Time For a Run

[Deleted member 2897]

4-2, with 2 road losses where the final score was respectable.

Now its time to go on a run.
12/1 vs 6-0 St. John's.
St. John's has a +300 strength of schedule I think - a lot of close games. But beating a 6-0 team is beating a 6-0 team. This is as close to a must-win as we can get for a non-cupcake. It would do wonders for our confidence and be a solid P5 win.

12/9: vs Florida A&M
Must-win scheduled lower team.

12/17: vs Gardner-Webb.
Must-win scheduled lower team.

3 home wins could take us to 7-2. Then (along with St. John's) is when we find out if we have a possible 18-20 win team or not:

12/19: @Arkansas
#52 KenPom, road game. (Northwestern is #47 for reference.) . These are the games we MUST find a way to win that are close to coin tosses where the home team probably gets the pick.

12/22: vs. georgia
#122 KenPom. Again, another MUST win.

12/28: Kennesaw State
Must-win scheduled lower team.

1/2: USC Upstate
Must-win scheduled lower team.

Against St. Johns, Arkansas, and Georgia we go 2-1 and sweep the lower schools, that will put us at 10-3 entering ACC play. That would be a very interesting way to start conference play. 8-10 would put us at 18-13, which would probably be an NCAA bubble team.

Honestly, anything worse than 10-3 means losing 2 of 3 to St. Johns/Arkansas/Georgia which would be bad, or winning 2+ of those but losing to a really poor lower team...neither of which would be good outcomes.

These are beatable teams. I hope we can work our way through it.

 

[THWG16]

4-2, with 2 road losses where the final score was respectable.

Now its time to go on a run.
12/1 vs 6-0 St. John's.
St. John's has a +300 strength of schedule I think - a lot of close games. But beating a 6-0 team is beating a 6-0 team. This is as close to a must-win as we can get for a non-cupcake. It would do wonders for our confidence and be a solid P5 win.

12/9: vs Florida A&M
Must-win scheduled lower team.

12/17: vs Gardner-Webb.
Must-win scheduled lower team.

3 home wins could take us to 7-2. Then (along with St. John's) is when we find out if we have a possible 18-20 win team or not:

12/19: @Arkansas
#52 KenPom, road game. (Northwestern is #47 for reference.) . These are the games we MUST find a way to win that are close to coin tosses where the home team probably gets the pick.

12/22: vs. georgia
#122 KenPom. Again, another MUST win.

12/28: Kennesaw State
Must-win scheduled lower team.

1/2: USC Upstate
Must-win scheduled lower team.

Against St. Johns, Arkansas, and Georgia we go 2-1 and sweep the lower schools, that will put us at 10-3 entering ACC play. That would be a very interesting way to start conference play. 8-10 would put us at 18-13, which would probably be an NCAA bubble team.

Honestly, anything worse than 10-3 means losing 2 of 3 to St. Johns/Arkansas/Georgia which would be bad, or winning 2+ of those but losing to a really poor lower team...neither of which would be good outcomes.

These are beatable teams. I hope we can work our way through it.

Did you watch us last night?

 

[THWG]

Did you watch us last night?

Clearly you only watched the first half.

 

[lv20gt]

Did you watch us last night?

Did you watch the entire game. The team is still in desperate need to find it's identity but once it does so we're going to be pretty good. Best case scenario is that somewhat happened against Northwestern. More realistically we should hope it happens by the end of the non conference portion of the year.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Alvarado, Haywood etc were hurt last year a lot. We’re playing with basically an entire new team. I think we’ll get better as we go.

 

[THWG16]

Did you watch the entire game. The team is still in desperate need to find it's identity but once it does so we're going to be pretty good. Best case scenario is that somewhat happened against Northwestern. More realistically we should hope it happens by the end of the non conference portion of the year.

Hope youre right! We gotta get some talent in here

 

[AUFC]

After last night, I don’t see us putting up much of a fight vs. St. John’s, Arkansas, or UGAG. I think we finish 8-5 out of conference.

And yes I watched the full game. I put that second half as a wash because Northwestern came out with way less mental focus than they would in a competitive game and we had more mental focus than average in a competitive game. As soon as Northwestern started taking it seriously again, they re-extended their lead.

I think a slightly under .500 season is looking more likely than not.

 

[YlJacket]

I don't think the second half was all about NW not taking it seriously. Even with that we played good to very good defense most of the game. That gives us a basis for moving forward - and quite honestly the hardest side of the game taken care of.

The fixes on the offensive side are not undoable - or something these kids are not used to. They should be able to install a motion offense and have it impact the results for the next several games. I thought CJP would install it after UT - I hope last night was a wake up call. But it isn't rocket science or something that takes all year.

I think we still have a good shot at all these games - likely won't win them all - but we will see.

 

[mstranahan]

@AUFC first off -- Vamos ATL tonight!

