Im excited about this game amd big five again, well maybe for this week. What are our chances? From what i read st joes looked good in their two homes wins and then not surprisingly got crushed in the road. Would be ironic if it came down to end and Steve made some good coaching decisions
Steve is due for some of those.
KP spread is St Joe -7. Ironic indeed if the guy who supposedly can’t coach engineers a win in his Palestra return.
It will be interesting to see how he uses the offense Lange had been running before he headed up the Turnpike for an NBA job. I doubt SD will use much of what he ran at Penn.
Except Steve’s entire career reputation has been built around being a guy who runs great offense. Lange didn’t install him as associate head coach to run the D.
We’ll see what it looks like tomorrow night. I suspect that the Hawks will win (though I don’t think they’re at Providence’s level), but I’d like to see us keep it close.
Until Fran gets his Andy Toole, I think it’s going to be a rough year.
That was a nice win! Zanoni was a dud but our guards and Scantlebury helped to make up for that. Power in the first half and Roberts in the second half were just unreal. Can beat you in so many different ways.
Watched the last 7 minutes. Ethan Roberts is really a beast. Win me a few bucks tonight also on this game. Will try and watch a full replay later. It’s nice to have hope.
Power is amazing. We really haven’t had a guy like him who is so big and athletic and skilled and versatile since maybe the Koko and U days.
That was a hell of a game. Power and Roberts were excellent. The combination of Levine and Thrower were solid. I liked what I saw from Scantlebury off the bench, and Williams had a couple of nice moments as well. Too bad Zanoni never got going.
Defense down the stretch held when it counted. I think we’re going to be better than people expect.
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Just got to watch the second half of the game. Loved it haha. Still a lot of room for improvement on defense but some fun offensive players.
per Ethan Roberts at the end of the game “we’re fucking back”
Having 2 scorers who can create their own shot is a huge luxury in the Ivy League. It’s going to keep us in a lot of games in the league. Our PG issue will have the opposite effect. To highlight the problem you need only look at the assist to turnover ratio of our guys playing the point. an acceptable A/TO ratio is 2:1 (2 assists for every one TO). Elite PG’s are around 3:1. Anything from 1.5 to 2.0 is not great. Below 1.4 is abysmal. Dylan Williams isn’t yet a factor. AJ’s A/TO ratio is 1.4:1 and Cam Thrower is 1:1. Collectively those two are 1.2:1. You simply cannot win consistently with your point guards creating as many turnovers as they do assists. None of the other stuff matters. The team can’t function when the one guy who is supposed to create shots and get you into your offense is turning it over as much as he is creating.
Isn’t it possible to offset that by having Power and maybe other guys handling the ball to start sets in the offensive end? Agree it’s a concern.
Yes agree, I’d even say 3 scorers since Zanoni can pile it on in right circumstances. On offense PG is biggest issue thought the rotation was better last night with addition of Williams.
The other area to watch is center. Gerhart needs to have more confidence and go up with the ball - he was short on every hook yesterday because we was worried about getting blocked. If he went up strong I think he would have scored or gotten fouled. Scantlebury looks promising and might overtake starting role if Gerhart doesn’t become more aggressive inside. Both of them need to rebound better. Power is crushing them both in rebound rate.
On defense, a lot of improvement needed and hoping more time playing together will develop it a bit.
We’re not going to have a lot of assists in a game where St. Joe’s one advantage was the strength and speed of their guards. But we were able to take them one on one, which was great to see. Against slower, weaker guards, we’ll have more assists. Of course, the fact that neither Levine nor Williams can shoot well means they don’t get a lot of respect with the ball and that makes distributing harder.
The issue at PG has been every game. Its not St Joe specific. If it makes anyone feel any better, the only team with no issues at PG (relative to A/TO) is Yale. Their collective Assist to TO ratio is 3.2, which is elite. Dartmouth is 3.0 and every other team is somewhere between 1.4 and 1.8 with the exception of Harvard, who despite being 4-1 has a negative A/TO with just 10 assists and 16 TO’s through 5 games. They make up for it with some good defense though.