we couldn't score from about the 10 minute to 5 minute mark in each half.  not sure why that was, but during those stretches, the score went from 21-19 (VCU) to 37-20 and then 52-49 (VCU) to 63-51. despite that, it seemed like hollis might will us back into the game.  always net year...

I agree that neither of the big men had one of their better outings, but the refs were also letting VCU's players work them over, particularly Katuka.  Otherwise, Katuka was out of sync.  He got some opportunities but didn't have the touch.  It happens with big guys.  In a lot of ways he's just finished his freshman season.  Herm just wasn't athletic enough for this game.  Where was Edwards?  I thought this was a game where he would've been useful in some stretches to apply some defensive pressure or block or change a shot or two. 

I also agree that Hobbs didn't have one of his better games.  Two or three times he had crazy lineups with almost no shooting out there, and killed momentum when we were catching up.  Particularly I think when we had closed to around 52-49, he left a unit out there that was obviously dragging and couldn't make a play, King kept forcing passes, and the net thing I knew, we were down by 10 again.  A timeout when the lead got back up to 6 might've broken VCU's momentum and allowed us to regroup. When it got to 61-51 or so, it was basically over.  Another  problem was Taylor.  Someone remarked that sometimes we focus too much on numbers.  Well, this game, I don't think his reported 8 assists to 2 turnovers was an accurate picture.  He did have a couple of nice plays where he created his own baskets and he obviously set up a lot of baskets, but he took way  too long to get plays going when we needed to catch up, he blew yet another front end of a one and one, and he was careless with the ball a bunch of times.  I don't want to lay it all on him, though.  The only two guys who really had it were  Hollis, who played like the warrior I wish we'd seen all his career, and Kromah, who had two tremendous scoring bursts and gave us a nice inside and outside game..   

After all this, I don't know what to make of this team.  It's obviously better than the last two but I'm not quite sure where we are as we go into net season.  I still don't think Hobbs has sorted out what he wants out of many of the players.  But it was nice to have another game and it was eciting if frustrating.

I'm a lurker here, but felt compelled to post to epress my strong agreement about Hobb's poor coaching tonight, especially with respect to the second half scoring drought after we had clawed our way back.  I understand Rabbi's point about why Hobbs took out Hollis, et al for a breather, but he waited way too long, and until it was way too late, to call a timeout to break VCU's momentum and get the scorers back in.  I'm the first to admit that I know net to nothing about basketball s and Os, but it was painfully obvious to me, and I would venture to say almost everyone else in the arena, that the players we had out there had absolutely no offensive flow going and were just turnovers waiting to happen.  Hobbs waited at least two possessions too long to call the timeout that many of the fans (myself included) were yelling for.  Calling the timeout when we're only down 4 or 6, rather than 10, was one of the differences in the game in my opinion.

On another issue, am I the only one who thought Hobbs should have taken Hollis out of the game when there were only three tenths of a second left and VCU was at the line?  I think it would have been classy for Hobbs to give the fans (despite the relatively low turnout, I thought the fans were pretty into it) one final chance to give Hollis some love, especially after his monster game tonight.  Anyway, I thought it would have been the right move.

• http://blogs.gwhatchet.com/courtside/2010/03/17/gws-season-ends-with-cbi-loss-to-vcu/
• http://dailycolonial.com/?p=2928
• http://www.gwsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/031610aaa.html
• http://www.gwsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2009-2010/gw-vcu.html
• http://www.gwsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/031610aac.html

From the scary file:

""When we went over their personnel, we talked so much about Larry Sanders and we were so concerned about him and [Joey] Rodriguez, that we almost never talked about the other guys. And we almost played like we never talked about the other guys."

From the funny file:

"The most eciting thing in addition to how we played was our fans, the number of people who showed up for our game. I'm so appreciative of that because everything happened so quick--finding out who we'd play at the last minute. The support was as good as it's been all year."

Grenada Man, no one's attacking our players' character.  I should've said it in my previous post but I'll say it now, they all played their guts out and never quit.  It takes a lot of character to come back as many times as they did last night against a good team, not to mention they were fighting three refs who missed calls and were pretty inconsistent on what was a foul.  I can also accept that most of them had never played in a postseason tournament before and naturally could've taken awhile to find their groove.  LSF made a good point about Taylor not getting much help, but I have to agree with Herve that several times he tried to go through a bunch of people, or just kept dribbling without any apparent regard for the fact that he was being surrounded and the ball was knocked away.  I realize that sometimes picking the dribble up is worse, but if you're going to keep your dribble going, get to a position where you only have to deal with guys in front of you.  It's hard for me to believe he only had 2 TOs unless they don't count when an opponent knocks the ball out of your hand from behind.  Maybe some of those were picked up by our players. 

