by Magic Bird » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:56 am
12/21: Lafayette (2-6) @ Brown (3-7)
Brown scored the first point of the game with a free throw at 16:48. Both teams missed their first 8 shots combined. We finally hit our first shot at 15:22, draw a foul, and Tyler Stanfield fulfills the three point play. I call a timeout midway through the period when the Bears take double digit lead 8-19. We're doing alright taking care of the ball, but we can't shoot to save our lives (3/14 from the field).
It seems that after every timeout I call we turn the ball over on the ensuing possession. Throughout the rest of the half we finally hit a few shots and creep up on the Bears, narrowing their lead to 4 points. Unfortunately the last couple of minutes saw Brown make most of their shots and we missed most of ours. Brown entered halftime up 36-29. I'm impressed with Starzee Reed, who carried us with 8 points and 3 rebounds while only playing the last five minutes of the half. He's unstoppable tonight, so I'll give him a lot of minutes in the 2nd half.
We play pretty well in the second half, but our shot making doesn't keep up with Brown's. With about 8 minutes left I call a timeout and set up a play for Tyler Stanfield to get a three pointer. I hope something like this may jumpstart our confidence in our shooting. Tyler makes the three, and our shooting improves for the next few minutes. We close the gap to 5 points with 5 minutes on the clock. That's as close as we would come. Tyler Stanfield fouled out with 1:52 left. His last three fouls occurred over just 2 minutes. I thought he would defend more intelligently than that. We lost this one to the Bears 61-69.
Player of the Game: Brown PG Adarrial Carey (14 pts, 4 ast, 5 reb)
Leopards Honorable Mentions: Starzee Reed (12 pts, 6 reb)
12/22: Most of the team, including my assistants, is heading home for the holidays. I'm staying at Lafayette, but I've mailed a few gift wrapped Amazon packages to my folks back home. Any players who want some individual practice sessions with me I am welcome to work with.
I'm still vacillating in games between using the strong defensive settings I favor and having the team play slightly weaker defense with less pressure. I instruct the team to play at whatever level they appear capable of at that moment.
12/25: Yesterday PG Ronald Blanchard gave us his verbal commitment. That's a nice Christmas present for the program. He's a good passer and ball handler, he's pretty athletic, and he can score and shoot. His shooting in particular is sterling. Also he's pretty good defensively. I hope he can play a big role for us next year. He's currently ranked #505 in the nation with an overall player rating of C, but I think he's better than that.
Our last scholarship will go to a center; I don't know who yet. I'm looking at three right now.
My Thoughts About the Team:
-Tyler Stanfield is frustratingly inconsistent. When he plays well, he's our best player. When he doesn't play well, he's more hindrance than help. Marcus Woods is our best consistent player, but he's only consistently good, not great.
-Individually my players are lousy defenders. As a team we demonstrated the capability to defend pretty well for the first few games of the season. Where did that ability disappear to for the last few games?
-Right now the team is not shooting well. Over most of our past several games we've barely scraped over the 40% mark from the field. Against Brown we found a new low: 31.3%. This team can shoot pretty well; I hope they find their shooting touches near the beginning of conference play.
-I'm not too worried about the recent inflation of turnovers. My guys can handle the ball; we've simply played poorly recently.
-I'm also not worried about how many fouls we pick up each game. My adjustments have slightly reduced that problem over the past few games. My players and I manage our fouls adequately. I am concerned about how often we send opponents to the free throw line. It's not a consistent problem, but once every few games our opponent shoots a significantly larger number of free throws than we do. It's significant enough to impact whether we win or lose.
