I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[CoachC]

Our last meeting with the Camels still sticks in my craw. 2 of the clowns from that game are "working" this game as well. Not sure if the league is testing them or me. The 3rd official is one I respect and is crew chief. Hopefully he'll keep his dodo partners in check in this one. I have the blanket handy, just in case. After robbing us at our place, karma has sent the Camels on a downward spiral, having lost 7 of their last 9.

Williams is dressed but his foot is still tender. Not sure how much he'll be able to play. Bonney, West , or Moore need to step up. As we take the floor I'm greeted by a long round of boos. Screw them.

By the 2nd media time out we've turned the ball over 8 times and have gotten off just 5 shots. The dodos are letting them climb all over our backs going to the boards, but at the moment I'm more perturbed with my team than the officials. Out of the time out, I challenge Brown to get more aggressive. He misses a short jumper, gets his own board, puts it up again, misses, goes and gets it again and gets fouled on his 3rd attempt. At least someone is listening to me. 4 minutes later we are at 11 turnovers and have still only gotten 10 shots off and we are falling further and further behind. Most of the turnovers have been unforced and there is no excuse for it. Feeley immediately throws the ball away. He's sitting for the rest of the half. Anyone that commits an unforced turnover the rest of the half is sitting. I may not have any players left by halftime. Sheals drops the ball out of bounds. He sits. Gilchrist throws it 3 feet over the head of Evans. He sits.

17 turnovers and no rebounding = 20 point deficit at halftime 23-43.

I tell the team at halftime there is no sense coaching players who aren't here to win. They are on their own. Woods has 6 pts and 3 steals. Brown has 3 rebs and a blocked shot. Nobody else has done anything that doesn't add up to a negative. They can figure this out on their own and make a run early, or I'll be coaching the end of the bench the rest of the game.

Woods gets called for a block at 18:42. The under official saw nothing. The out official makes the phantom call. His 3rd. He'll stay in. Evans throws the ball away at 17:52. He's done for the night. Woods picks up his 4th at 17:12 trying to defend a layup after Lemeke throws away the inbounds pass. Thanks Q. Woods will stay in. Porter travels on the drive at 15:18. His night is done. At the first media timeout we are outshooting them 54% to 45% and trail by 18.

A few people off the bench play intelligiently enough in garbage time to cut the final deficit to 12, but it was never that close. I congratulate the guys on on shooting 49% from the field, playing good defense and still getting blown out. I tell them that I'll have to ask Bobby Randall to be sure, but I think it might be a team record of some kind. Woods and Brown had good games despite the fact that Woods only had 12 shots in the game because we couldn't hold on to the ball long enough to get it into his hands. Woods also gets credit for playing the last 17 minutes of the game with 4 fouls. West and Bonney were big contributors off the bench. West in particular took our poor play personally and had one of his finest games. In the last 6 minutes of the game he stole the ball for breakaway jams 3 straight possessions. Gilchrist was our only point guard who had a clue tonight, and also played well.

We outrebound them, outshoot them, beat them in points in the paint and still lose by 12. 26 turnovers. Unacceptable.

Final: GW 67 Campbell 79

[CoachC]

We are in a 4 way tie for 5th heading into the final game of the regular season. Tie breakers would at the moment make us the number 7 seed, which is where we were picked preseason. A win on Senior Night could put as high as the 5 seed depending on how things shake down elsewhere.

[CoachC]

Senior night for Lemeke, Williams, and West. All 3 will start if Williams foot has healed. I don't dwell on the Campbell game in practice. If they can't figure out how they lost the game, they'd never understand me explaining it to them either. Instead the focus has been upbeat...sending our seniors out with a win, getting to double digit wins for the first time in 5 years, and finishing .500 in the conference.

We beat the Eagles handily at their place on a night when Woods was all-world and we went to the boards with abandon.

Woods picks up his 2nd personal at 13:55. Time for someone to step up offensively. We flounder offensively without Woods in the game, with everyone standing around on offense looking for him and everyone ignoring Brown in the posts calling for the ball. At 6;14 we gamble and put Woods back in the game for a couple of minutes. We'll go 1-3-1 to try to protect him.

With Woods getting just 3 points in 9 minutes because of foul trouble and no one other than Brown looking to score, we are fortunate to be down only 6 at haltime to a really bad team. In fact it's because they are a really bad team that we are only down 6. We obviously need to keep Woods on the floor in the 2nd half so we'll stick with the zone until they shoot us out of it.

With Woods back on the floor, our offense begins to run like a poorly oiled, and barely functional machine. Woods himself is just 1 of 10 from the field. Shields scores from the post at the 11;57 mark to finally give us the lead headed into the 2nd media timeout. Brown has been asserting himself, however, and is trying his best to save us from ourselves. They haven't been able to solve our zone, fortunately, and their leading scorer is on the bench with 4 fouls.

