When your freshmen play as well as your juniors, it often brings out the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY

Helllooooo AU Hoops blogosphere! Well, last night was the night we were all waiting for, the beginning of the 2009-10 AU basketball season. It was a doozy of a game, and in case you weren't following the LiveTweeting, we lost. At the buzzer. 49-47. If you want a recap of the game, you can go see our friends at Athletics as it's pointless for us to write a redundant recap. Similarly, the box score is here. I think (read: hope) you readers come here for our charming analysis and obscure references, and so I'm going to offer you the former in this edition of the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY.

THE GOOD

- The defense was solid last night. At one point in the first half we held Randolph-Macon scoreless for 13:44. We forced 18 turnovers. Had 10 steals. The benefit of having all these guards? Quick hands. We picked Randolph-Macon's pockets often times before they even realized what happened.

- The freshmen. Danny Munoz and Blake Jolivette (20 minutes each) both had pretty solid games. Daniel Fisher had a few more growing pains in his 17 minutes, but he still picked up three rebounds.

- Stephen Lumpkins. Looked dominant last night. 18 points and 6 rebounds in 28 minutes. Could see he was getting fired up after a couple of tough put-backs. He looks like a guy who has done a lot of maturing in the off-season, which is good, because we're going to put the team on his back this year.

- Simon McCormack. As far as I'm concerned he made the best case out of any of the guards for being the starting PG last night. He only got half the time that Blake and Danny did, but he looked more polished than either. Not giving up on plays, hustling like crazy, distributing (and taking care of) the ball. I think Jeff Jones would be remiss not to give him more play time on Sunday against Catholic.

- We got to see 10 players last night, nine of them for 10 minutes or more. Jeff Jones is using pre-season the right way, to try different combinations to see what works and what doesn't. The fact that a lot of it didn't last night brings us to...

THE BAD

- This section really could begin and end with two words: ball handling. 25 turnovers (eight of them from Nick Hendra, who also had a more than respectable 12 points and 7 rebounds, but 8 TOs negates that a little bit, as do the 6 TOs that Lumpkins gave away). We gave up 14 steals. The dribbling was sloppy. The passing was sloppy (we've got to stick with chest passes, these tortoise-esque bounce passes aren't going to cut it). The rebounding was sloppy. Just really ugly overall.

- We played this poorly against a Division 3 school that, to be frank, didn't look particularly good last night either. The overall quality of play was atrocious. It looked like Keystone Kops out there for most of the game. We've got to get our act together or any D1 school is going to make mincemeat of us.

- The 3 point shooting. 1-9 total. The 1, to be fair, was a beauty from Steve Luptak, from about 8 ft behind NBA range with 3 on the shot clock, but the rest of it was horrendous, which leads me to...

THE UGLY

The way we lost. Getting the ball back with 31.4 seconds left. I'm not sure what the set play was intended to do, but I know what ended up happening was Hendra tossing up an ugly three pointer, we fumbled the rebound, and Randolph-Macon's Eric Pugh streaked up the floor to put in the layup as time expired. Like I mentioned, we were 1-9 from 3, and our shot, for the win, was an unbalanced three pointer that Garrison Carr would've had trouble with?



Listen, I could be harder on this team. There's plenty more Bad and Ugly to write. Let me be fair though, this is the first pre-season game, and quite frankly, this writer expected us to lose this game. RMC is a very experienced and good team, D3 or no D3. The fact that the Eagles never got into a rhythm last night is because JJ was constantly cycling players in and out to see who could do what. When we have a firmer line-up down, the chemistry will come. There's a lot of bright spots from last night. The freshmen looked reliable. Riley and Lumpkins showed glimpses of a lot of promise as an inside duo. The defense was very good. There's a lot of room for improvement though, too. I hope you'll be there with me on Sunday as we watch the season continue to unfold against Catholic.

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!