MBB Game 1 - San Jose State, 11/6/19, 7 PM

[EvanJ]

We went up 5-0, down as much as 5, and lead 31-27 with 3:23 left in the half. The statistics stopped a few minutes ago, which rarely happens. The picture quality was horrible for a time, but fixed itself.

[Hofstra]

I guess everyone still thinks its Halloween. They showed up to the sellout dressed as empty seats..

Why deem it a sellout if its not even close to sold out? ?It sounds ridiculous. Imagine they actually turned people off from the game by saying its a sellout so they didnt even go to the arena to buy seats?

[EvanJ]

Miranda checked in before Silverio

Silverio is questionable with a leg injury, and Trueheart will not play due to injury.

I guess everyone still thinks its Halloween. They showed up to the sellout dressed as empty seats..

Why deem it a sellout if its not even close to sold out? ?It sounds ridiculous. Imagine they actually turned people off from the game by saying its a sellout so they didnt even go to the arena to buy seats?

I see the empty seats. It's bad if an opener can't sell out and a team has tickets they choose not to sell just so they can call it a sellout. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's bad if it did.

We lead 35-34 at halftime. We shot two-pointers well, but made 3 of 12 threes. All six of FGM, FGA, 3FGM, 3FGA, FTM, and FTA are equal or one team has 1 more than the other. Pemberton has 10 points and is tied for the team with 3 rebounds. Buie has 9 points and 2 of our 3 assists. Ray has 7 points and 3 rebounds. Coburn had 2 points and 2 rebounds in the first 33 seconds, but had 2 points and no rebounds after that. Kante has 3 points from a three-point play, but missed his other 3 shots. Burgess, Miranda, and Schutte combined to attempt 1 shot, which was a two made by Schutte. Like last season, we kept our fouls (7) and turnovers (3) low. Pemberton had our only 2 steals, and we didn't block any shots. Buie, Pemberton, and Ray made 1 three each, and Coburn missed all 3 threes. Burgess and an SJSU sub who played 7 minutes have 2 fouls, and nobody else has more than 1.

[Wags]

35-34, Dutch at the half.

Pemberton leads all scorers with 10 pts (4/8 fg), so on pace for 20, which he'll roughly need to average this season to finish as #Hofstra's 9th all-time 2,000-point scorer.

Very even first half:

SJSU 14/32, 3/11 from 3, 3/4 FT
HOF 14/31, 3/12 from 3, 4/5 FT

[EvanJ]

Since Kante played 13 minutes and Schutte played 7, it looks like a Taylor and Dwyer situation where exactly one of them will play at a time. Our points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots were all too low.

Edit: We missed threes with a chance to take a largest lead of 6, but our lead stayed at 3, and we now trail 38-37 because we scored 2 in the first 4:37 of the halftime. The good news is that we have the ball after SJSU's fourth foul of the half, and we haven't committed any. We attempted 5 free throws in the first half, and we're on pace to attempt a lot in the second half.

Edit: We went down 3, but Pemberton scored 8 in 2:20 to put us up 47-46 with 11:09 left. The teams have combined to shoot threes 0-for-11 in the second half.

The background music "Don't Take Your Love Away" (or whatever the song is called) is repetitive, and it was played a little during the game.

Edit: My comment my have been a good jinx because Coburn made consecutive three to go up 53-48, which ties the largest lead for either team.

Edit: We went up 61-53, but then down 65-63. Pemberton made his second three to give him 21 points and go up 69-67 with 3:32 left. We called our second-to-last timeout. Charlotte and James Madison is tied at 42.

[ProudofPride]

Well this is thoroughly embarrassing.

[BringBackFootball]

Yuck!

There goes the at-large bid

[Hofstra]

I think the line is absurd, we always have bad home opener performances, and this is probably the most talented team we've played in a home opener with Joe.

Good call. What an embarrassment. Same crap, diff. year.

[BringBackFootball]

Reading the boards before the season I was legitimately excited about the depth this season. Either that was way over hyped or JM is just a coach that refuses to use his bench no matter what. Burgess was praised on this board as the 2nd coming and he played 4 minutes in an opening night loss to a **** team.

