LIU Game Impressions

I wasn't going to do this but apparently you all were watching on gamecast or grainy CSTV, at least those who have posted so far.


BY FAR sloppiest game we have played...that said, Wright getting hurt (yes HURT we are sju...step back from the ledge....   ) and Mase being off with the J...and yes Wright being off before he got hurt, def hurt us.

Geno: Worst game so far. At times played out of control and sloppy, chucked 3s at inappropriate teams. But played GREAT TENACIOUS D, at least. Also was the only player I've ever seen in recent memory have a sign made for him by a fan "Cap'n Geno (but the o was a heart)." OK it was my friend and she hearts Geno, you could tell the other guard was razzin' him a lil for it haha.

Wright: Shaky beginning, hurt, but hit big 3's and a solid 2 with a limp. Larry is the man.

DJ: I can't say enough about this kid. He rebounds and boxes out. He drives to the hope better than anyone on our team. He finishes (usually). He makes good passes. He does everything. It's early, but I'd say by the end of the year we're all going to be saying he was way ahead of where Mase was after 1 year.

Justin Burrell: Absolute beast. He is going after boards HARD. He has such a quick first step, and was using it greatly. Finished with 19 points, and a ton of boards though I dont know how many exactly. Sometimes he dribbles into double teams. My biggest problem, is the kid's head is not always there. Some BS calls got to him again. Also when he missed the front end of a 1 and 1 late, the next 1 and 1 he got he missed way short. Norm and Q need to make sure this kid is FOCUSED at all times. I kind of worry about how Cameron will affect him when we go down there, but thats a long ways a way (on the other hand I have no doubt DJ and Paris will be as unaffected as any freshmen can be).

Dele: Marillac should be nostradamus with this one. 3 minutes on the dot, first foul. He doesn't control his body on defense very well. But he is a beast on the boards. Nothing new.

Paris: Pushes the ball great, made some ill advised passes on the break but he was at least trying to make things happen. He finishes as well as anyone we've had at St. John's. At one point a guy jumped in front of him on the break and he smoothly flew under the basket and put it in for the reverse. Anyone calling this kid Ced is way wrong. Although he did not hit a J this time, his shots were all right around the rim and much better looking.

Boothe: Tenacious D, a few nice moves in the lane for buckets, some ill advised passes --- looked a little too much like Geno at points out of control a few times.

TJ: Kid is usesless right now. That said he's playing with a considerable limp. In fact, every time someone is subbed out, he is the FIRST one to jump up to congratulate even with the limp. He has the heart of a champion, too bad that doesnt translate into talent.

Mase: Ugh. Going down hurt. Bad. I just hope he can be back for Hawaii. His J was way off, but he passed well, was hitting the boards decently, and flew in for a nice dunk and a huge put back (the one he hurt is ankle on). No signs of the injury before he went down. Don't know if he wasnt comfortable driving because of the ankle or because he doesnt like driving in general...its too bad if the latter is the case because with his stronger body and good mid range game and finishing ability, he should be driving aggressively.

On another note, 1 ref in particular was absolutely horrendous. HORRENDOUS. Called multiple BS fouls against us and hardly called anythign against LIU. In my entire life I have never wondered if a ref was on the take or biased as much as this ref tonight. He was that bad. Luckily the other 2 refs I think started realizing how bad he was and took charge a little for us.


Sloppy sloppy game, but we had to expect this could potentially happen with such a freshmen laden team. The difference between this year and years past is, we scraped away with a victory....and a double digit victory at that.


On to Miami.

Thanks, Kid.

I agree with most of your analysis.  I thought Geno played better than you said.  You omitted Evans.  Good.  There's nothing much (positive) to say.

At the end of the day, I think we'll all say that Kennedy was the most pleasant "surprise" this season.  People thought he would be good.  Few, if any, thought he'd be this good.  It's early.  The competition has been weak.  But he's a pleasure to watch and he's quickly becoming my favorite Johnny.  He had a ton of rebounds, a few steals, a block or two...all to go along with his double digit point total.  His defense was solid.  He's effective both on the break, in transition, and even in the half court set.  Had Mase not blocked his layup attempt and had he hit one or two of his three's, his game tonight would have been (nearly) flawless.

