James Jones is a tremendous coach who has conducted himself with class and grace for north of two decades. I thought he handled yesterday’s loss as well as anyone possibly could have.
6 Likes
I’m a cynic about recruiting rankings. There’s a fairly obvious confirmation bias that you see in those things. (If Duke offers someone, clearly he’s a five-star, because he has a Duke offer.) Production over potential. The Big Ten POY started his career at a JUCO. College basketball history is strewn with players who got highly recruited and fizzed out, and there are plenty of unheralded mid-major guys who had excellent NBA careers.
This isn’t really about TJ Power ftr, this is just a chance to get back on my hobby horse 
1 Like
it is only getting worse not better with the portal focus
Good news for Yale and the ivy league. Rankings are becoming comical outside the top 25
I never felt that way, and (not to be argumentative) I don’t recall posts to that effect. All I ever felt was a sense of impending doom when the NIL money reached the Princeton program, as it has.
1 Like
That was a weird game in that I’d have thought it would have been a rock fight given how it was officiated and how both teams were grabbing all over the place, but the offensive play was still good. Power, especially, of course, but guys on both sides managed to score a lot more than I would have thought under the circumstances. On the occasional closeups of out of bounds plays and so on I saw things going on that were a lot less subtle than the usual holding and bumping–violent jerking and pushing that the refs could not have avoided seeing. Kudos to the shooters on both teams who managed to get free anyway and/or finish through contact. (When players tried to draw contact and get a whistle, they inevitably came away disappointed.)
I feel James’s pain about Yale’s non-varying defensive strategy, as I have been bitching about that for Princeton for a couple of years now. I would have been faceguarding and denying Power even if I had to go to a box or diamond and one and had never practiced it, although Yale could have probably managed it within their normal framework by switching appropriately.
One under-appreciated aspect in this ILT to me is Penn’s very much improved defense, physicality allowed by the refs aside. McCaffery is not exactly known as a defensive coach, and early in the year I thought the Quakers looked pretty awful–easy to drive past their on-ball defenders, poor help, iffy rebounding, etc. Not in these two games. They’re going to need to maintain that improvement in order to survive against the Illini, who are a potent offensive team.
The improved defense is largely a result of the far greater minutes given to Lueth and Jay Jones and the far better footwork of AJ. Penn still is vulnerable in the paint, but they are not getting beaten off the ball and are interfering with the passing lanes much better than they were early in the year. Still would have led to nothing but a respectable defeat if Power didn’t go off and Thrower become a good 2nd option.
I would also add that Penn seems a lot less predictable now on defense. McCaffrey is not afraid to mix things up, both in terms of personnel and changing defensive schemes, the latter sometimes possession by possession. We saw plenty of that this past weekend.