MBB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[mybleedinghands]

Obviously Averett won. We were up two with 26 seconds left in the game, we were applying pressure on the person on the right wing I believe, he attempted a pass and it got deflected, Cory McDaniel was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and to catch the deflection, and he had enough time to hoist up a 30-foot 3 pointer that our defense didnt have enough time to recover and contest.  Sucks to lose that way, but the good thing about that is that if not for that lucky hsot we would have been one of the few to win @ Averett, which is really hard to do, and we executed oth offensively and defensively. If we keep playing this way we'll get wins for sure. In a way I'm glad we kinda lost this way before the conference slate starts so we'll kinda know what it takes down the stretch in an extremely close game. From Game 1 to Yesterday we've improved drastically and I'm hoping this game will give us even more motivation to go out and play just as well or even better than last night.

[ladyeagle]

i know im a little late but......

Saturday, November 26
E&H, EMU, LC, John Carroll, RC

Sunday, November 27
BC, H-SC

Monday, November 28
Salisbury, R-MC

[3sdown]

Steely-

Please see my picks in bold...Missed Tuesday, but I will attempt to catch-up in your system, especially if you throw me a couple of bonus games! 

Saturday, November 26
E&H vs. Thomas More
EMU vs. Greensboro
LC at LaGrange
W&L vs. John Carroll
RC vs. NC Wesleyan

Sunday, November 27
BC vs. Greensboro
H-SC at Ferrum

Monday, November 28
VWC at Salisbury
R-MC at Lincoln

Scottie-

Looks like it is going to be a rough season again for LC.  RMC spanks Averett at Lebanon Valley.  Then LC loses to Averett...Sounds like Steelyglen is going to be right again on the predictions for LC's season.  How many losing ODAC seasons will this be in a row?  Just to refresh my memory...

[mybleedinghands]

Scottie-

Looks like it is going to be a rough season again for LC. RMC spanks Averett at Lebanon Valley. Then LC loses to Averett...Sounds like Steelyglen is going to be right again on the predictions for LC's season. How many losing ODAC seasons will this be in a row? Just to refresh my memory...

3sdown,
As we know, the first 3 games aren't always indicative of the success or lack of for the entire season. EMU won 8 of their first 12, then went 4-9. Bridgewater won 8 of their first 9 games last year, then went 9-8 the rest of the year. Guilford won 8 of their first 12, then went 7-8. HSC started 6-7, then went 11-3. Macon started 3-5 going into winter break, then they went, 14-5. Virginia Wesleyan started 11-0, then they proceeded to lose 4 of their next 5 games. A 3 game losing streak to start the season doesn't say a whole lot about how the rest of the season will go. If it did, then VWC, Birdgewater, EMU, and Guilford should ahve been the top 4 teams with HSC and Macon near the bottom of the tournament field. So if the first 3 games of the season are indicative of the entire season, then we might as well just quit and not play any more games! I mean, whats the point now that 0-3 means an overall bad season??

You mention the Averett vs. Macon game. Sure AU got spanked. What do you expect when you dont play defense? Their defense was basically non-existent against Macon. It's not that difficut for a top 25 team to win by 25 when the other team doesnt play any defense. Its not that difficult for any D3 team to beat another D3 team when one team plays zero defense. Averett played pretty good defense last night, if they had played that good of defense against Macon it would hve been a close game. Also, look at how Averett did at home last year. They were great on their home court last year, going 9-2 at home! It won't be any different this year. THey return a lot of the key players from last year and added some good freshmen to make the team even better than last year's squad. Averett is capabe of winning 17-20 games this year. They were picked to finish third in the USA South preseason poll and received one first place vote. They are going to be a really tough team to beat this year. Averett was 0-25 just 2 years ago and improved to 13-14 last year.  A lot of that can be attributed to their coach, Jimmy Allen. He's a very good coach that can recruit well and really knows the game and how to coach. Averett is a team that is capable of being a very good team, and others who know a hell of a lot more about basketball have said the same thing. Sure, our first game was horrific. Our second game was better, but not good by most standards. Our game last night was a pretty well played game overall. We did good offensively against good defensive pressure, and we played pretty good defense, ony allowing them to have 46 attempts and make only 20 shots. THey scored 80 against Macon, we only gave up 24 points in the second half. The game last night was a ewell played game by both teams. We went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the USA South tha is capable of big things, losing by one on a lucky shot, I consider that to be a pretty damn well played game.

As a matter of fact, to prove how confident I am in how the season will go, If we don't equal or better our win total from last year, I will resign as manager of the team, uness we have a significant injury, like Andy Albright or Pete Manos are out for 5 games or more.

[narch]

You mention the Averett vs. Macon game. Sure AU got spanked. What do you expect when you dont play defense? Their defense was basically non-existent against Macon.

scottie - with all due respect, how do you KNOW averett didn't play any defense against rmc? were you in attendance at the game?

if so, i defer to your assesment, but having seen averett play NUMEROUS times over the last 8-10 years, i would have said you were correct prior to last season (and the current coaching staff at au) - averett teams NEVER played defense against ANYBODY under the previous coaching staff - the biggest difference for au last year vs. the previous years was the staff got their guys to hustle and play strong defense, every night

could it be that au played with the same type of defensive intensity against rmc that they employed against lc, but rmc was just that much better?

i'm with you on the 0-3 start thing, though...especially since my monarchs could easily be staring a 1-3 start (or worse) squarely down the throat - teams CAN rebound from tough starts, but if you don't have a winning tradition/mentality, it's difficult

[mybleedinghands]

You mention the Averett vs. Macon game. Sure AU got spanked. What do you expect when you dont play defense? Their defense was basically non-existent against Macon.