I should note...we would have won this game by 25 if we shot even 20% from 3-point land.  By my count, we went 1-15 or so from behind the arc (again, just approximating).  It was closer than it should have been only b/c we had our worst shooting performance of the year.  I don't expect that to continue.  We may not shoot like the FDU game, but we ought not to shoot as horrendously as we did this evening.

Agreed alleyoops....Larry hit 2 3's I believe so 2 for something, but it was a little made to a lot taken...

We were truly awful shooting tonight, if Burrell didn't stage a mini takeover inside we may have lost...
Does anyone know the severity of Mase's injury? I couldn't tell if he was grabbing his knee or ankle, but obviously we saw that he was really struggling to put weight on it. I particularly noted him dejectedly throwing the towel as he left the court, which said to me that it was a really bad, season-threatening injury (though of course I'm praying I'm wrong).
When/how did Wright get hurt? He looked fine to me, but it would explain why he didn't get back in until 12:53 of the second half which really had me confused...
On that note, I was upset with the substitution patterns, though I recognize Norm didn't have a full deck to deal with tonight so I can give him a pass. However, as raw as Evans has been thus far, he has to be a better option than Tomas on one leg. TJ could barely move around the court and was thus caught out of position a lot. If this is a lingering problem, they really need to work on Coker to keep him out of foul trouble b/c we will need a second post presence in the Big East.
I was prepared to say midway through the second half that I'd be happiest with a main 5 of Geno and Larry in the backcourt, Mase and DJ up front and Burrell playing as a smallish center. Though DJ is undersized for the PF role I was envisioning here, he is a tenacious rebounder which leads me to believe he could get it done. However, I fear this is a moot point with what looked like a bad injury to Mase.

Lastly, thank you to JJ for scouting out the last piece of pizza for me tonight lol came through in the clutch when my stomach was about to give out. Thanks, JJ!

i think justin had 12 boards

and i wouldnt worry about him in cameron

the kid rises to his competition and surroundings and he will prob have the best game of his life when we go down to duke

btw he reinjured his ankle and could be out until big east play

burrell played a great game. regarding his attitude i dont think theres much to worry about. only thing is, some ass in the section next to the student section was really riding him and i think it started getting his head. didnt affect his game much obviously as he had a double double. but he did say something back to the guy along the lines of what do u want me to do.

someone getting to his head? just blaze played in is8 so carnesecca arena shudve been nothing compared to the fine stylings of pete edwards 

Well everyone can agree this was our worst game yet but we still got the W at the end of the day. Baskets weren't falling for us tonight. We went 0-10 from 3 in the first half, looked lost against the man to man. In the beginning there was so much confusion in the half court game on where to go / what to do on offense. This made me upset but I'm glad this problem happened now and not against Miami. Defense saved the day for us once again as we really did damage off turnovers. I have a lot to say so I'll just break it down in the +/-'s

Justin Burrell
+ He is really hungry for getting those boards and he is not going up and under as much but rather dunking the ball
- He is so lackadaisical at times. He got burned defensively one time by not even turning around to see the ball as the PG got in for an easy layup through the whole team. He often plays to the crowd which is a fine line between fan favorite and disaster. He seemed nervous on the line down the stretch too(by nervous I mean pulling the string on his shot, not a normal follow through imagine playing with a yo-yo...he was overthinking)

Geno
+/- Well we didn't see games 1,2,3 Geno but we didn't see 2004,05,06 Geno either. He did force the ball with that one cross court pass to Larry in the first half which was 1 of his 2 turnovers. Larry was open but that is way too far of a pass to make without someone getting a hand on it. On the good note this was 1 of his 2 turnovers and we can all live with 2 turnovers for a bad game. He forced some shots which were long threes but it seems that when the shot clock is winding down and we have nothing Geno is the guys that is forced to force the shot up. Some would say he played great D while I would say he had great steals. He got beat by his man a few times and tried to make up for it by trying to swat the shot from behind while personally I would like Geno to do a better job of keeping his man in front of him. Geno is so strong though and he ripped the ball out of guys hands at quite a few opportune times.

Dele Coker
He has to do a better job, yes. I thought however 2 out of his 4 fouls were skeptical calls but the other 2 were just unacceptable. Dele needs to learn the game more as the game is moving faster than Dele right now. I think with experience things will slow down for him but right now he is just too slow to get to where he needs to be and is caught in the air more times than not. However I think his offensive game is a bit underrated(don't over analyze this sentence).