Or maybe the problem is Hobbs not getting the other players to work with him, because we often have 2 or 3 guards out there at the same time with ballhandling skills, plus Hollis is a more than adequate ballhandler to help get it out of the backcourt and get into our offense.

I think hobbs is the greatest coach ever

I think this version of the GW Colonials is the greatest team we ever had

I think Edwards, johnson and King are all staying since they love Hobbs and Matt Albritton has agreed to come back to GW too!

I think I taw a putty cat

Happy St Patty's Day to all

Wishing you and yours all the best this offseason

Lev 

This is the quote that some want to drive a truck through ...

“We were just so concerned about him and we talked about [guard Joey] Rodriguez, but we didn’t talk about the other guys – and we almost played like we never talked about the other guys,” Hobbs said. “But they did just a terrific job of making threes.”

Anybody who has ever been in a locker room before understands eactly what he was saying. His point was that if we stop Sanders and Rodriguez we have a good chance to win as they are the team's best players. I am sure they had a scouting report on everyone. In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it. It was a statement about what poison they were going to choose beforehand.They were prepared as well as you could be given two hours to get a scout in.

Nobody counted on a team that shot about 35% from 3-pt. range going 10-18 in the first half. Great job by them. We did a good job on Sanders and Rodriguez came back to earth in the second half.  They hit about 1.5 threes more than you would epect for the entire game. The difference overall last night was our inability to score not our defense. We shot 4-15 from 3-point range. We had inopportune turnovers and we had 4 possessions down 51-45 where we could not score. VCU was not playing great defense last night. We had plenty of opportunities that we couldn't capitalize on.

Hobbs played this game eactly right from the defensive end. If you want to be critical about something - the lack of a timeout at around the 6-7 minute mark where VCU opened up a little bit or a couple of the lineups he had out there (from an offensive perspective) would be far more reasonable. 

bfan ,

No i do not know anything about those guys leaving , it was mentioned once before in a post. Where someone said the hoped Johnson would stay. I dont remember who it was , but they said they wasnt trying to start any rumors. I was just asking if they were leaving thats all. Johnson was a little more laid back on the bench last night , and Edwards was a no show.

I guess Hobbs is listening to FQ now as the net recruit, Nemanja Mikic, seems to be more "skill" and less "athletic".  The problem with that is pure shooters have fared very poorly in Hobbs' system in the past: Wilmore, Collucci, Matty A.  Maybe if Mikic is truely 6"6' or above, he can succeed as a catch and shoot gunner on the perimeter.  But if he's more of a 6'3" shooting guard dependent on picks and screens to get open, I would not be too optimistic.

Hobbs has got to learn to be less stuborn about his offensive and defensive systems. VCU was clearly shreading his zone in the first half.  As Kvancz said at half-time, the problem wasn't just that VCU got hot but ALL THEIR SHOTS WERE WIDE OPEN.  But instead of adjusting his defense in the 1st half, Hobbs took the opportunity to scream at his players and assistants that they weren't eecuting his system correctly. True, they were not. They were late on rotations (Katuka and others) but that is not the time to lecture, its the time to adjust.  Scream at them in practice or in the locker room after the game but in game, Hobbs has to learn to keep his head and switch strategies on the fly.  He does a poor job of this.

On offense, Hobbs needs to realize that teaching an effective half-court offense is not one of strengths.  Its a poor system poorly run.  It seems that Hobbs cares more about the defense and fast break opportunities anyways.  He should find someone else on his staff to completely gut the eisting system and impliment an entirely new one in the off-season.  Very often, ast. coaches specialize in running an offense or defense and Hobbs would be smart to swallow some of his enormous pride and delegate to Ellerby (or someone else) on the half-court offense.  

GW needs to continue to improve net season so it may just save his job in the long run. 