scottie - with all due respect, how do you KNOW averett didn't play any defense against rmc? were you in attendance at the game?

if so, i defer to your assesment, but having seen averett play NUMEROUS times over the last 8-10 years, i would have said you were correct prior to last season (and the current coaching staff at au) - averett teams NEVER played defense against ANYBODY under the previous coaching staff - the biggest difference for au last year vs. the previous years was the staff got their guys to hustle and play strong defense, every night

could it be that au played with the same type of defensive intensity against rmc that they employed against lc, but rmc was just that much better?

i'm with you on the 0-3 start thing, though...especially since my monarchs could easily be staring a 1-3 start (or worse) squarely down the throat - teams CAN rebound from tough starts, but if you don't have a winning tradition/mentality, it's difficult

I saw parts of the game film. The defense was down right atrocious. Anytime a team scores 63 points in a half and arent playing the style of E&H or Grinnell, the defense is atrocious, especially when they shoot 72.7% from the field.

HSC and RMC never shot that well against us 2 or 3 years ago when we were worse than the current Averett team and RMC and HSC were better than the current Macon team!

[3sdown]

Scottie-

I know that LC's season has started similar over the recent and not so recent past.  In addition, I know the end result of LC's season in recent and not so recent years.  Thus, I can put 2 and 2 together and get 4!  Therefore, I can put together a similar start for LC with a similar ending!!!!!  Losing Season!  Sorry, start planning for 06-07!

And thanks for all of the statistics related to the other teams.  It is great to have all of that...I will record it on a scrap sheet of paper and immediately toss it in the closest garbage can.       

[mybleedinghands]

3sdown,

How often do teams overcome bad starts? Last time I checked, tons of teams do it every year. Assuming an 0-3 start is representative of an entire season is simply fallacious and ignorant. Now if you want to keep arguing that a bad start automatically equals a bad season, then you can go ahead with making yourself look stupid because I've already proven that teams are capable of overcomig bad starts, which you apparently don't understand the simple concept.

By the way, all teams with a losing history that are on the up and up and have acheived winning records have overcome past experiences of losing seasons. No team that has been in a losing funk for years and has turned into a winning team hasn't overcome such experiences.

[steelyglen]

ladyeagle...its never too late! Welcome aboard!

3sdown...not even December and you've struck a nerve!
nice to see you back in the pick'ems...AND in mid-season form!

scottie...there's ALWAYS a reason, eh? and what does an injury to a player have to do with your resigning (or not) as a manager? I'm not encouraging you to resign...thought it was a silly bet to begin with...just curious though!

3sdown,

How often do teams overcome bad starts? Last time I checked, tons of teams do it every year. Assuming an 0-3 start is representative of an entire season is simply fallacious and ignorant. Now if you want to keep arguing that a bad start automatically equals a bad season, then you can go ahead with making yourself look stupid because I've already proven that teams are capable of overcomig bad starts, which you apparently don't understand the simple concept.

By the way, all teams with a losing history that are on the up and up and have acheived winning records have overcome past experiences of losing seasons. No team that has been in a losing funk for years and has turned into a winning team hasn't overcome such experiences.

[steelyglen]

"By the way, all teams with a losing history that are on the up and up and have acheived winning records have overcome past experiences of losing seasons. No team that has been in a losing funk for years and has turned into a winning team hasn't overcome such experiences. "

Excuse me...huh?

[mybleedinghands]

"By the way, all teams with a losing history that are on the up and up and have acheived winning records have overcome past experiences of losing seasons. No team that has been in a losing funk for years and has turned into a winning team hasn't overcome such experiences. "

Excuse me...huh?

lets say a team was 5-20 five consecutive seasons, the next they were 9-16, the next season they were 12-13, then the next season they finally finish with a winning record of 14-11. This team had a losing history, then they started to become an up and up them rising out of horribleness and overcame their losing history to become a winner.  basically bad teams that turn good overcome bad history. That's the stiuation LC is in. they have had a bad history full of losing and we have shown the past 2 years that we are a team on the up and up. Eventually LC will break the losing tradition and acheive a winning record. hope that helped explain better, sorry for the confusion!

[mybleedinghands]

scottie...there's ALWAYS a reason, eh? and what does an injury to a player have to do with your resigning (or not) as a manager? I'm not encouraging you to resign...thought it was a silly bet to begin with...just curious though!

Significant injuries genereally have a significant impact on a season. I towuld be hard for any team to overcome an injury to one of their star players! Just imagine how big of an impact it would have been had Ricky Easterling gone down with a torn ACL during the middle of the season. No offense to the talent BC had last year, but it would have been very difficult for the Eagles to replace a player that could go oot and score 20 points on  any given night! I wouldnt want the fate of my career with the basketball team to rely on a major injury! Silly bet I agree, but it wasn't a real bet, i was using it as an example to show how confident I am in the team! I mean, there were no mentions of moon pies of rc colas, therefore it cant be a real bet! 

[jeloesel]

This team had a losing history, then they started to become an up and up them rising out of horribleness and overcame their losing history to become a winner.  basically bad teams that turn good overcome bad history. That's the stiuation LC is in.

Thanks for clearing that up, Scottie.

[3sdown]

Scottie-

The point is that LC started out on a losing note and they will end on a losing note...I think my point is way to simple for you to get!!!!   (And it is part joke...But it is great that you get so wound up!)

[steelyglen]

" I wouldnt want the fate of my career with the basketball team to rely on a major injury!"

scottie ...still don't see the correlation between an injured player and the team Manager's resignation. How does say Pete Manos' injury affect you? You're not a trainer...you're the Team Manager. My injury never affected the fate of any Team Manager we ever had! Not belittling your/their resposibilities, but I guess I'm just not very smart...