Paris Horne
-5 turnovers YIKES. Didn't look good shooting again but we need him to become a shooter. My belief is that if you are hesitant shooting the ball you won't be a good shooter and you need your players to have the confidence shooting the ball and right now I'm unsure if Paris has it or not. He looks like he 2nd guesses himself mid move a lot which is a cause for some of his TO's sometimes and the lack of touch on his J at times as well. Missed 2 chippees tonight too
+ He is our best on ball defender though and maybe runs the floor better than anyone too.

Malik Boothe
+To some this might come surprising but I was most impressed with Malik Boothe tonight than any of his past games. I thought he did a very excellent job at handling the press as he was very patient, calm, and composed. I am also starting to see what posters have said about him playing uptempo he is very effective out in the open court.
-He sometimes gets screwed when going into the lane. He does a good job of hanging in the air and waiting for his defender to come down but if the defender doesn't jump with him he gets caught and exposed which makes it look like a bad decision on Malik's part.

MVP

X-Man....DJ Kennedy. I wish Theo was at this game because DJ put on quite the display with his handle. The kid showed great control of his body driving to the lane and using hesitation moves and changing of speeds to do just what he had to do. He has really shown a great knack for being around the ball whether it be cutting off the passing lane to intercept a ball(huge in the first half he didn't let one pass get made to his man) or whether he is around the ball after a missed shot on both the offensive and defensive ends. He showed hit a big three and looks very confident shooting the ball, hell he just looks confident everywhere and I love it. He isn't afraid of anyone and that is something this team has lacked in the past half of this decade.

thats enough for now I can't keep my eyes open any longer.... tomorrow I'll get into this more. Check out Balzo's Breakdown

Some posters on the other boards have been talking about Justin Burrell's attitude, from the lackadaisical (sp?) to the talking back.  Any impressions on this?

JJ,

Gotta disagree with you about Boothe big time.  Thought he did a terrible job on the press.  Within the span of a minute his "patience" as you call it, almost cost 2 10 second violations.  One was stolen by them, and another we got baield out when they fouled us right at 10 secs.  He did look patient, but looked like he had no concern for the 10 second clock and did not handle the press well at all IMO.  That's when they put Geno back in, and the second Geno was back in they stopped pressing.  That told me something.  And it's not cuz they were giving up, certainly not, as they were fouling and calling timeouts til 30 secs left.

JJ, my friend at the game who has been to all the other SJU games this season did call me and tell me that DJ looked good driving off the dribble a few times. 

I listened to the game and from what I was hearing Malik got burned a few times playing man to man defense.  Very surprising because, if this is true, it would be his second game where he has been burned off the dribble.  #22 on FDU burned him a number of times the other night.  Wondering whats going on with that.

i think malik might be playing too tight and not giving himself enough room to recover when a move is made

shouldnt be a big deal he should do well on sunday

Burrell = BEAST... 'nuff said.

Wright - started off slow but warmed up in the second half. Kid is a "special" talent imo. His jumper is a thing of beauty & he is ALOT more smooth/confidant with the ball in his hands this year.

DJ - what can u say about this kid. He is a SERIOUS baller & does a little bit of everything.

Lawrence - Had an off night. But still took care of the ball & led the team to victory. He better find his shot foir the Miami game though or we could be in trouble.

Horne - Not his best game either. But u have to love the ENERGY, intensity & defense he brings off the bench.

Jas - played alright despite the injury. Good to see him FINALLY shoot the ball as well. Unfortunately u could see he is thinking too much before he shoots it.

Coker - Had a couple nice moves in the post but missed the shot both times. He was also tagged with a couple BULLSH*T fouls. We should see more of him this sunday against Miami. They are not that big but King & Graham are both 6'8-6'9 and like to bang. Should be an interesting match-up imo.

Boothe - Love when this kid comes into the game. Sure he makes some DUMB/FRESHMEN mistakes now... but by mid-season i have a feeling he is going to be much better player. We shall see.

what did everyone think about the Jungle this past game? It's hard for me to gauge but I think there were more people in the student section did we sound any louder?

I thought it was larger and louder.  Keep up the good work.  Great to see so many undergrad students at the game!