Second, I get your perspective. I'm sticking with my original 10-3 OOC projection. Think we can beat 2 of St John's, Ark & UGAG. No guarantee, but I'm optimistic

 

[Ramblingon]

Let's hope tonight we start Saturday where we left off Wednesday. Especially Alvarado and Banks. St. Johns is a short team...maybe we can get it into Banks some.

 

[RamblinCharger]

Desperately need ball movement and movement on offense. We really miss lamers. I wish we could find another Anthony Morrow. Alvarado is legit, I’m not too sure about anyone else being a real ACC caliber player on our roster. We need an influx of talent. Not sure what happened to our violent cuts, but to my untrained but I’ve watched basketball for 20 years of my short life eye, we quit focusing on them for some weird reason. We need those easy buckets. Defense has to play for the whole game, not just 2H when a team semi checks out. I think we can beat uga this year. Not sure about Arkansas or St. John’s. I see 9-4 OOC most likely and 6-12 or 7-11 in conference. Probably barely missing the NIT. Hope I’m wrong, but we need some talent on the wing. If we had a legit scorer at SG/SF we could do some things since I think Banks is solid, but we just don’t have the talent. Hopefully Josh pulls a rabbit out of his hat recruiting this year or next, or we’ll be needing a new coach in 2ish years.

 

[Connell62]

If we had a legit scorer at SG/SF we could do some things since I think Banks is solid, but we just don’t have the talent. Hopefully Josh pulls a rabbit out of his hat recruiting this year or next, or we’ll be needing a new coach in 2ish years.

You mean like a Josh Okogie? Most people weren't expecting him to leave after last year. His departure set our offense back considerably.

It's gonna take some time to recover from that because as you mention, we really don't have guys able to go get their own bucket or get to the foul line.

My hope was that Shembari would help here, but that has been a resounding NO so far. In the second half against NW, Devoe ran point and Jose played that role. That seemed to work pretty well.

 

[MiracleWhips]

Yea if we are going to have any hopes at a post season we will need Devoe at the one and Jose playing off the ball, Devoe looks to get guys involved more than alvarado and not only that I feel like Alvarado is just naturally better at scoring. Having him at the two would open things up for everyone else.

 

[UrinatesOnDawgs]

I think Devoe will be special , just needs to grow up quick ..... like by ACC play!!


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[D-man44]

I seriously think it’s hilarious at how delusional this fan base is sometimes. Devoe literally got out of a boot a week before the first game duh he’s rusty. CJP will get at minimum 2 years after this (Until Jose’s class graduates) to turn it around. It would be unfair to him to fire him before that and we’ve made it clear we will give him time his first full class are true Sophmores...

 

[dtm1997]

I seriously think it’s hilarious at how delusional this fan base is sometimes. Devoe literally got out of a boot a week before the first game duh he’s rusty. CJP will get at minimum 2 years after this (Until Jose’s class graduates) to turn it around. It would be unfair to him to fire him before that and we’ve made it clear we will give him time his first full class are true Sophmores...

How dare you post a rational thought founded in reality!

 

[ESPNjacket]

CJP told anyone who was listening that we would be putting in an entirely different offensive approach. It is reasonable to expect it to take at least a month worth of games for the team to execute it efficiently. Hopefully we are almost there.

 

[RamblinCharger]

I seriously think it’s hilarious at how delusional this fan base is sometimes. Devoe literally got out of a boot a week before the first game duh he’s rusty. CJP will get at minimum 2 years after this (Until Jose’s class graduates) to turn it around. It would be unfair to him to fire him before that and we’ve made it clear we will give him time his first full class are true Sophmores...

I find it hilarious that we can't expect better results than we've seen. This is year 3. Chris Beard turned things around at Texas Tech in about 30 days. Sure maybe they weren't in as bad of a spot as us, but they don't recruit 5 stars, and somehow he's winning tons of games. Their Okogie was Zhaire Smith. They went to the elite 8 with a bunch of 3 stars. Some coaches have it, others don't. I think we all know CJP will be here for a couple more years at this point, but we need to do better in every area especially recruiting if we aren't able to win big with the 3 star guys. JO wasn't his player, but I also understand we'd probably add 4-5 wins with him, so we might be a tourney team this year with him, but I don't know why we can't talk about what we need to improve on. There is super negative, and then there is realistic.

 

[MiracleWhips]

CJP told anyone who was listening that we would be putting in an entirely different offensive approach. It is reasonable to expect it to take at least a month worth of games for the team to execute it efficiently. Hopefully we are almost there.

When did he say that?

 

[YlJacket]

CJP talked at length about having a new offense particularly with the loss of Lammers who was the key to the high post modified Princeton approach. The discussion was we needed to be more uptempo and more focused on the perimeter to match the talent we have plus we need to show a new approach to offense for recruiting. I don't have any specific interview but I do recall seeing / hearing him say this multiple times.