VCU Game - What to Expect?

[CuseJacket]

Definitely encouraged. The thing that mattered most and I saw executed was a plan for the final 4-5 minutes. We upped the aggression on offense and forced the issue unlike what we saw last year. It helps that we have more basketball players capable of scoring, but that's been said before.

One thing I'll offer that may come across as a downer... VCU was frankly not good yesterday offensively. They missed a lot of open shots from the perimeter that could have changed the game before we pulled away. I don't know if last night was the exception or the norm for them this year. Hopefully it's the exception and we'll look back and say we capitalized on the opportunity.

 

[CuseJacket]

There may be something to their lack of ability to score this year, particularly from their guards:

WHAT THE heck IS GOING ON WITH THIS GROUP!?! AAAAHHHH!!! Gonna be completely gray by the end of this season with the way our backcourt is playing.

Outside of Melvin....man, things are lookin' rough on offense.

JeQuan (25.6 min per game)- turnovers an absolute killer, the worst turnover rate by a VCU point guard since kenpom started keeping that stat.
Doug (18) - 2-22 from the field over VCU's last three games. Shooting 31% on the season.
Jordan (27.3) - 27% 3-point shooter, 35.4% from the field.
Korey - He's been a ok...which is ok...but not when ok is your second best guard.
Johnny - ankle injury has limited his sample size but has an astronomical turnover rate and has shot 11% from the field so far.

VCU's two-point percentage of 43.3% ranks 303rd nationally out of 351 teams and is the worst at VCU since kenpom has been keeping the stat. Sheesh...rough times in the Broad Street backcourt.

https://forums.vcuramnation.com/threads/guard-play.15506/

 

[CuseJacket]

 

[Peacone36]

Holy cow this was a pleasant surprise to wake up to. Went to sleep thinking it couldn't end well with Adam not getting a lot of touches/clean looks and Nick looked a bit lackadaisical along with Johnson basically getting anywhere on the floor he wanted but god dam if I didn't wake up to a win that's going to look good OOC on the resume.

Way to protect that home court men.

 

[up state jacket]

I don't take pride in saying this, but the team look better w/out Jorg being on the court. W/him not available and Coach having to try a new lineup we looked like everyone was on the same page most of the night. I really like putting the ball in Marcus's hands more. Letting him facilitate the offense seemed to work better than anything else we've tried this year. 50 pts in 2nd half.

 

[Connell62]

Definitely encouraged. The thing that mattered most and I saw executed was a plan for the final 4-5 minutes. We upped the aggression on offense and forced the issue unlike what we saw last year. It helps that we have more basketball players capable of scoring, but that's been said before.

One thing I'll offer that may come across as a downer... VCU was frankly not good yesterday offensively. They missed a lot of open shots from the perimeter that could have changed the game before we pulled away. I don't know if last night was the exception or the norm for them this year. Hopefully it's the exception and we'll look back and say we capitalized on the opportunity.

Agree, but I will counter that by saying that in the first half, we also missed a ton of gimmes. We had a number of opportunities to stretch a small lead, but we would miss a putback or layup on the break.

I remember saying to my friend that it felt like we were outplaying in the first 10:00 but I looked up and the score was tied because we kept missing layups.

 

[awbuzz]

Rolled ankle during practice.

While that bites, does make me feel better. Kept thinking during the game, where is he?

 

[Connell62]

I don't take pride in saying this, but the team look better w/out Jorg being on the court. W/him not available and Coach having to try a new lineup we looked like everyone was on the same page most of the night. I really like putting the ball in Marcus's hands more. Letting him facilitate the offense seemed to work better than anything else we've tried this year. 50 pts in 2nd half.

Disagree, I think that we missed Jorgensen quite a bit, especially in the first half. Travis is a very capable PG, and against a team like VCU that plays pressure defense, you need all the ball handlers you can find. According to the piece in the AJC, he has just five turnovers in 136 minutes this season. That is pretty impressive. Not sure why everyone is down on him. Hopefully he is able to play on Saturday. We will need him against the UGA backcourt.

Marcus absolutely played a great game last night, but I thought one of the reasons that we looked so much better in the second half was the play of the bench (Tadric, Q, and J. White). All those guys really played with a lot of confidence and energy. Keep in mind that Marcus was on the bench for a large portion of the second half with foul trouble.

The two trey's by Q were huge and really swung the momentum. Also, I thought that Tadric did a great job of letting the game come to him. He is soooo much better when he decides to get into the lane. When that occurs something good usually happens. Either he got to the line, found open shots for teammates, and created easy put back opportunities. Last night should help his confidence immensely.

 

[awbuzz]

from @CuseJacket "It helps that we have more basketball players capable of scoring..."

Makes a BIG difference on how the game has to be played to give us the best chance to win.

 

[dtm1997]

There may be something to their lack of ability to score this year, particularly from their guards:

https://forums.vcuramnation.com/threads/guard-play.15506/

Interestingly, I don't feel bad for VCU because their fans got a sense of entitlement & ran with it instead of remaining humble & grateful. However, I now hope they start winning games in bunches to help our resume.