Lafayette Leopards Statistics:
PPG: 1. Marcus Woods - 13.4, 2. Tyler Stanfield - 9.8, 3. Tim Stowers - 8.2, 4. Johnnie Long - 7.0
APG: 1. Francis Cambridge - 3.4, 2. Vegas Johnson - 3.3, 3. Tyler Stanfield - 1.8
RPG: 1. Tim Stowers - 5.8, 2. Marcus Woods - 3.6, T3. Dennis Riley, Starzee Reed - 2.9
BPG: 1. Johnnie Long - 1.0, 2. Dennis Riley - 0.8, 3. Tyler Stanfield - 0.6
SPG: 1. Marcus Woods - 1.4, 2. Tyler Stanfield - 1.2, 3. Jerome Campbell - 1.0
Other Stats:
-Tyler, Tim, Marcus, and Johnnie are all shooting at least 37.1% from 3. No one else is shooting better than 30% from 3. Tim is shooting over 40%, and Tyler is shooting over 50%! I've been asking Tyler to shoot more threes ever since practices began, and he has made slow but steady progress in that area. Vegas, Jerome, Clint, and Francis are pretty good shooters, but Vegas, Francis, and Clint need to quit forcing threes. If they take easier threes more consistently, they can maintain volume and improve their percentages to a respectable level. Jerome doesn't take enough threes, and we're not doing a good job of getting him high quality shot looks. Once he starts taking more threes, I think his percentage will improve as well.
-Vegas is averaging 2.7 TOPG. No one else is averaging more than 1.8 TOPG (Marcus). Vegas must cease playing with reckless abandon when he runs the point.
And now for a few analytics!
-Tyler has a TS% of 66.9% and an EFG% of 67.2%! Those are Stephen Curry-esque figures. Marcus' numbers in those areas are solid, but almost everyone else has terrible TS% and EFG% numbers.
-Starzee has played very well in limited minutes. His per 40 minutes numbers indicate that I need to play him more. I may start him over Shaun Lavin. However, Starzee's numbers may be benefitting from playing with our bench unit most of the time. I will make sure he gets more playing time at the expense of Shaun's.
-Lafayette ranks in the bottom half of Division I in possessions per game. I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed. My players have a propensity to hold on to the ball for too long and not get shots off early in the shot clock.
*Author's Note: The advanced stats STL% and BLK% are 0.0 for all of my players. Is this a bug? I know DDS:CB 2019 is close to release, so this issue probably won't be corrected in my game version. However, it's possible this issue exists in the 2019 version. If any beta testers read this, you may want to examine the upcoming game and observe if this issue persists in it.
Patriot League Standings Entering Conference Play:
Bucknell: 6-3, RPI - .536 (108th nationally)
Lehigh: 6-3, RPI - .523 (123rd)
Loyola-Maryland: 5-4, RPI - .475 (214th)
Holy Cross: 5-5, RPI - .421 (307th)
Colgate: 4-5, RPI - .489 (192nd)
Army: 3-6, RPI - .443 (265th)
American: 3-6, RPI - .380 (337th)
Boston: 2-7, RPI - .469 (223rd)
Lafayette: 2-7, RPI - .357 (343rd)
Navy: 1-8, RPI - .431 (286th)
So we're 2nd to last in overall record and last in RPI. We're in the bottom ten in Division I in RPI in fact. If Texas had been ranked when we faced them, maybe our RPI would be higher. Bucknell beat both Clemson and Boston College on the road. Navy and we are the only teams that haven't won a road game. Rival Lehigh looks pretty good; the freshmen Jerome, Starzee, and Tega Allen aren't yet interested in the rivalry but our upperclassmen are eager to draw some blood. We won't meet Lehigh in battle for another three weeks.
Notre Dame (11-1) is at the top of the AP poll and has been ranked #1 since the second week. Preseason #1 Florida (10-1) is now #2. Texas (7-2) still hasn't reentered the rankings. One big surprise is that Long Beach State is undefeated (13-0) and ranked #15. In addition to Long Beach St., #3 Kentucky (9-0), #5 Alabama (12-0), #21 Fresno State (11-0), and Presbyterian (9-0) are undefeated. Rider (0-9) and Furman (0-9) have yet to win a game.
