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George Mason coming up this Sunday

Ulla be like.......

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Boy, if I'm a Spider football recruit attending that game, I might have second thoughts.
 
The crazy thing is our stat line wasn't that bad at the end of the game...we just let them abuse us right before halftime and it proved too much to overcome. just a shame mooney couldnt figure out how to stop their dribble penetration.
 
Sounds like a Mooneyism.

Don't know what you call it but Spiders coming back from 23 down (at 14+ minutes) to within 5 (at 3+ minutes) was pretty impressive. Might have been with little assistance from CM but really liking what I saw from the team.

Still counts as a L though which hurts. Recruiting seems to be getting better
but FYI never been a fan of CM as a in-game manager. That faucet of him might never improve but still a young coach. Hopefully the light goes on!
 
The crazy thing is our stat line wasn't that bad at the end of the game...we just let them abuse us right before halftime and it proved too much to overcome. just a shame mooney couldnt figure out how to stop their dribble penetration.
Took all they had to come back 18 points. Nothing left when it mattered.
 
And for everyone who complained about us blowing big leads earlier in the year, today's game was your alternative. Thisis what we have done the past 5 years. I prefer blowing big leads and then still winning to getting way behind then not having enough to come back.
 
Marquise Moore is an interesting player. 25 points, 13 rebounds, 3 blocks ... at 6'2" (0-7 from three for the year)
 
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Don't know what you call it but Spiders coming back from 23 down (at 14+ minutes) to within 5 (at 3+ minutes) was pretty impressive. Might have been with little assistance from CM but really liking what I saw from the team.

Still counts as a L though which hurts. Recruiting seems to be getting better
but FYI never been a fan of CM as a in-game manager. That faucet of him might never improve but still a young coach. Hopefully the light goes on!

Out of respect to Moliva, I'm trying not to say anything negative. But how in the world can you say ANYTHING was impressive about this game? Certainly they never gave up, but when any team is up by 23 in the second half they tend to take their foot off the gas, thus the comeback.

And as for Fan1's earlier comment about the crowd, we did our part....
 
Mooney's offense-defense subbing of Marshall and Khwan is infuriating. Khwan is our 3rd leading scorer and our damn pg and he is subbing him out for a 1 dimensional player who hasn't even played that 1 dimension well all year. Predictably Marshall fumbled 2 rebounds and got his one 3 ball blocked.

That offense-defense is like a drug to Mooney. Never works but makes him feel secure.
 
Not just a poor defender but not having the kind of senior year you would have expected offensively. He's not the leader of this ream.
Ive been saying that for two years. He cares mostly about offense and trying some ridiculous out of control drive which he scores once out of five times. His D effort is atrocious and under most coaches he would get very little pt.
 
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The crazy thing is our stat line wasn't that bad at the end of the game...we just let them abuse us right before halftime and it proved too much to overcome. just a shame mooney couldnt figure out how to stop their dribble penetration.
What was the stat line after first 30 minutes when we were down 22 to GM? Forget the final stats, last ten minutes was garbage time. sDJ does this everg game almost... hit late three's get us within shouting distance and his stats look goid so he's happy. I dont care what stats read, that game was a disaster.
 
Mooney's offense-defense subbing of Marshall and Khwan is infuriating. Khwan is our 3rd leading scorer and our damn pg and he is subbing him out for a 1 dimensional player who hasn't even played that 1 dimension well all year. Predictably Marshall fumbled 2 rebounds and got his one 3 ball blocked.

That offense-defense is like a drug to Mooney. Never works but makes him feel secure.
Absolutely pathetic. We could have bet the house that when Wood came back Mooney would be sooo thick headed that he would change the lineup back to when we sucked, and he did. We won 5 games and were playing inspired, why mess w it even a little. Wood does nothing out there that the 4 guards werent already doing.
 
One more fun fact, keep in mind that Mason has mostly sucked during their A10 life

 
I guess, in retrospect, this was bound to happen given how small we are up front. It makes me cower at the thought of Rhody on Wednesday night. Basically we cannot compete with larger teams unless we are shooting lights out. Obviously we were not today, hence the outcome. Mason is an average team, so we still had our chances late but too many careless turnovers and bad shots cost us.
 
We got off to a very poor start, and Mason was white-hot. Should have used more TO's in the first 5 or 6 minutes to break the momentum. SDJ and Kwan not very involved in the first half, and TJ was hurrying his inside shots.

We should have used more TO's in the second half when Mason went on their big run. Plus I think the GMoos created the perfect blueprint for beating us, which is to take the ball to the rack, because we can't defend the dribble, and we have no size on the weak side to help out.

Marquis Moore is a beast, he can slash, he has a nice midrange game, and he rebounds like a machine. He has to be one of the better players in the A10. Plus we could not hang with their size and strength either on defense or on the boards.

Wood was terrible today, He played like he just rolled out of bed.

I did like the effort from Buckingham, but it wasn't enough to make a difference. We need a true team effort, more intensity in order to beat teams like GMU. More of the same old CM tactics like we saw before the 5-0 run. Meh...
 
Absolutely pathetic. We could have bet the house that when Wood came back Mooney would be sooo thick headed that he would change the lineup back to when we sucked, and he did. We won 5 games and were playing inspired, why mess w it even a little. Wood does nothing out there that the 4 guards werent already doing.
Correct. Since Wood has come back, Mooney's lineup management has reinstated the 6-6 out of conference team.

