Villanova game thread

Quote from: KAHNIGHT on January 02, 2013, 11:44:45 PM

That was tough one to stomach remind me of the knick lost to the Kings Friday. Battle back only to lose by a few dumb plays and the home court calls was blatant! I am calling it now we beat Cincinnati. Call your bookies!

We are not beating Cinci in Cinci two years in a row

Actually, we've already done that.  Saturday would be 3 years in a row, if we did it.

Refs were way worse than Lavin.  Turning point to me was the 3 on 1 break with a chance to go up 5 or 6 and instead of attacking the rim, someone kicked it to D'Angelo and he fired a 3 with Jim Burr right in his face!!  Get a dunk there and I think we hang on to win in regulation!!

Turning point to me was immediately following D'lo's insane momentum building screw the fast break I'm on fire pullup 3 puts us up 3 with 1:21 left in the first half.  Point guard populare Jamal Branch endears himself to the Johnny faithful by commiting the most ridiculous of boneheaded intentional fouls sparking an immediate 8 point run for the then reeling Wildcats. 

Haven't seen momentum change like that on a Johnny T since Singleton.

Unbelieveable!

Quote from: upstate32 on January 02, 2013, 10:40:24 PM

Refs were way worse than Lavin.  Turning point to me was the 3 on 1 break with a chance to go up 5 or 6 and instead of attacking the rim, someone kicked it to D'Angelo and he fired a 3 with Jim Burr right in his face!!  Get a dunk there and I think we hang on to win in regulation!!

Turning point to me was immediately following D'lo's insane momentum building screw the fast break I'm on fire pullup 3 puts us up 3 with 1:21 left in the first half.  Point guard populare Jamal Branch endears himself to the Johnny faithful by commiting the most ridiculous of boneheaded intentional fouls sparking an immediate 8 point run for the then reeling Wildcats. 

Haven't seen momentum change like that on a Johnny T since Singleton.

Unbelieveable!

Turning point, officiating wise, was second or third possession of the game, when Branch got smacked in the face, and they called it a common foul.  Remember, the fact that the defender was going for the ball should make no difference. It's anything excessive, and I personally thought that qualified as a flagrent 1.  Don't condone what Branch did later, but I felt his frustration.

Also, Obekpa really had 6 blocks.  The refs called 2 of them for fouls, even though they were clean.

I also want to ask the refs this:  How the heck could we be committing fouls every time Nova drove it inside, with the ole style defense we were playing?  That's pretty damn near impossible to do.

Some thoughts .. (Just realized how long this post is, I apologize ahead of time  )
1) The officiating wasn't as atrocious as everyone is making it out to be; it leaned in Novas favor, but we got bailed out on a few calls as well.   The calls that bothered me most were on the steal at half court in the 2nd half.. I thought we picked it up cleanly, and there should have been a loose ball foul against Nova where Dom was elbowed.

2) the out of bounds play to Greene didn't bother me, bc from what I saw the play was to pick for Phil and have him drive right, Dangelo was in the right corner and his defender would've come to help.. Leading to option 1 a shot/drive by Harrison.  Option 2 of course is Phil continues that drive and uses his good midrange for a floater or draws a foul.  Obviously that didn't happen.  They trapped Phil off the pick, and that's our weakness bc teams are free to do that when the guy setting the pick (Amir, Dom, Chris, Jakarr) can be left open bc they have no shot. 
The second guessing I have is that the play should've been run with Branch who it appears can split defenders easier, and drives tight around a screen.  But either way I didn't hate it.

3) Also didn't care much about Branch's tech.  Nova player flopped, they had arms locked from boxing out and Jamal wasn't even looking at the guy when he pushed him off him.  Bad play by Branch, but it wasn't bad sportsmanship or anything like that.  I had no problem w/ coach leaving him in.