So Seneca, is Hobbs unable to speak English, a liar, or unable to accept responsibility?  Or it's just loose talk because, hey, who cares whether the fans really know what I mean, they're just fans.  Or they should read my mind.  Or they should get that I walk on water, and even if I say something that sounds dumb, they should know that what I do is brilliant?   We didn't talk about anyone else.  In English, that means we didn't talk about anyone else.  I don't think he's a liar.  So that kind of leaves, it's my fault, either I gambled the ranch on winning if we shut down 2 players, or I missed the boat on the other guys, or something.  We played like we didn't talk about the others -- that's at best a vague passing of the buck to his players.  At worst, a blatant passing of the buck.  As you would point out, it's not the coachs' job to play -- and it's not the players' job to scout the other team or figure out how to play them.  So at best, he admitted to focusing too much on two players.  Is it likely that VCU won 20 games, and 11 in a decent conference, by almost-total reliance on 2 players? 

Plus, how many times do we have to get torched by hot 3-point shooters for more than the first few minutes of the game for him to say, throw out the stat sheet, these guys are hot, let's force them to do something else.  If Katuka had come out and made 4 or 5 quick baskets, would it have made sense for the VCU coach to say, shoot, everyone knows the scorers on the team are Hollis and Kromah, keep single coverage on him and we'll beat them by shutting down Hollis and Kromah?  This is what coaching is about -- adjusting.  I don't think you need to have spent time sniffing athletes' jocks to figure that out.   

First, let's get our facts straight.  There were two difficult offensive stretches for GW during the second half.  The first one which the original poster refers to came with GW down 51-49.  We had Tim, Travis, Herm, Dwayne and David on the floor.They were in the game for just over two minutes and while they looked woefully awkward on offense, they also didn't allow VCU to score during this stretch either.  KH put Damian, Lasan and Tony right back into the game.  The second and far more costly stretch involved VCU going on a 9-0 run to push a 4 point lead back to 13 over a slightly more than 4 minute period.  While we had some subs during the stretch, it was largely Travis, Lasan, Tony, Joseph and David on the floor during this run.

Now that that's out of the way, a bit on Hobbs.  No, I don't want him fired, but he does need to find some new ideas on both sides of the ball.  To suggest (as Seneca did) that we didn't lose this game on the defensive side of the ball is just crazy.  We fell behind by 17 points in the first half because VCU nailed one open 3 pointer after another.  While we cut that lead to two and a subsequent 13 point lead down to two, you can not undermine the amount of energy that gets sucked from a team when it has to play from behind.  Plus, in the case of both comebacks, we never actually came all of the way back.  So if you're talking about WHY we lost the game, I felt the biggest reason was that we were behind 17 in the first half.  And WHY that was was due to VCU's 3 point shooting in the first half.

I shake my head when I read or hear things like "you don't epect a team that shoots 35% from 3 for the season to go 10-18 in a half."  Yeah, one actually should epect that when their players are being left wide open.  I say this once a year so here it comes: any division 1 college player who even semi-regularly shoots 3 pointers has no greater opportunity in the college game than a wide open 3.  This is an easy shot; in fact, it seems it's an easier shot than a free throw.  Why?  Because these players religiously practice shooting 3's (unlike free throws).  The "2 guys chasing the ball" defense can only work if a defense is forcing close to 25 turnovers a game.  Otherwise, opponents are being given way too many opportunities to etend runs, change momentum, etc., simply by making wide open 3's.  VCU shot 1-9 from 3 in the second half.  Sure some of this was likely due to fatigue but a lot of this was because we changed up our defense in the second half and did a lot less of the "two guys chasing the ball routine."  Actually, for all of the crap that KH is taking today, this was a good halftime adjustment.  I only wish we hadn't started the way we had.

On offense, there is a lot of work to be done.  Dwayne Smith and Brian Bynes need to learn how to play more under control; David Pellom needs Rob Diggs to tutor him; Joe Katuka needs to learn how to better handle double-teams, etc., etc.  But more than individual skills, this team needs a new offense.  There is still way too much 5 guys standing around although this aspect did improve over the course of a season.  Passes are still too lackadaisical at times.  It is one thing to show poise and work for a good shot on offense.  It is quite another to fail to begin to even run your offense until the shot clock is under 15 or 10 seconds.  The one-on-one attempts too often turn into one-on threes.  Finally, there are more shooters on this team than meet the eye.  Everyone needs to work on shooting this off-season, and with some luck,  a new offense designed to free up shooters will be in place come October. 

Wow!!