Not saying that the 5-0 rotation would now be 7-0 (because Dayton and GM are better teams), but the product would be better, and the fans would enjoy watching it more. The smaller, quicker, 6-man lineup made the players more comfortable, AND it gave the Spiders a "better chance" to win against most opponents.
 
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The thing that kills me is it's so obvious to a casual fan that we were getting crushed with their dribble drives. We called a timeout at one point but maybe I missed it, but i did not see a change in the D to try to counter. Just the same matchup where get beat off the dribble and no one steps in to stop the drive.

Mason made a change to their D at the end of the game that stifled our comeback and that was it. Really bummed but we are regressing to the mean. Can't believe this Mason team lost to St. Louis. There are no gimme games anywhere on our schedule, not one.
 
Maybe I wasn't as upset as some others because I don't really know what we could have done. Their big guys were killing us. We don't have any big guys to defend them with. So great, we come out and press up on their guards, they'll just dump it to the big guys for layups. We sit back on the big guys and the guards will drive to the hole and lay it up. It reminded me of the Lasalle game a couple years ago up there. Layup after layup after layup.

About the only thing we could have done would have been to get Abakah in there and tell him "You have 5 fouls for a reason. Use every one of them." Or put Kirby in and try to use up more fouls on the guards, take a few more chances at steals, etc. This is what happens sometimes when you don't recruit bigs, though.
 
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Maybe I wasn't as upset as some others because I don't really know what we could have done. Their big guys were killing us. We don't have any big guys to defend them with. So great, we come out and press up on their guards, they'll just dump it to the big guys for layups. We sit back on the big guys and the guards will drive to the hole and lay it up. It reminded me of the Lasalle game a couple years ago up there. Layup after layup after layup.

About the only thing we could have done would have been to get Abakah in there and tell him "You have 5 fouls for a reason. Use every one of them." Or put Kirby in and try to use up more fouls on the guards, take a few more chances at steals, etc. This is what happens sometimes when you don't recruit bigs, though.
 
You're right. CM has recruited some outstanding players in his tenure. But, they have been mostly guards. He has failed to recruit frontcourt players to complement the guards.
 
But they really weren't that big - the guy doing the most damage was a guard. Point is - try sonething else because what we were doing at that juncture wasn't working.
 
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I guess, in retrospect, this was bound to happen given how small we are up front. It makes me cower at the thought of Rhody on Wednesday night. Basically we cannot compete with larger teams unless we are shooting lights out. Obviously we were not today, hence the outcome. Mason is an average team, so we still had our chances late but too many careless turnovers and bad shots cost us.
Mason is not bigger compared to others. Size was not an issue here!
 
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Yeah. Mason's starting 5 was actually smaller than ours. We could not stop dribble penetration. No one could, Buck, Julius, SDJ, Khwan all got toasted. But yet there we are all game playing all up tight in there guards.
 
While interior defense was a problem against GMU, it has been a problem for the whole year, including all our conference games. GMU shot 51.2% from 2FG range, which is the 4th highest out of the 7 A10 games we have played this year and they were also 4th in terms of getting to the line. Our interior defense, at least in terms of outcome, was no worse than it has been overall during A10 play, even during our win streak. Similarly, GMU's 3FG% was tied for 5th highest out of the 7 A10 games we have played.

Our defense was not worse this game than it has been over the past 6, over the course of the whole game it was pretty much what I have come to expect. Our offense, as it was against Dayton and St. Joes, was much much worse than how we performed in the beginning of conference play.

Here is the difference in shooting percentages between the beginning of conference play and our last two losses for us:

2FG% in wins: 59.8 losses: 49.4 change: -10.4
3FG% in wins: 44.4 losses: 22.0 change: -22.4

and for our opponents:

2FG% in wins (for us): 52.9 losses: 54.1 change: +1.2
3FG% in wins (for us): 33.3 losses: 35.1 change: +2.2

Though opponents did tend to shoot slightly better in our past two losses, the biggest difference is our performance on offense, which has been significantly worse.
 
While interior defense was a problem against GMU, it has been a problem for the whole year, including all our conference games. GMU shot 51.2% from 2FG range, which is the 4th highest out of the 7 A10 games we have played this year and they were also 4th in terms of getting to the line. Our interior defense, at least in terms of outcome, was no worse than it has been overall during A10 play, even during our win streak. Similarly, GMU's 3FG% was tied for 5th highest out of the 7 A10 games we have played.

Our defense was not worse this game than it has been over the past 6, over the course of the whole game it was pretty much what I have come to expect. Our offense, as it was against Dayton and St. Joes, was much much worse than how we performed in the beginning of conference play.

Here is the difference in shooting percentages between the beginning of conference play and our last two losses for us:

2FG% in wins: 59.8 losses: 49.4 change: -10.4
3FG% in wins: 44.4 losses: 22.0 change: -22.4

and for our opponents:

2FG% in wins (for us): 52.9 losses: 54.1 change: +1.2
3FG% in wins (for us): 33.3 losses: 35.1 change: +2.2

Though opponents did tend to shoot slightly better in our past two losses, the biggest difference is our performance on offense, which has been significantly worse.
While I noticed the defense in the first half, what seemed so bad in the first half of this game was, I believe, 7 of 21 from 2 point range.
 
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