4) What I did have a problem with was our stupid turnovers.  We made some terrible decisions w the ball, and we also threw terrible passes in situations were we were actually making a good decision and just couldn't execute.
Branch has Phil open on the wing in transition in the first half and he throws it out of bounds,
Obekpa has a wide open Felix on a back door cut and throws it past him.
Dangelo drives the lane and throws a pass into traffic to Amir when Phil was open in the corner.
I could go on.  We pressed all game, it makes sense we forced nova into 18 turnovers, what was our excuse for having so many though? 

To me we lost this game bc of poor defensive rebounding and unforced turnovers. 
My criticism for coach would be why he didn't sub more early 2nd half.  We went with Amir, Dom, Phil Dangelo and Obekpa for way too long in that stretch.  Guys got worn out, and picked up fouls.  5 mins into the 2nd I wanted to see Felix and Branch, or even Jones to give guys a breather.
And yes, I do think fatigue played a factor.  They are young, and athletic, but we press following every made basket, and literally push the ball up court as fast as possible when we get a defensive reb.  That's a tiring style.  So I would've liked to keep guys fresh in the 2nd half, but overall I'm actually not that disappointed in either the team or staff. 

 I see noticeable improvement from the Ashville, Fordham, St Francis, and USF games where we had no ball movement, and poor defensive effort at times.  Effort was there tonite defensively, and we moved the ball; we just threw it away too often.    Sorry for such a long post.. Lot on m mind following this one.

This teams needs Sanchez and Gift just to keep up w the BE. If Nova dunked on us at will, what is Cinci gonna do? Management of the roster is worse than a Norm Roberts team. There I said it.

Sure would have loved to see marco get some burn with branch tonight. The one shot marco got, phil gave him the ball  about 3 seconds too late. Marco missed badly.

Sure would have loved to see marco get some burn with branch tonight. The one shot marco got, phil gave him the ball  about 3 seconds too late. Marco missed badly.

Marco is so slow on defense that he just can't be out there. They blew right by him as if he wasn't even there. What we really need is for Branch to be the point guard we've been lacking. The defense I don't know if they'll fix it. We just don't care to do it. It is so uncharactaristic of a St.John's team.

We play like Depaul. Like a we don't want to get hurt.

Desco, Nova had a 42-20 Free throw advantage.  More than double, which is a huge advantage for any team, especially in an OT game on the road.

We shot 47.1% from the field and 50% from 3 which are both very good considering those criticizing the offense.  Seems pretty obvious that we had a few stumbles during the game that we couldn't recover from when the opposing team gets 30 points at the line. 

Jays move to have Jayvon P bring up the ball with 4.5 seconds to go in the game was rather odd.  Ryan was open but they looked for Jayvon.

With a comment like this you show a complete lack of understanding of the game and you were definitely not paying attention to the announcers.

 - SJU played great inbounds defense on this play and Pinkston flashed from just inside half court, like he is supposed to, to insure the ball got inbounded with less than 5 seconds left.
 - The annoucers specifically praised the play after it happened because you can't give up a 5 sec inbounds violation under your own basket with a few seconds left. Glad you were paying attention to the game though.

There is plenty to pick apart in this game but this game is not on Coach Lavin. I do think his in game coaching leaves some to be desired but he can't control effort on the defensive end and he can't control shot selection by some players.

When you let up 80+ points in regulation Big East play, you don't deserve to win the game

A few things that stuck out -
- someone mentioned Branch's T being a big moment - just not true, esepcially since we had a 3pt lead with under ywo minutes to play.
- Pinkston was a beast in the paint and we had no answer for him at all. This type of player will cause us problems all season.
- The refs did suck and a 2/1 FT attempt advantage is just out of control. I don't think the refs cost us the game but we did get screwed a little bit.
 - Phil Greene is a role player at best and is just not a starter in the Big East, he just takes too many bad shots and any game that sees him with 16 FGAs is probably not going to be a W for us.
 - LOVE Amir Garrett, he has the heart of a lion, but he is just not strong enough to defend anyone in the block and to put that on him is not fair to the player. You are putting the kid in a position to fail.
- Anyone who think JaKarr Sampson is remotely ready for the NBA better rethink his position.