I'm impressed by the amount of discussion on this game.  kudos to FQ and DM for their analyses.  while i don't have their insights, i will nevertheless add some thoughts.

i did not see warren and i looked.  but i'll take thinkers word on that.  i would question what edwards absence portends.  without any source whatsoever, i wonder if he'll be back.

not enough credit has been given here to vcu.  they could have been the best team we faced all year.  we talk about A10 slights but vcu deserved a tournament bigger than this. 

i would have guessed the attendance was closer to 1200-1300.  about 50% was vcu.  by the way, a lot of their student body is from northern virginia and they were home on break.  a home and home would be a great idea.

i am not a kh fan.  nor do i write countless posts calling for his head. but he is a lousy in game coach, plain and simple. and has shown little improvement as he's gotten more eperienced.  he is however, a better than average recruiter (the immediate aftermath of the Post's eposes ecepted).  could a better in-game coach won that game for us?  maybe.  the wholesale substitution during the 2nd half run and his inability to react to vcu pressure were game changers.  but the fact remains vcu was better than us and deserved the win.  (the only eception being rodriquez's 3 point attempt down the stretch which could easily have cost them the game.)

it wasn't just the freshmen making bad passes.  king and ware contributed in that regard.  while i too like ware's heart, he has little upside at this level. 

this was not a good matchup for katuka.  they were just too physical, too big for katuka and i think there will be matchups like this net year he wont be well suited to.

great performance for hollis to go out on.

Mason had a 27 point lead in the 2nd half last nite. and lost?

Seneca Seats' words: "Nobody counted on a team that shot about 35% from 3-pt. range going 10-18 in the first half."

Anybody care to talk about the three-point shooting of VCU in the second half? Since they were 10-18 in the first, they went 1-9 in the second. I'd like to say that was an adjustment but it really wasn't - many of those threes were just as wide-open as the first half or just as contested as the first half - and that is the point not all the 3's were as uncontested in the first as some would lead you to believe here. Rodriguez for eample missed at least 3 wide-open ones.  If we are solely going to be results-oriented crowd then you all need to own up to that. My point is water finds its mark and as a coach you have to play percentages and matchups. What did VCU shoot for game? 40.7% with an unconscious first half.

Sanders was our worst matchup coming in then Rodriguez. Yes you might get burned playing percentages but that is how games are won and lost by MOST college coaches. What some of you guys really don't understand is the notion that the other guys get "paid" too. We decided to double-down on Sanders and pack in a zone. I'm sure had we denied up on the perimeter and etended the zone more and Sanders had 15 in the first half some of you clowns would have been hollering doesn't Hobbs know that Sanders is their best player? It's an absolutely no win situation unless of course we win - then it's Hobbs is a good coach. I've never seen a more outcome-determinative group in my life.

There aren't a lot of secrets in this game and if your team shoots 10-18 in a half from three you look pretty good. Conversely, if you shoot 4-15 for the entire game generally you are in trouble.

And MV, you really need to get out more and watch some basketball. Our defense did not lose the game for us at least not that night. Against another team maybe so. Our problem was our inability to score at critical times with lineups that were inacapable of scoring based on personnel combinations. We also shot poorly, especially in the first half. We play the very same overall defense and shoot somewhat better, we win. Even with our poor shooting we were in the game. Apparently, you don't grasp that so what can I say?  And nobody is worried about the threes.

Sure Hobbs has his flaws at times, there isn't a coach who doesn't. But I've never seen anyone dissected to the degree he is with less than all of the facts or a parsing of something he said without the full contet.

Seneca,

GW came played zone in the first half but came out in man to start the 2nd. Hobbs did adjust. Unfortunately, he just did so too late.  I don't think anyone has a problem with Hobbs backing the zone to start the game to combat Sanders.  VCU was up 23-19 at the 9:00 minute mark already hitting four 3pts.  Smart had taken Sanders out at this point but Hobbs stuck with the trapping half-court zone.  VCU continued to shread Hobbs' trap zone - going up by 17 at one point and hitting 6 more 3pts to end the half.  THEN Hobbs made the defensive adjustment.  Too late.

If you believe that Hobbs is subject to too much undue criticism, you just do not follow college basketball closely or have never visited any other basketball message board.  Phil Martelli, Brian Gregory, Bobby Lutz and many others get killed on thier boards as well. 