12/28: Lafayette (2-7, 0-0) @ Loyola-Maryland (5-4, 0-0)
Both teams started out hot, and it was a back and forth game until we turned the ball over a few times. I called a timeout 5 minutes into the game and addressed the issue with the team, but they continued to be careless. A few minutes later we were down 14-27 with 7 turnovers, so I called another timeout and chewed out the team. We played better from there, ending the half down 44-52. The Greyhounds went 21/21 at the line. This is one of those games where I do worry about how often we foul. We committed 13 fouls in the half. I'm culpable for allowing this to proceed throughout the half without making any significant adjustments.
We are ice cold from the field in the 2nd half. I told us to sag a little more on defense but we still foul too much. At least we do a great job of taking care of the ball. With 3 minutes left I order us to press and stifle the Greyhounds on defense. We've spread out our fouls and we've started making shots. It's now or never if we want to comeback. We close the deficit to 7 points, but never get closer than that. The team was down 20 midway through the half. Loyola-Maryland wins 80-90.
I was pleased because we handled the ball fairly well this game and tonight's defense resembled our early season defense. However, I'm upset with how I didn't adjust our defense earlier in the first half, which allowed the Greyhounds to go to the line 31 times. I think we could have won if we had shot better at the beginning of the second half and if I had been more reactive in the first half.
Player of the Game: Loyola-Maryland C Justin Shepard (24 pts, 1 ast, 7 reb, 1 stl)
Leopards Honorable Mentions: Marcus Woods (15 pts, 2 ast, 3 reb, 1 stl, but 3 tov, 5/16 fgm/a), Clint English (13 pts, 1 stl, 0 tov, 3/4 3pm/a, 5/7 fgm/a, 13 min),
Shaun Lavin (7 pts, 3 reb, 0 tov in only a few minutes in the 1st half) -- He played several more minutes in the 2nd but didn't do anything.
12/31: Lafayette (2-8, 0-1) vs Boston (2-8, 0-1)
16:41 left in the period and we already have 5 fouls. I made some adjustments but they haven't had much effect yet. At 11:52 we have 8 fouls, they only have 1. The team is shooting moderately well and hasn't turned it over yet. Good! Lafayette leads 16-11. Boston already has used a pair of timeouts. For once we run away with a first half, Tyler Stanfield nails a dagger of a three at the buzzer, and the Leopards enter the break leading 45-22! I tell my team not to get too comfortable or the Terriers could do to us what we did to Bryant to start the season. Lafayette stole the ball 7 times while turning the ball only twice in the half.
Terriers C Marcus Carter is an incredible rebounder. He knows exactly where a missed shot will fly to; his box-outs and positioning are outstanding. Four minutes into the second period he has 4 offensive rebounds and 9 rebounds total. We are still leading 54-29. At 13:07 we've had a series of miscues so I call a timeout. With shocked faces my players listen to me rant at them about how we're turning it over and fouling and being lazy when we run plays and... As I send them back out onto the court I let slip a slight smirk. I hope no one noticed. The guys play with great hustle and effort after that. My tactic worked. We build the lead to 64-31 at 7:55. I'm starving for a win! With 2 and a half minutes left and a 72-46 lead (we had a brief but costly stretch of bad play) I put the walk-ons in. Final score: Lafayette wins 74-50!
Player of the Game: Tyler Stanfield (16 pts, 3 ast, 4 reb, 2 blk, 2 stl)
Honorable Mentions: Francis Cambridge (7 pts, 5 ast, 2 reb), Vegas Johnson (8 pts, 3 ast, 2 reb, 1 stl),
Johnnie Long (5 pts, 2 ast, 3 reb, 2 blk, 3 stl), Dennis Riley (8 pts, 2 ast, 3 reb, 4 blk, 2 stl),
Jerome Campbell nabbed 6 rebounds and Starzee Reed grabbed 8 boards.
The whole team is savoring this victory. Let's get some more!
Last edited by
Magic Bird on Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:35 am, edited 1 time in total.