owlfan2272

Rotnei Clarke 15 of Butler's 19 points

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

steve19981

Consistency has been a serious problem for Soko. You saw him on one of his worst games in non conference play judging by the stats. If he learns to bring it every night, he's a solid all league player. The kid oozes talent but lacks focus. Ferry's system and a year to mature should suit him.

owlfan2272

Illinois shooting the lights out this tournament.

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

owlfan2272

Back comes Butler!

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

owlfan2272

8-0 run for Illinois

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

bprichard

Off Topic: Any VCU fans know what the hell is going on with Old Dominion? 1-4 with home losses to Holy Cross, Texas-San Antonio and today VMI. That does not sound like the Old Dominion I know at all.

Free Quebec

Very happy for the Dukes. I have to admit I didn't see it coming. I don't know how YSU played so well the first week and then so badly this whole week. (Not just tonight, it was three straight clinkers).

GW's game against Notre Dame showed a bit of the future and too much of the past. The team got good shots for the first 7 minutes but couldn't hit em. Them they panicked and let the game get away from them. However they battled tough and never let it get too out of hand.

macDonald definitely looked like he belonged. He will be one of the best PGs in the league before too long.

Larsen is big and strong and got position but couldn't hit the bunnies against the big ND players. He'll learn and have some big games against A10 teams. Garino was quiet but is already close to a lock down defender.

Savage and Paris gave decent minutes. They will be solid A10 players soon enough (savage very soon though he needs a jump shot)

And the last newcomer Armwood was always around the ball. He took too many shots, mostly bad ones, but when David Pellom comes back (our leading returning scorer and rebounded) - and if he comes back from injury at the same level - that is going to be a matchup nightmare for a lot of teams. It's two long quick bouncy guys.

As for the returnees, same stuff different day. Kromah underachieved and was slow to help on D. Dwayne smith was good on offense but was too small to guard their bigs and got abused badly inside. Bynes played within himself but the offense ground to a halt when he was in. And Mikic just can't do enough (or get open enough in a Lonergan offense that doesn't really allow a shooter to stand and wait without moving much).

Bottom line: despite the loss, GW fans should be feeling good about the influx of talent and where the team is headed.

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owlfan2272

78-61 Illinois over Butler. Still a very good tournament though for the Bulldogs.

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Temple Owls have won a lot.

ItsyBitsySpiderII

Old Dominion has put all of their emphasis into their budding football program as they look to quickly make the transition from fcs to fbs. I sense an apathy for ODU basketball that will only get worse with time.

ItsyBitsySpiderII

And the demise of the CAA in basketball has brought a smile and some tears. while I miss the classic regional rivalries, I don't miss it's small-minded commissioner Tom Yeager, who because of his petulance cost Richmond a probable NCAA bid in 2001 by banning us from the caa tourney and indirectly screwed our football team this year by banning odu from winning the caa title in football, eliminating an at large that would have been ours.

DistrictBaller

It's been a long time in the making. ODU was back to back CAA champs in 2010 and 2011 with top-30 RPIs and Blaine Taylor had been shopping himself around a great deal at the time hoping to parlay his rebuilding job at ODU into a better job. There were no takers although he was everywhere at the Final Four selling himself in 2011.

He was a bit neglectful of the future of the program during those years on the recruiting trail as well as managing his own program and has seen the fruits of that over the last season and the beginning of this one. He's had several players come in since then that have either flunked out or can't cut it and moved on, very atypical of Blaine Taylor recruits and indicative of quick-fix recruiting that has backfired on him.

The truth is that he never expected to still be at Old Dominion, and he didn't plan for that possibility, so it's biting him in the ass now. They are very young and very bad right now, worse than they have been in a very long time.

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"We will wreak havoc on our opponent's psyche and plan of attack."
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duq81

You can't judge a player off of one game. Plus, he was playing in a system that wasn't well suited for his abilities.

DistrictBaller

We'll see. He's an undersized forward in this league who didn't show much at all when I saw him.

__________________
"We will wreak havoc on our opponent's psyche and plan of attack."
- VCU Head Coach Shaka Smart

butlerway

Butler looked exhausted. Defensive rotations were a step slow and so many shots were left very short. I guess that should be expected after 2 tough games. Plus Illinois looked really, really good. No way that is only the 9th best team in the Big 10.

WH

The difference between Duquesne and GW is illustrative.

The Dukes have a handful of guys who know how to shoot or score and the coach employs a system to utilize those strengths.

GW is bigger, more athletic and has more experienced players, but no one on the team is a very good scorer - yet. Nor does the coach employ a system designed to take full advantage of the team's athleticism to generate points.

A big advantage for Duquesne is that Ron Everhart recruited the kind of offensive-minded players that Jim Ferry likes. So Ferry can put his system in place and still find good use for the returning players on the roster while he adds his own recruits. It helps that at least two Ferry recruits who signed in the spring appear to be keepers.

Mike Lonergan runs a very different system that the uptempo, pressing style of Karl Hobbs. As a result, he has not found it easy to redeploy the players signed by Hobbs. And aside from David Pellom, none of the remaining Hobbs recruits have panned out. They either cannot shoot or they cannot defend and are one dimensional.

The best of the lot should have been Lasan Kromah. He looked like a future all-conference player as a freshman. Yet he's never been the same since the foot injury that cost him his sophomore season.

Still too soon to tell which team will end up better this year, though. Seems the determining factor will be whose first-year players perform better over the course of an entire season.