In the team’s defense, we have no idea how good/bad Iona actually is.
Preseason predictions outside of the high majors is basically looking at the stats of returning players. Iona has all new guys so it’s assumed they must be in for a bad-to-mediocre season.
The Gaels team I saw was at least average. Probably above-average.
That said, I was pulling out my hair at our struggles with the press. MH’s teams have easily handled every opponent that tried to press them in the past 4 seasons, even the power conference teams.
Anyway, I sincerely hope that was 1st game jitters and not symptomatic of big problems. Duquesne might answer that question.
Cold 3pt shooting happens, so I’m not worried about that. Peters will be fine.
Davis has a knack for big shots even when he struggles, which I like, but he’s gonna get torched defensively if he doesn’t generate more steals. Gotta make up for being short by causing more TOs.
With Huggins and Abdullahi, we’re gonna miss a lot more FTs this year. But they also give us some rim protection and, well, a lot more dunks. No need to sweat finesse layups anymore.
Early on, MH was throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks - 12 players had minutes tonight with no garbage time. Peters, Huggins, Abdullahi are clearly rotation players. Jury’s out on Hicke - he has a great feel for the game, but at some point, he has to make shots.
We don’t know how good Iona is but tonight I thought they played really well, with sustained tenacious swarming defense and hitting a lot of tough shots.
Shooting 8-26 for 3P and 11-22 FTs and somehow managing to win showed that this Tiger team has some grit. The intensity in the last 15 mins was much higher than the first 25 and that is what it took on a night went they could not hit those shots.
Lee and Pierce both had 6 assists, they are clearly the heart beat of this team and it is fun to watch them play off each other. Good learning experience for the new players in the rotation about what it takes to win on an off night.
It’s really hard to gauge early season results. A “marquee” win in November can become a Quad 3 win by January. And an “ugly” win like this can end up looking decent by season’s end.
I feel a little better knowing that McNeese St, considered a Top 5 mid-major, lost a close one to South Dakota St. (10pt underdogs). And St. Joe’s, considered a potential Bubble team, only beat Navy by 7 (15pt underdogs).
Message board tech is a couple of decades old, I get it, but the community is small as it is, might not make the transition. What problems were you having with the board?
Lee made a comment postgame about the Tigers having to go to Plan C on defense, and with about 15 minutes left they did. No more easy backdoors (help the helper), better/smarter on-ball defense (knowing where the help was), and a lot more active hands was what it looked like to me. And maybe Iona got a little physically and mentally tired from their own style of play when Princeton didn’t crack when they were supposed to down 14 points. It’s too close to be thrilled, but the grit shown in the second half was inspiring and the bigs looked much better than I expected, including the new guy. Got to clean up the foul shooting (including by Pierce).
If PU had hit anywhere near their probable three-point average they would have won pretty comfortably–they had a ton of good looks that didn’t go down, compensated for by Lee pulling those difficult (for most() crossover stepback treys. Wish they’d shown replays of Lee’s desperation two-point jumper late in the shot clock with guys all over him.
I also looked up Iona’s freshman who cooked us, Adam Njie, and it turns out he’s a big-time recruit. 15 offers including lots of high majors. He’s a future star who also had the element of surprise on his side.
Due to bots flooding the site, the forum frequently wouldn’t load.
I’m no IT expert, but a site still on HTTP (not HTTPS) seems like a security risk.
Whoever is/was the moderator of the forum has completely vanished so no changes are forthcoming.
I’m done with the old forum (minus occasional visits to remind folks we’ve moved).
The only question for me is whether we use this super high-quality forum set up by Vonsid or the much lesser but more familiar Proboards I set up: https://ivyleaguebasketball.proboards.com/
My understanding is that Jack Scott is with the team and practices with them but is ineligible to play this season due to his brief transfer to W&M last spring.
Duquesne should tell us more about where
we are. They lost their opener to a decent
team, but have some size and athleticism.
Both Lee and Pierce are banged up.