 

[dtm1997]

This is gonna be me while I peruse this thread...

https://forums.vcuramnation.com/threads/the-official-beat-gt-in-atl-thread.15480/

 

[up state jacket]

Disagree, I think that we missed Jorgensen quite a bit, especially in the first half. Travis is a very capable PG, and against a team like VCU that plays pressure defense, you need all the ball handlers you can find. According to the piece in the AJC, he has just five turnovers in 136 minutes this season. That is pretty impressive. Not sure why everyone is down on him. Hopefully he is able to play on Saturday. We will need him against the UGA backcourt.

Marcus absolutely played a great game last night, but I thought one of the reasons that we looked so much better in the second half was the play of the bench (Tadric, Q, and J. White). All those guys really played with a lot of confidence and energy. Keep in mind that Marcus was on the bench for a large portion of the second half with foul trouble.

The two trey's by Q were huge and really swung the momentum. Also, I thought that Tadric did a great job of letting the game come to him. He is soooo much better when he decides to get into the lane. When that occurs something good usually happens. Either he got to the line, found open shots for teammates, and created easy put back opportunities. Last night should help his confidence immensely.

The two threes Q hit were huge. They changed they permanently changed the game. Jorg is a liability on d more than offense, but his lack of being a legit scoring threat is too much of a negative to overcome his other skills on the offensive side. The second half is where you saw players getting comfortable in the roles they were being asked to play. Slow Tad down a little he can create havoc for the other team. Get the ball into Adam's hands more he can create a shot for himself or someone else on a dime. We have ball handlers, but the passing was better last night. Not down on the young man, just he hasn't been any where the same player since his knee. Some come back 100% some don't not blaming just observing. He has time to get it together, he's still a step slow.

 

[Techster]

Disagree, I think that we missed Jorgensen quite a bit, especially in the first half. Travis is a very capable PG, and against a team like VCU that plays pressure defense, you need all the ball handlers you can find. According to the piece in the AJC, he has just five turnovers in 136 minutes this season. That is pretty impressive. Not sure why everyone is down on him. Hopefully he is able to play on Saturday. We will need him against the UGA backcourt.

Marcus absolutely played a great game last night, but I thought one of the reasons that we looked so much better in the second half was the play of the bench (Tadric, Q, and J. White). All those guys really played with a lot of confidence and energy. Keep in mind that Marcus was on the bench for a large portion of the second half with foul trouble.

The two trey's by Q were huge and really swung the momentum. Also, I thought that Tadric did a great job of letting the game come to him. He is soooo much better when he decides to get into the lane. When that occurs something good usually happens. Either he got to the line, found open shots for teammates, and created easy put back opportunities. Last night should help his confidence immensely.

I think Jorgy is good at ball handling, but struggles with setting up our big men and is a swinging door on defense. Don't get me started on his shot.

Considering VCU is a decent mid major, I thought we looked really good last night without Jorgy. Not sure where having Jorgy would have improved on our performance last night. It's not like we struggled against VCU's press, and our perimeter defense was one of the better performances of the year for our squad.

Maybe it was just a confluence of a lot of guys having a good day, but I think we looked better than we have overall as a team then we have in a while considering the quality of the opponent. Not saying Jorgy would have made us worse last night, but I don't see where he would have made a double digit win against a quality opponent any better.

 

[alagold]

WOW--it was like a whole different team.Not only won but looked at times like we knew what we were doing in 2nd half.
The stats also looked different, --first--24 of 26 FTs! 92% got to be best of PGs time here, next-the other team actually outrebounded us and we won! the other team were sunk because THEY missed most all their 3s , Heath was a scorer instead of a assts guy, Tadric had 4 ats and didn't jack up a bunch of 3s (but was 1-7), the double /double machine (Mitchell )was back
but unfortunately the TOs still were more than assts
the guys looked like they found their roles--Q broke the game open with 3s, MGH was the MAN

 

[RamblinCharger]

Great team win. Hopefully we can keep it going and win out before conference play begins. If we do that and we win 7-9 games in the ACC we will be in the tourney again, which would be nice

 

[kg01]

Pretty satisfying win. We were clearly the better team and actually rose to the occasion when VCU made a mini-run.

Glad to see us re-focus on the board since that's where we had an advantage. Like others, I liked the look of MGH at the point for a bit. That play where he drove, backed out, hesitated and set up the sweet dime to Mitchell was a thing of beauty.

So glad to see Tadric calm down and actually make some plays.

We gotta work to get Q some more open looks. Love that pure J.

 

[Techster]

After last night's performance, I'd say this team has the highest ceiling of any CBG team. Of course, the real test doesn't start until we begin ACC play, but you have to like what we're showing so far. We're actually playing basketball instead of "WTF!!!" ball.

 

[McCamish Maniacs]

 

[McCamish Maniacs]

 

[jeffgt14]

Definitely encouraged. The thing that mattered most and I saw executed was a plan for the final 4-5 minutes. We upped the aggression on offense and forced the issue unlike what we saw last year. It helps that we have more basketball players capable of scoring, but that's been said before.

One thing I'll offer that may come across as a downer... VCU was frankly not good yesterday offensively. They missed a lot of open shots from the perimeter that could have changed the game before we pulled away. I don't know if last night was the exception or the norm for them this year. Hopefully it's the exception and we'll look back and say we capitalized on the opportunity.

True but we still managed to put up 77 points. Something we couldn't do at all last year. We held plenty of teams to the 60's range and still lost because we couldn't hit 70.