They have been doing everything they can to give us this game, and we keep saying "no thank you". At 2:44 we are down 4. Sheals and Brown have been our offense on a horrible shooting night from our perimeter guys. Woods has been shooting like he's blindfolded. Down 7 with 1:28 I pull him from the game after he misses two more shots. He's not going to be a hero tonight. I've got Brown and Sheals both in for one of the few times this season. Evans hits a 3 with :41 to cut it to 4 but it's going to take a small miracle and some missed freethrows at their end. After they make 2 freethrows, Porter misses a 3 at our end, and we are well-done and deep-fried.

A horrible night offensively against a bad team. We shoot 34.4 % for the game and turn the ball over 16 times. Even a thorough domination of the boards (46-33, 20-6) couldn't make up for inability to score from inside of 2 feet. Woods was a dismal 1-13 for the game and has just 7 points. He did chase down a lot of his own missed shots at least, so he was trying and had 9 rebounds for the game. Porter had 10 but didn't play well. Brown (13 pts, 10 rebs) and Sheals (8 pts all in the 2nd half, 9 rebs) tried to put us on their backs in the 2nd half but without any support weren't able to get it done.

The depressing final: GW 61 Winthrop 69

[CoachC]

2/26: High Point finishes their wonderful conference season with 75-70 road win over 2nd place Presbyterian. I bet they are kicking themselves for that lone road loss to last place Radford. We finish in sole possession of 8th place. Very disappointing.
We'll be playing 9 seed VMI in the Big South tournament in a play in game to see who gets to be stomped on by High Point.

[CoachC]

As the higher seed, the first round game with VMI will be played at our place, giving our seniors another chance to redeem themselves in front of the home crowd...er, i mean rows of empty seats. The following rounds will be played at Asheville. If we survive round 1, I'm told we may have upwards of 75 fans braving the 20 miles to go to the tournament.

[CoachC]

High Point now has an RPI of 57. They will not likely have to worry about a play-in round in the NCAA tournament if they win the tournament, and will almost surely get an NIT bid if they don't.

[Wayne23]

A LONG year, Coach. Hopefully one more win at least, 10 would be nice.

[CoachC]

Our only meeting with the Keydets this year was at our place where our offense was non-existent, much like our last game. Woods was held to a season low 5 pts, and they outrebounded us by about a million in beating us 62-57.

Funny thing happened. Faced with their last chance to get to double digit wins, our guys decided they wanted to play some basketball. We outplayed the Keydets in every aspect of the game in the first half. We outshot them (52% - 32%), ourtrebounded them (20-13, 5-2), got to the freethrow line 4 more times in a whistle happy half, and even stole the ball 7 times forcing 9 turnovers, while committing just 4 ourselves. Woods paced us with 14 points, but EVERYBODY was looking for an opportunity to score and EVERYBODY was going to the boards. Good things tend to happen when you play together. Lemeke, Gilchrist, Feeley, and West each have 2 fouls at halftime, but they have 4 guys with 2 as well.

At the half we lead 48-27. In the locker room I ask them, "where the hell have you guys been?" Larry Williams says, "we missed that bus that night in South Carolina , Coach. Took us this long to get home!" Everyone broke up laughing, including myself which surprised the team. I want to take this locker room atmosphere and bottle it for next year. It's fun to play well.

In the first 4 minutes the whistles keep blowing, but mostly at one end now. Lemeke picks up his 3rd and Brown and Sheals each pick up their 2nd. Playing the point, Woods throws the ball away 5 times. We still lead by 18, but I need to calm them down a bit and get a true point guard back in the game. At 1:42 I'm able to get West and WIlliams the ovations they missed out on senior night, and I bring back Lemeke with 4 fouls so he can get his at the next dead ball. This should be a much better senior night memory for them all. They were able to cut it to 14 in the waning minutes, but we were never seriously threatened in the second half as we continued to outplay them in every aspect of the game.

Woods had 20 pts, 9 rebs (we'll ignore his 6 turnovers playing out of position), and had support from just about everybody, including seldom used point guard Robert Myers who got some minutes with all the foul troubles we had at point. Myers had 7 points, 2asts, 0 TO in 11 minutes. Myers has been our best ball handler in practice, and has a picture perfect jumpshot. We really hope to have him be an important part of our rotation next season, and maybe this will give him some confidence.

We become the first GW team in 5 years to win 10 games, and it was a pleasant night. With High Point awaiting us in Asheville, we can use all the happy we can get.

Final score: GW 81 VMI 62.

[Wayne23]

Big Win! Congrats, Coach, this is how you build for the future.

[CoachC]

After the game we discover Gilchrist has suffered a severe abdomen strain, and somebody has to help him get his shoes off, because he can't bend over and can barely walk. Looks like Myers is going to get his chance. In the other 1st round games tonight, 11 seed Radford shocked 6 seed Coastal Carolina 87-70 on the road, and 10 seed Winthrop traumatized 7 seed NC-Asheville on the road 88-80, which is good news for everyone else. Asheville won't even be able to be a part of the tournament they are hosting in their brand new arena which is being used for the first time in the conference tourney.