally was assembled FROM SCRATCH less than six months ago. NEVER. This wasn’t Kentucky starting from scratch — it was St. Freaking Bonaventure!

Like what in the actual hell are we doing here if we lose that game? A team that just materialized out of thin air was good enough to beat us comfortably. Think about that for a long time.
 
I will go on the record and say in no uncertain terms, a team in this conference with our resources and history coached by one person for 18 years SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER lose to a team in the same conference that literally was assembled FROM SCRATCH less than six months ago. NEVER. This wasn’t Kentucky starting from scratch — it was St. Freaking Bonaventure!

Like what in the actual hell are we doing here if we lose that game? A team that just materialized out of thin air was good enough to beat us comfortably. Think about that for a long time.

Mooneyites would never!
 
I will go on the record and say in no uncertain terms, a team in this conference with our resources and history coached by one person for 18 years SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER lose to a team in the same conference that literally was assembled FROM SCRATCH less than six months ago. NEVER. This wasn’t Kentucky starting from scratch — it was St. Freaking Bonaventure!

Like what in the actual hell are we doing here if we lose that game? A team that just materialized out of thin air was good enough to beat us comfortably. Think about that for a long time.
I will think about for about 1 second, while you can continue to whine and complain all year if you want.
They aren't 1-17. They also beat Notre Dame OOC, and Mason and UMASS IC. Oh yeah, I forgot, it is okay for these and other teams to lose to them, but we should NEVER lose on the road to a team like that, right? The game was pretty much a pick em game, but in EL's world, we "should" always win these types of games. Always. Doesn't matter if we win some, like @ Davidson, we should win them all, right? Nevermind the fact that all 15 teams in our conference have lost at least one conference game and we are in a good spot at 3-2, because we should be the only unbeaten team, right?

Because we are Richmond, way better than all these teams. We should never lose to anyone. We have SO many advantages over everyone else. We should destroy the Clemsons out there, and shame on our program when we don't, right? Wow, some fan you are. Maybe we will lose to VCU by 50 like you want and you can finally be happy on here for a change.
 
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We aren't fans of those teams so it's up to them.

Besides, (and I think you know this) we aren't looking at last night's loss in a vacuum. It's part of a long term pattern that many fans recognize and want to see changed. We aren't okay with the results and expect them to be better, something any sports fan can appreciate.
You (plural) aren't okay with the results. I get it. You aren't okay with a 24-7 season, an A-10 tourney title, and a dance win over Iowa the last 3 seasons because of what happened in several of the 14 seasons before that. Seems silly to focus more on the first 14 years than the last 3 when discussing the shape of a program right now, but par for the course on here.
 
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