I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[CoachC]

The debacle from Saturday behind us, practice has been spirited the last couple of days. I expect the kids to come out tonight with a chip on their shoulder. I can only hope they put their energy to good use.

Winthrop has a faithful following despite a poor season, and Winthrop Coliseum is about half full at 3000 or so. The biggest crowd we've played in front of all season. They were picked 5th in the conference pre-season, but thus far things aren't looking any better for them than for us. After an 0-5 start they picked up a win over Texas A&M which they thought would be a turning point for them. Hasn't worked out that way.

At 9:05 both Brown and Williams have 2 personals each. It's been rare for our big guys to get into foul trouble. Porter also has two. Donald Moore gets a rare opportunity to play, and buy Sheals some time. We are getting homered again, but thus far I've not said a word to the officials. I know they are just waiting to T me up after our last game. Doesn't take long for Moore to pick up 2 fouls. Sheals is going to have to play the rest of the half, or until he gets in foul trouble too, which is likely, or until he goes into cardiac arrest which is also likely. I'm still smiling at the officials. Moore picks up number 3 at 3:56. No matter, he's just a 5 foul body at this point. Fouls have evened up a bit, it's just that most of ours have been on our post players. Brian Kerr makes only his 3rd appearance of the season, and I'm still smiling.

Neither team plays much defense in the first half. In our case because we aren't allowed to, and in their case because they can't. If their plan is simply to outscore us, it's doomed to fail. We limp to halftime with no one other than Moore with more than 3 fouls. Woods is on fire with 21 first half points and they have no idea of any way to stop him. We shoot 52% for the half, they shoot 44%. Not a lot of rebounds in the first half but we lead there 15-11, 8-5. We do turn it over 8 times in the first half, but we turn them over 7. At the half we lead 43-36. Hopefully with some of our big men able to play a couple of minutes in the 2nd half we can do a better job on the defensive boards.

They foolishly do try to outscore us in the 2nd half, to their total doom. With our bigs back in the 2nd half we take control of the boards and the game. For the first time this season we are able to start emptying the bench in the final 4 minutes.

The ineptitude of our deep bench made some of the final stats similar to a sideview mirror... objects may look closer than they appear. Rest assured though this was a good old fashioned butt-whipping. These guys took the Campbell game fiasco and came out MAD.

Reb: 39-26, 20-7 on the offensive glass
FG: 44.6 - 44.9 (was more like 52-42 before we emptied the bench)
A/T (21-11, 13-16)

Woods was our only player in double figures with a career game (32 pts, 4 asts, 5 reb, 2st, 2 blks), but don't think for a moment that the rest of the team stood around and watched him. They just realized he was unstoppable and gave him all the support he needed. Lemeke had 8 asts, 3 sts and just 3 turnovers. Josh Brown had 7 pts, 8 rebs, 2 asts, and a steal. Sheals had 5 pts, 8 rebs. Bonney 7 pts, 4 rebs. Porter 8 pts off the bench. West 6 pts, 4 rebs. And Donald Moore donated his body to science in the first half with 4 fouls in 6 minutes at a time when we simply needed a body. Great team effort, great team win....We need to stay mad. Only Williams had a subpar game.

Final: G-W 81 Winthrop 61, and to be honest it wasn't that close.

[Wayne23]

It's starting to build!

[PointGuard]

5 wins! I said to myself, where did all these wins come from? Had to go back and count...yes, 5!

Looks like there's a shark fin circling around the courts nowadays.

[Wayne23]

Cue the music!

[CoachC]

Lol! Maybe Heart's Barracuda would be better though lol

[CoachC]

Strange that 3 of our 5 wins have come on the road. I don't think we like our fans. All 8 of them.

[CoachC]

With our schools just 20 miles apart and both with Bulldogs as a mascot, this should be a natural rivalry. First though, someone in either town will have to care. Still enough fans come over to Asheville to give us our biggest home crowd of the season.

Their guard oriented team has lost 4 straight after winning their first 2 conference games. We'll see if we can keep them rolling backwards.

Hot shooting (56%) coupled with strong defense gives us a 40-30 lead at the half. Woods led as usual with 17 first half points. Bonney re-injured himself. He tried to go but couldn't. With Bonney out we were getting hurt a bit on the boards at the defensive end.

Of course, the refs can't have that so start playing their whistle songs at one end of the court. Williams picks up his 3rd at 14:43. With Bonney not able to go, that will really challenge our defensive rebounding.

Fouls pretty much evened out after that, and they never were closer than 5. We were able to pull away down the stretch, and for the first time we could actually hear the crowd. Woods received a well-deserved standing ovation when we emptied the bench in the last couple of minutes. He was unstoppable again with 31 pts, 7 rebs 2 asts and 2 steals. It was another fine team effort at both ends of the floor, shooting 51.7 for the game while holding them to 40%. Gilchrist, now back in the rotation had his best performance of the season at the point with 4 pts, 5 asts and just 1 turnover in 13 minutes, and most everyone else gave strong contributions as well.

For the first time this season we've won two straight, both handily. Our guys are on cloud 9.

Final: 90-74

[CoachC]

Jan 22 Bonney's knee responded well to hydrotherapy after the game, and he should be ready to go for our next one if he doesn't re-injure it. High Point picked up a huge road win in their showdown with Campbell last night and are now 7-0 with a 2 game lead in the standings. We are tied with Liberty for 5th.

Not surprisingly Rob Woods is awarded player of the week for 2nd time this year after two incredible performances.

[Wayne23]

Two straight! Go Bulldogs!

[CoachC]

Trying to make it 3 in a row tonight against a struggling VMI team. Close to 2000 in attendance again tonight, many of them wanting a chance to see Rob Woods who had a nice write-up in the student newspaper. Other than a suprising win over Clemson in December, the Keydets haven't had much to cheer about. Their lone conference win was at home over Winthrop, and since then have been blown out in their last 3, twice at home.

After a chilly, chilly start we start warming up from the field in the last 10 minutes of the half, doing it largely without Woods who picked up his 3rd foul and had just 3 points in 10 minutes. To win this one we are going to have to continue to get solid efforts from everyone else.

At the half we lead 32-28.

At the 11:43 they have pulled within 2 and I take a chance and bring back Woods, hoping he can get hot and avoid his 4th foul

At the 3:44 mark we trail by 4. Poor shooting and even poorer rebounding has been killing us this game.

at :56 they take a 5 point lead and things are looking grim. Lemeke hits a pair of free throws at :45. We need a stop. They miss the front end of a 1 and bonus at their end. We take our last time out at :18. Woods fires up a 3 and misses. They get a layup in transition before we can foul and that is that.

A very disappointing loss. Woods has a horrible game, foul trouble or not, and just scores 5 pts in 21 minutes going 2 for 10 from the field. Our defense was good enough but we shoot just 38.9 % for the game and get lambasted on the boards at both ends. (25-42, 2-8). We win the turnover battle 10-17, with 10 steals but it's not enough to overcome our other short-comings. Porter had 12 pts 7 reb, Williams 10, Lemeke 6 pts, 4 asts, 5 rebs and a block. But we had no one in this game we could go to consistently for points, and we missed several easy baskets on breakaways following steals.

A horrible night for us against a team we should have been able to beat at home. Someone really needed to pick up the slack for Woodsie in this one and no one did.

Final: 57-62