I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[Wayne23]

Hey, a win is a win. So at least there's SOME good news.

[CoachC]

Past time for us to get our first conference road win against a weak team. Their 2 conferences wins though have been at home against Longwood and Liberty, however, so we don't get rewarded with a W just by not getting lost on our way to the court.

That was a little more like it. Again played only 7 players. Only Felts picked up his 2nd. We outshoot them 54.3 to 34.6, turn them over 11 times on 9 steals, and play almost even on the boards. The rebounding still should be better, but I'm happy with the first half effort. At intermission we lead 44-26.

We don't shoot as well in the 2nd half but we did wind up out-rebounding them in the end and were never seriously threatened although they cut the lead near the end. We didn't bring in anyone other than the basic 7 til there was 1:30 to go.

Battle had 10pts, 5 asts
Felts led with 20, 3 asts, 2 rebs, 2 stls and played most of the 2nd half with 4 fouls for a big pat on the back.
Jeffers added 17, 4 rebs and 4stls
Moore did his usual consistent thing that the stats sheet doesn't really show, but he did have 5 rebs.
O'Conner looked a bit lost again on offense with just 3 pts, and 6 rebs.

Off the bench, Brown showed great senior leadership with his best game of the season 16 pts, 11 rebs, in 21 minutes and may start the next one while "Zilla tries to remember his name.

Sanders again didn't do a lot in his 28 minutes 4 pts, 2 rebs, 2 stls. It may be time to give someone else a shot at that 7 spot in the rotation, although no one is really begging for it. Sanders did play pretty good man to man defense though, so I'll give him that.

Not happy that we sort of dogged it in the 2nd half, but we needed a road win and got it without ever being in trouble after the first 7 minutes of the game.

Final:
G-W 72 Radford 61

[CoachC]

Jan 22: with last night's win we move into a 3 way tie for 3rd a game behind Liberty and 2 behind the Blue Hose.

Jermaine Felts wins conference player of the week and it was well-deserved.

[Wayne23]

Your guys could be playing better but they ARE winning!

[CoachC]

With 4 charter buses and lots more students and community driving the 45 minutes to Asheville, they easilly have their largest crowd of the season, just under 3000 at game time. We may actually have more fans here. We need to sweep this road trip and get back into the race. The faux Bulldogs haven't been all that good this season, but they've won all 3 of their conference home games and beat Illinois here earlier this season. Again we don't get a W just for coming out of the locker room. Brown will start tonight, and hopefully O'Conner returns to form coming in off the bench. Sanders needs to do more tonight as well or someone else will get a shot. Playing only 7 players is hard enough without 2 of them sleeping through the game.

A different kind of first half for us in this one. Our defense wasn't very good allowing them to shoot 52.4 from the field. We also turned the ball over too many times (10). We owned the boards this time though (16-11,10-1) and have a 1 point lead at halftime. We need to get the rest of our game together in the 2nd half. At the half it's 34-33.

Poor defense, poor officiating, a good comeback down by 11 with 7 minutes to go and we still wind up losing to an inferior team. This season is going belly up fast. Too many turnovers (15) give us just a +1 on TO differential which will usually lose for us. Not enough stops, too many trips to the line for them, and a good rebounding effort (32-38,16-6) was not enough to overcome it.

Battle had 17 pts, 2 asts, 6 rebs, and a stl.
Felts had 5 asts, 8 rebs, but scored just 4 pts and turned the ball over a ridiculous 9 times.
Jeffers had 19 pts, 4 rebs, and a stl
Moore 8 pts, 5 rebs, 3 stls.
Brown added 7
O'Conner's effort off the bench was much better but couldn';t finish (3/7 from the field) and was allowed to do nothing on defense fouling out.
Under threat of losing minutes Sanders played a very good all around game with 8pts, 4asts, 4 rebs, 4 stls.

We underachieve again. This isn't the reason I came back for one more season,

Final:
G-W 71 UNCA 72

[CoachC]

With the loss we fall into a 3 way tie for 5th and will likely be sitting around in march watching other people play.

[PointGuard]

Tough loss. Inconsistent teams are so frustrating...and I know well the feeling. But I like the challenge of trying to find the key to unlocking that inconsistency.

[Wayne23]

Take two and hit to right?

[CoachC]

Maybe we need to bunt more.

[PointGuard]

Maybe just tip the refs better.