Josh has/had every intention of running a liveblog tonight. He's having some technical difficulty. If his Internet cooperates, he'll try to get a liveblog up, but the possibility exists it may not happen. Sorry for the letdown folks!
You can follow live stats of the game here: http://livestats.prestosports.com/santaclara/mbkb/?e=of8gym7zbzu5kvkr
Sorry I can't run it tonight folks!
Looks like we're up!
Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!
AU up by 14 at the half. We are making them look pretty bad. They were not prepared to play us. Vlad is having a dream game. Everyone for AU playing very well. No hiccups. Total confidence. SO far, so great.
ReplyDeleteAU's most complete game in a year and a half. Everyone contributed well, and we never faltered. I'm looking forward to the PL season. It's rare enough when AU can take command of a game, but to hold leads throughout for two games in a row, that's something to cherish.
ReplyDeleteAU--Cable Car Classic Champions! I'll take that kind of alliteration any day.
ReplyDeleteVlad was great tonight, but the big story is how Luptak and Munoz have played the last two games. Two games, 78 minutes, ONE turnover. This is the whole season, folks. Every one of our fears, and they were real, were about our subpar point guard play so far this year. Believe me, I understood the talk about Nick playing the point, because we were wanting at that position. But we weren't/aren't going to go anywhere by jerryrigging someone into that position; somebody needed to step up.
Steve and Danny did that these last two nights. Luptak was fine; even drove the lane for a bucket late! But Munoz had the key stretch in the game, after UD cut the 14-point lead in half in about eight minutes to start the second half. Munoz drove twice for layups, then got a defensive board off a long UD miss and caught Simon cheating for the easy fastbreak layup. All in about 60 seconds. Slammed the door in their face. Finished with 11 points and should have had 15 or more but missed four of six 'throws in the last minute. (Game was in hand by then).
When we don't turn the ball over, we get the ball to the right people, like Nick last night and Vlad tonight. Down the road it might be Lump or Troy. The point is, make sure the guy who's feeling it gets the rock, and they can't do that when we're dribbling the ball off our feet or throwing it away. Strong point guard play keeps that from happening.
Last year, I seem to recall lamentations that JJ didn't develop any point guards. Any time your points go 78 minutes with one turnover, I think that's pretty good. The fact that it's Steve and Danny who did that is amazing. We'll see you all at Bender on Monday. I think the guys deserve a big crowd after being on the road for a month, and playing so well the last two nights.
Incredibly sorry about the liveblog everyone!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree about being more than satisfied - nay, impressed - with the point guard play in Santa Clara.
In 78 minutes, the Danny and Steve combo platter put up 20 points, 12 assists, 4 rebounds, 1 steal....with only a single turnover. Considering that we're more than solid at every other position, with solid help coming off the bench, I'll take it!!
And yes, that's an A:TO ratio of 6.0 in the Cable Car Classic at the AU point.
ReplyDeleteAU embarrassed Fordham and Delaware. We took them apart. It didn't take long to do it, plus we maintained our advantage throughout, which is a rarity at AU. I can think of so many games at AU where we were the better team, showed it, then let the other team get even anyway.
ReplyDeleteDelaware was afraid to double team Vlad or Lump. Their center, an excellent ahtlete and proven shot blocker, ran out of ideas on how to stop us down low.
The teams in the PL, lacking quality center play, will not let Vlad catch the ball in the post. So our next challenge will be to get Vlad and Lump the ball down low with players fronting them. I hope we can do this without relying on the 3.
I think we will see zone or a guard dropping down low like a one-man zone. A lot. Aside from shooting 3s, the way to break a zone is with quick reversal of the ball or possibly a zone-buster offense, like a 1-4, trying to isolate a guard at the foul line and then drawing extra attention away from the post.
And since we have guys like Brewer and Hinkle, couldn't we, pretty please, see going over the top of a zone for an alley-oop?
Anyway, I believe that the teams in the PL will adopt a different strategy than Fordham or Delaware. Both of those teams tried to out-talent us, and they got clobbered. So now is the time to prepare for those other defenses. PL teams will try to suffocate the post. If they can do nothing else, they will be tenacious.
I also just realized that prior to the UD game, we were 112 in the RPI, and Delaware was 99. So we just beat a top-100 RPI team, which is pretty good for us, so presumably we'll rise again. Keep in mind at this time last year, even post-Vlad, were pretty close to 330 in the RPI.
ReplyDeleteWOW - Josh that is a great tidbit!
ReplyDeleteI can't comment on other PL teams, but I can guarantee that Bucknell will play 99% man-to-man vs AU. Cohen did a very good job guarding him last year, and will likely guard him much of the time.
ReplyDeleteBTW, three of the five pre-season All-PL players (not counting Vlad) are centers (Muscala, Keister, Mintz), so I'm not sure it's accurate to say the league lacks quality center play. Only two teams (Army, Lehigh) lack a decent player in the 6'10" range.
We are 110 in the Sagarin ratings (by way of comparison, Bucknell is 108). But are you sure Delaware was top 100? They were below us before the game last night in the Sagarin and now they're 143; I doubt they'd drop that far with just one game. Unfortunately I think our RPI will slip from here on out no matter what we do b/c other than Bucknell, the PL is so poor this year that by only playing PL teams, our rankings will actually suffer. We've risen in RPI this month by playing four teams in the top 40 (Pitt, WVU, Florida, Northwestern), even though we lost all of those games.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the PL per Sagarin:
Lehigh 173
Army 214
Lafayette 262
HC 297
Navy 313
Colgate 342
Wow, that's bad. Which is why, even if we win the conference and tournament, we'd likely be in the play-in games and be a 16 seed if we won. The conference is just terrible this year, with next to no good wins anywhere.
Sagarin Ratings do not count for anything, though they are a lot of fun to look at, and are probably as accurate as any system could be. Here is a completely updated RPI: AU is 97th.
ReplyDeletehttp://realtimerpi.com/rpi_Men.html
NJJ - I was using realtimeRPI that was accurate as of about two hours prior to the UD game. To my knowledge the RPI and Sagarin are two different formulas, and while neither is "officially" used by the NCAA selection committee when it comes to tournament time, somehow the RPI ratings always seem to correlate quite well. Accident? Who knows.
ReplyDeleteRPI was created by the NCAA and is the only one used by the NCAA tournament committee. It is "official". However because it only looks at wins and losses - while ignoring margins of victory and defeat - it is not nearly as accurate as Sagarin (or Pomeroy). It is particularly unreliable prior to Mid-January.
ReplyDeleteOne problem with the RPI is that winning a game against a mediocre team who has a good record in a bad league is much better than a one-point loss to Duke or Kentucky. In Sagarin, the one point loss would be far better.
I stand corrected. Thanks!
ReplyDelete