Our proclivity for finding guards with lower body injuries is prolific- Gertrude, JAR, Bliss, and McCorkle
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Even going back to Malcolm, though he got through them his last 3 years
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F**k.
I’m going to be pissed if we lose Bliss and Gertude this off-season having never seen their potential.
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I think it’s possible maybe even likely Neptune gets fired if we beat them on Friday. Who knows how much they will fight for him but I hate having to face them with their backs against the wall (granted you could probably say the same thing about them heading into the St. Joes game).
Nova clearly has talent issues. They’re not a deep team at all. We might have the same issues, tough to tell. If Tony was coaching I would feel pretty confident that this would be a game we should win. Based on that, this should be a good test for Ron.
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Firing mid season is pretty rare in college hoops.
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Definitely a back against the wall game for them, tho I doubt firing is possible this early (MD and Cincy still to come, plus BE play).
Kenpom has Nova favored by 4
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Nova also has the benefit of being a bit more battle tested this early in the season than we are, having played four games vs our two, and having played two mid-tier-solid opponents (KenPom 158 Columbia and KP 105 St Joe’s, the latter in an unfriendly gym) whereas both our opponents were KP 300+. Yes they’ve lost the two games they’ve played against non-cupcakes, but at least they’ve tested themselves against a non-MEAC/CAA opponent. Best we can say is we got blasted in secret scrimmages against VCU and G’Town a few weeks ago.
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What is the foot issue, exactly, if HIPA hippos won’t eat you for saying?
Edited: “trample”, they’re vegetarians!
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Majestic Mapp
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I appreciate this attention to detail. 
Yeah idk why we’ve only played 2 games. Our schedule seems odd. We will have only played 3 games in the first 15 days of the season.
And your point still is a relevant one but I don’t pay too much attention to the early season analytical rankings for the low major schools. There is just so much possibility for variance in the data (how the hell does KenPom know what a Campbell team with a brand new roster will look like?). Directionally it should be correct but it’s probably hard to differentiate a top 200 team like Columbia from a top 275ish team like Campbell should be. Columbia jumped 50 spots by beating a Nova team that appears to be massively overrated (they were 20th preseason). The very bottom of D1 (aka MEAC caliber schools) sure, we know they’ll be at the bottom regardless but I don’t think we’ll know much about the other low-mid majors for a while.
Our schedule is doing us no favors this year that’s for sure. Same with football.
New look roster needing time to gel so we set up a schedule that could have us 2-3 to start the year, with our “tune ups” being 300+ KP teams. They’re certainly not easing us into the meat of the non conference schedule.
Villanova shifted away from their big lineup for most of the game vs St. Joseph’s for the first time. Playing Dixon alongside a center hasn’t gone well for them, shocker. They only did it for 17 minutes vs St. Joes. 34.26, and 40 minutes in the previous games.
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I want them to go small. Mostly because I want to see Blake guarding him. Not that I don’t think Saunders can handle the assignment, but I worry about him getting in foul trouble like he did against Campbell.
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Seems like their best rotation plan right now is to play Dixon, Longino*, Poplar, and Brickus for as close to 40 minutes as they can manage, and then throw everyone else in a hat for the fifth spot and hope it works out. It was Perkins in their first couple of games, but Kris Parker got the call for the last 10 mins against St Joes.
*Side note: Longino has been really bad for them, seems like he should be a better shooter and then you see he’s at 28.5% from 3 for his career.
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We got Cofie instead of him. Good trade.
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Nova fans are really trashing Dixon (and really the whole team’s defense. Makes sense given they gave up 20 assists yesterday, 13 of them to one dude.
If we can pass well as we have thus far, especially big to big, we could get some easy ones.
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Yeah but we are going to get both Hodge and Abraham in 2025 too as redshirt freshmen lol.
Sorta like how we got Hunter Key and Hauser all as 2016 wing forwards. Time is a flat circle.
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Am genuinely interested in why you keep pushing for Abraham. To me he’s at best a really solid glue guy, which we already have in droves on this roster.
I might be crazy but feel like we can do better.
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