Well that just reeked, didn’t it?
(And an unintended consequence of my day…more to say than I thought, so check back later today for thoughts on ODU and GMU. Hint: they won’t be pretty.)
The Tribe, JMU, and Towson games went according to plan (other than a scrape between a Towson student and UMBC parent).
Quickies: W&M had a whopping EIGHT players on the floor for between 20-28 minutes; Pierre Curtis crossed 1,000 points for his JMU career; and Rob Nwankwo put up a 17/14 dubdub for Towson.
VCUs win over Rhode Island was close to script, even though VCU still turned the ball over 25 times (told you it wouldn’t be 30) and did everything it could to give the game away. In their final four possessions, VCU missed three one-and-ones and had one turnover.
Quickie: Larry Sanders had his second consecutive dubdub and swished another three. Scary, I tell you.
A halfcourt Rhody heave at the buzzer clanged off the back iron. For those keeping track, that brings the CAA to 2-1 this season on games decided by halfcourt shots. Eat that, NCAA Selection Committee.
But let’s talk about the three games, in order of magnitude, that mattered. Drexel.
Tea leaves aside, we all pretty much knew Drexel would lose to Villanova. No big deal really, as Drexel walked in with about a 10% chance of winning anyway. Margin is somewhat irrelevant. Games like this are about what happens.
Important, in our eyes: Drexel is looking like they need to go back to 2005 and rotate a bevy of guards around a big man or two. They are a better team playing that style.
Here’s what’s interesting/odd from that game: Drexel’s starters accounted for just 24 points, and 23 of those were from Derrick Thomas. (Nice FT, Neisler.)
What’s more, the experienced duo of Jamie Harris and Gerald Colds were 0-17 from the field (0-6 from three) and 0-2 from the line. They combined for six assists and seven turnovers. Two bagels in the scoring column in 58 combined minutes. The freshman duo of Thomas and Chris Fouch were 12-24 FG (10-14 from three!) and 9-12 FT, with four assists and three turnovers. A heap big 43 points in 48 minutes.
And as a guy who knows his stuff and attended the game emailed me this morning: “with Fouch in the game: Drexel 47, Nova 43. Without Fouch: Drexel 11, Nova 34.”
Perhaps useless, but maybe not. Play the freshman, play the guards is the lesson.
***
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Forgive me for playing devil’s advocate, but playing freshmen (especially CAA-level freshmen) is why a lot of college basketball coaches no longer have use for combs or brushes. Some days, they light it up and you have visions of similar performances swirling around in your head for the next three seasons. Other days, they play as if they’ve never actually seen a basketball before.
This is not to say that Drexel shouldn’t play both Thomas and Fouch a lot. Both kids should play, if for no other reason than the Dragons aren’t going to the NCAA tournament and this is as good a time to get them on-the-job training as ever. Same goes for Mason and its kiddie corps.
But while Fouch is gonna have games where he just absolutely goes bananas from 3 (like he did in that AAU game two years ago), I can’t see how Drexel’s guards are big or strong enough to get away with playing a 4-guard set. Thomas would basically be your PF in such a lineup, and he’d get absolutely abused trying to defend and rebound against 6-7/6-8 guys in the CAA.
A better option, IMHO, is to use the young guys to keep the veterans’ feet to the fire. If Fouch and Givens keep playing well, give them more of Colds’ and Harris’ minutes. That should be all the motivation the juniors need to avoid another combined 0-for-17 FG performance.
December 4th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
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