We are a .500 team at best this year and there is not a single game remaining on schedule that can be taken for granted as a win.

There is plenty to pick apart in this game but this game is not on Coach Lavin. I do think his in game coaching leaves some to be desired but he can't control effort on the defensive end and he can't control shot selection by some players.

When you let up 80+ points in regulation Big East play, you don't deserve to win the game

A few things that stuck out -
- someone mentioned Branch's T being a big moment - just not true, esepcially since we had a 3pt lead with under ywo minutes to play.
- Pinkston was a beast in the paint and we had no answer for him at all. This type of player will cause us problems all season.
- The refs did suck and a 2/1 FT attempt advantage is just out of control. I don't think the refs cost us the game but we did get screwed a little bit.
 - Phil Greene is a role player at best and is just not a starter in the Big East, he just takes too many bad shots and any game that sees him with 16 FGAs is probably not going to be a W for us.
 - LOVE Amir Garrett, he has the heart of a lion, but he is just not strong enough to defend anyone in the block and to put that on him is not fair to the player. You are putting the kid in a position to fail.
- Anyone who think JaKarr Sampson is remotely ready for the NBA better rethink his position.

We are a .500 team at best this year and there is not a single game remaining on schedule that can be taken for granted as a win.

Agree completely! Keep thinking of the three point lead, momentum and Garrett foul on a three. Killed us.

We beat Cinci.

Look at Lav's track record at UCLA.

Loses games he's not suppose to, then wins games he's not suppose to --- often on the road.

We beat Cinci.

Look at Lav's track record at UCLA.

Loses games he's not suppose to, then wins games he's not suppose to --- often on the road.

We have yet to win anything worth mentioning this season. No different than last year.

free throw adv:  we fouled jump shooters multiple times and never took the ball to the paint to draw a foul. 

Turnovers:  Pointer should not dribble the ball more than 3 times because he is turned over too often. 

Flag Foul:  no brainer call, too obvious of a push. 

Non-Flag Foul (Sutten):  Homer call or a miss-call by the ref when originally called.  That was a football block out.  Our forwards should take notice on how to be aggressive on a def block out. 

Sampson: how about some high post action......invisible all night. 

Horrible weave offense sets\patterns not getting it done.  How about cutting with a purpose, even if 99 times out of 100 you dont get the ball.....

DLo, III, Amir played good to great games. 

We beat Cinci.

Look at Lav's track record at UCLA.

Loses games he's not suppose to, then wins games he's not suppose to --- often on the road.

Cincinnati is going to attack St. John's in the paint all game long

Without GG and Sanchez, the team just won't have an answer for it

Can't Gene Keady pull Steve aside and suggest a better plan? We look as poorly coached as we did 4 years ago. I'm disgusted, and thoroughly embarrassed.

Can't Gene Keady pull Steve aside and suggest a better plan? We look as poorly coached as we did 4 years ago. I'm disgusted, and thoroughly embarrassed.

Disgusted is one thing.. but  embarressed?

Bottom line is thus: this team looks so much better on O wit the ball in Jamal's hands and Phil playin off.

Sure Jamal made a few bad mistakes but bein that this is his 2nd game back after a year off, I was pleased.

The ball movement, while not great, is much better wit Jamal on the court. His head is up and he's pushing it constantly.

Meanwhiles, Phil leads the BE in DPG (dribbles per game).

Bottom line is thus: this team looks so much better on O wit the ball in Jamal's hands and Phil playin off.

Sure Jamal made a few bad mistakes but bein that this is his 2nd game back after a year off, I was pleased.

The ball movement, while not great, is much better wit Jamal on the court. His head is up and he's pushing it constantly.

Meanwhiles, Phil leads the BE in DPG (dribbles per game).

+1 Invest in Branch and it will pay dividends over next several years. Despite some early errors, he can penetrate, beat man off dribble and create. We are not going anywhere this year, so invest in future with potentially solid PG, a glaring need for so long.

What's sad is branch played horribly and most of us including myself wish he played more