Virginia Tech Basketball Week 6: Dec. 10 - Dec. 16, Miss. Valley St., Ga. Southern

[Ragingcroc]

I guess people will start to jump off the VT basketball bandwagon now.

 

[Ragingcroc]

We really need to get Robert Brown going again. Jarrell Eddie got going at the end but still shot at a pretty poor percentage. Cadarian Raines has been a huge disappointment this year.

The biggest problem was defensive rebounding. I mean Eddie lazily went for a rebound after a free throw by not boxing out and gave up a possession. Pretty inexcusible. If we rebound better defensively, we'll be able to run more off misses and get more easy buckets.

Georgia Southern did hit a lot of 3s but good teams can hit a lot of 3s as well. We can't hope that players miss barely contested 3's everytime. This feels like last year all over again where we started out well in OOC and then fell flat in our faces in ACC play.

 

[HoHumHokie]

Wow just wow. Can someone name the last out of conference loss this bad?

Been at least 6 or 7 years. How the hell do Brown and Raines completely not show up for games?...espcially Brown with the minutes he's getting.

 

[hokiecheme11]

I guess people will start to jump off the VT basketball bandwagon now.

I'm not jumping off anything. This is disappointing, but I knew we would take our lumps sooner or later. We were playing above our heads early in the season, we were gonna come back down eventually. I will still watch every game.

My first takeaway- holy shit our rebounding is terrible. Also, where tf is Raines? He has been nonexistent the last two games

 

[Ragingcroc]

Been at least 6 or 7 years. How the hell do Brown and Raines completely not show up for games?...espcially Brown with the minutes he's getting.

Raines only got 12 minutes today.

 

[Ragingcroc]

I'm not jumping off anything. This is disappointing, but I knew we would take our lumps sooner or later. We were playing above our heads early in the season, we were gonna come back down eventually. I will still watch every game.

I wasn't refering to anyone here but to the turnouts at games in the Cassell..

 

[Ragingcroc]

My first takeaway- holy shit our rebounding is terrible. Also, where tf is Raines? He has been nonexistent the last two games

We need an attitude adjustment with rebounding. When the ball goes in the air, find a body and burry your ass in their crotch. It just seems like we're not finding bodies to hit. If players get a free run to the basketball on defensive rebounds, you're going to have a bad time trying rebound defensively.

 

[Ragingcroc]

 

[Lumbee09]

My observations:

- Defense is AWFUL. The double team leads to wide open 3s or easy layups way more than it causes turnovers. I'm guessing JJ does it to go with his high tempo transition offense, but in games like this where we aren't making our shots it bites us big time. Georgia Southern did shoot well, but I attribute that more to bad defense than good shooting. They missed a lot of early wide open 3s, but we kept giving it to them and they got hot and stayed hot.
- We are too reliant on making 3s. Either that or we're reliant on Green to drive. It works fine when we make them, but we had mostly open looks when shooting today, but only made 22% from beyond the arc.
- Rebounding still needs improvement. We aren't boxing out well enough and it's allowing easy boards. I do like the progress from JVZ. He saw limited action because of foul trouble, but he seems to box out better than most on our team as a R-Freshman.

This loss will hurt us badly later. Our OOC schedule is already pretty weak with so many of the teams being 200+ in the RPI. Even if we win the rest of our OOC (unlikely) we will still have to finish 4th or better in the ACC to be considered for the tourney. Even that may not be enough (see '10-'11 season). It's going to be an uphill battle, but I still think we will fair well in ACC play.

 

[Hokie Swagger]

really really bad loss that will haunt us if we are again on the bubble, which will be likely.

 

[wildturkey]

Garbage effort all around today. Some will gloss it over that GSU shot very well (they did) and we didn't. While that's true, there's more to it. Even if GSU shoots well, we still could have won if the team played with any kind of sustained effort and energy. We didn't. It was disjointed on both sides of the ball. We're still a relatively young team with a new coach and it looked like the team thought the W would come just by showing up. By the time anyone realized this wasn't the case, it was too little too late.

Offense was a mess. Pace wasn't consistently good and when it was, there was no rhyme or reason to much of anything. Lots of shots just being jacked up when just an extra dribble or pass would lead to an easier shot. Too much of the game looked like 8th grade gym class when the teacher rolls the balls out on the floor and all the kids just take off. We didn't even record an assist until well into the 2nd half. You could say some of that is poor shooting, but most of it came off not running an actual offense. Too much one man action and too many long shots after fits of dribbling. You can't win like that. While we were shooting exceedingly well in our 8 wins, a lot of that came from good ball movement and easy shots set up in transition and semi-transition. We didn't get much of that today and forced too much. The result? Piss poor offense that had people commenting about Greenberg.

Defense continues to be sloppy. It's annoying that for the umpteenth game, we're way too slow closing out on shooters if it even happens at all. And as everyone sees, rebounding sucks. I still say its an effort issue but I also see some structural issues. We like to run a high screen with Raines (or whatever big) which Green usually uses to shoot a 3 or a long two around the top of the circle. That's fine, but it pulls the big out of the lane because he doesn't roll too the basket. That's fine too at times. What isn't fine is far too often I saw the other 3 players standing around the perimeter making no effort to crash for the rebound. Or either there's 1 player (usually the 4) in the lane fighting against 3 defenders for a rebound. You're not going to win any rebounding battles like that. And defensively, we're just getting out worked (which may be why Raines didn't play much)

Terrible effort all around. The deficiencies that we've seen one at a time throughout the year all showed up today at once. Time for JJ to put his working boots on. Should be a good test to see how the team responds after bottoming out

 

[hokiegrad]

Been at least 6 or 7 years. How the hell do Brown and Raines completely not show up for games?...espcially Brown with the minutes he's getting.

Apparently Brown is recovering from the flu and has hardly practiced this week. But as I think you were saying, it hasn't just been this one game.

 

[Hokie Swagger]

reports say that marshall wood fractured his foot and is out indefinitely...yikes. we are in some trouble with how thin we already are.

 

[Ragingcroc]

Wild Turkey Club Breakdown (with Video) | georgia southern|Tech Hoops

 

[Ragingcroc]

reports say that marshall wood fractured his foot and is out indefinitely...yikes. we are in some trouble with how thin we already are.

Wood suffers fractured foot

Well that sucks but luckily he is expected to return later in the season.

 

[HoHumHokie]

reports say that marshall wood fractured his foot and is out indefinitely...yikes. we are in some trouble with how thin we already are.