I find it hard to deny the arguement that Hobbs' trap zone D got distroyed in the first half (as it has too often this year) and his wheel/motion/4 men on the perimeter half court offense has not been particularly effective for the last 3 years.  Maybe you disagree? 

Bobo if you think that Hobbs was happy about all those threes going in and saying we've got them where we want them you'd be wrong. My point is they made the shots and some of the kids that made them usually don't make them as FQ pointed out above. At this level you have to give up something. Players are too good and VCU is too good in the post just to play straight man. In fact, we came out playing man and switched to a zone if I recall. We did play some man intermittently. Some of the threes they made were contested. Plus we don't do a real good job of handling ball screens in man as Rodriguez was able to effectively use those in the 2nd half - we were lucky he didn't hit the shots or maybe we weren't - maybe it was as I said water finding its level. Also, since none of us were in the huddle nobody knows what he said about the threes in the first half.

Now if you want to talk offense, I would agree we need to do some different things as far as personnel patterns and offenses. That's a whole different discussion.

As far as the criticism levelled at coaches I am fully aware of it. I just think here that some of it is nonsensical. As I said there are things that Hobbs could do better so obviously he is going to get criticism fior those things. But what happens on this board is that every game is a referendum on his coaching ability. To me it is much like the NCAAs - look at the body of work. Coaches, like players, do have off nights. Sometimes, those off nights may cause games to be lost and sometimes they don't. But the funny thing is I've never heard anybody come on here once and say Hobbs outcoached the other guy. Maybe I missed it. If he loses games, he must have the power to win them too.

Seneca, what Bobo just said about the adjustments is eactly right and echos what I had written.  As for having an offensively challenged line-up, we had one just once the entire game, with GW down 51-49, and that group of five played a little more than two minutes of clock time before three players were subbed with the score still 51-49.  Maybe you can enlighten me as to other five player combinations we had on the floor that were offensively challenged.

And just to summarize, GW fell behind by 17 points, largely due to our inability to cover three point shooters, never tied or took the lead the rest of the game, and you think that I'm wrong in saying that we lost the game because of this?  If you don't fall behind by 17 and are forced to play catch-up the rest of the game, perhaps your offensive woes wouldn't be so terrible since your team would be far less worn out under different circumstances.  No, what you are saying makes far, far more sense.  We lost because we fielded a lineup for 2 minutes that couldn't score, even though that unit didn't allow VCU to score during those 2 minutes either.

danjsport - right idea wrong game. We didn't epend too much energy coming back because first of all we came back gradually - first at the end of the 1st half to cut it to 12 and then five minutes into the game to cut it to 6 and then five minutes later to cut it to 3. Then VCU went on a run to increase the lead to 13 which we again cut to 3 with 14 seconds left. If we had epended all that energy to get the lead from 17 to 3 how did we have enough energy left to get the lead down from 13 to 3 in the last five minutes?

This was not some furious comeback attempt from 17 late in the game - this was a game of several runs by both teams. It was essentially a even game at the 10 minute mark of the 2nd half. Again, our runs were not sustained enough or long enough to win partly because our best offensive players were on the bench either too much (Hollis) or all together. Against VCU the problem wasn't 79, it was 73. We make 2 more 3's on the evening and shoot 40% from 3 and it's a tie game and no one cares about the 10 3's in the first half.

Would I prefer we didn't give up the 10 3's absolutely! But in the end we lost the game for other reasons.

Seneca, so now you know eactly how much energy was put into these comebacks, and you're assuring us that it wasn't too much to be considered the cause for the loss?  Do us all a big favor...if you really, truly aren't Blue Seats, stop acting like him.

I get it now MV, when you have nothing substantitive to say you blame your alter ego.

Seneca, I appear to be making the same or similar points as Alumnus, Bobo, Danjsport, and Newtman on this thread.  Interestingly, your point seems to be backed up by nobody.  Nothing you're not used to, I'm sure.

MV, you've already more than amply proven that you shouldn't give up your day job for basketball analysis. In fact, I'm not sure you really have a day job given the number of times you post here. But whether you do or don't, I don't form opinions based on what everyone or anyone else thinks. And I think we are talking about opinions here aren't we? Unless of course you'd like to tell us how we are discussing facts. I guess dissenting opinions are not allowed. Now stop channeling your inner Blue Seats.

Seneca and MV -- why don't you start your own thread instead of bitching at each other all the time. It gets really old, really quick. Are you guys enemies from childhood or something?