5 kids played 33 to 40 minutes tonight. Hofstra got outscored 28-10 to close out the game. Either there is a serious lack of depth or coach severely misuswd the bench and cost the team the game

[Hofstra]

Still wondering about this sellout nonsense? What was that all about? The place was empty. The loss stinks, but not for nothing, this team without JWF wont be much. I am just super curious about why they considered this a sellout.

[Polito]

Was certainly smart to expect a fight, FD was right on.

No issue with a hard fought game 1, plenty of rust, but the final 5 min appeared pitiful. Expecting MUCH better.

These upper class men need to know by now to move the damn ball - chucking up 3 after 3 is not a strategy. Played very sloppy at the end.

Cmon staff, I understand this is a shooting team with the green light, but coach your players on the GAME of basketball. It’s called BALL MOVEMENT. We know you have zero D every yr, so let’s at least master the offensive side. This team should be and needs to be scoring in the 80’s easy.

I do see some positive for sure, team is learning life without JWF, but should’ve had a W here.

And admin, you embarrassed yourselves and this school by screaming sellout. Enough with the smoke and mirror horse sh!t. This makes you and us look really really bad - second rate. A sellout means a packed house. I don’t know if you’re lying or just don’t understand how it all works, but figure it out please.

[EvanJ]

Richard Washington scored 14 in the last 5:20. Schutte made our only field goal attempt by the bench. The guards shot twos well and threes poorly, and Kante made only 3 of 9 twos. He had 11 rebounds, but when you shoot 3-9 while only attempting two you didn't have a great game. Buie had 5 assists in the second half. He had 7 assists and 5 turnovers. After SJSU committed 4 fouls in the first 4:37 of the half, they went over 8 minutes before their next foul. They committed 6 in the second half, so Hofstra made 1 of 2 free throws to finish 5 for 7 and did not reach the bonus in the second half. Pemberton and Washington tied for the scoring lead with 23. SJSU had 47 rebounds, which is the most we've allowed since we allowed 47 in a 76-64 loss at North Carolina State on November 17, 2014. That was 165 games ago. The last 8 times we allowed at least 47 rebounds were nonconference games. The last CAA team to have at least 47 rebounds against us was Delaware in a 66-61 win at Hofstra on January 7, 2009. From 2005-2006 to now, 11 of the 12 times we allowed at least 47 rebounds were in nonconference games.

Edit: Three SJSU players had at least 13 points, 7 rebounds, and 3 assists. I wish I had a way of finding out how rare that is.

[Hofstra]

Was certainly smart to expect a fight, FD was right on.

I do see some positive for sure, team is learning life without JWF, but should’ve had a W here.

And admin, you embarrassed yourselves and this school by screaming sellout. Enough with the smoke and mirror horse sh!t. This makes you and us look really really bad - second rate. A sellout means a packed house. I don’t know if you’re lying or just don’t understand how it all works, but figure it out please.

Honestly, what could be positive from a loss? We lost to a team that won 4 games last year. We were 18-20 point favorites, at home. What positive could you have seen?

It's nice to be positive about stuff, but lets get serious here. I know this is only game 1, and a lot can change, but fool me once, shame on you.. Fool me twice, shame on me.. Im not about to be fooled for the 16th straight year. This team is going to suck. I hope they prove me wrong, but im going to be a realist.

[Polito]

Those stats straight suck. This staff... my goodness. They land fantastic talent at this level but boy they are avg at best game coaching.

Gonna give Kante a break in his first real game in a very long time. But that boy better play a heckuva lot better in the very near future. SJSU has strength in the post, thought we’d see what’s up there, and unfortunately didn’t impress yet. Let’s see game 2.

Guards? You get ZERO pass. You simply need to play smarter than that HS 3 chucking crap. How about play the game.

No ball movement, no D, and no rebounding. I’m not Wooden but I’m gonna say that you probably can’t suck at these 3 things at the same time and win many games.

One game, the first game, not the end of the world obviously. But it’s amazing how this program constantly falters down the stretch. This game was a microcosm of JM seasons.

And hey I get it, life without JWF is going to be a transition. I’m down for improvement and getting things right for the CAA. But let’s actually do that starting on Sat. Best be a much better performance with some hoops IQ and maturity.

Staff, get to work and figured your ish out.

[RIP_HOFUSA]

Did anyone notice how SJS had a corner three open every single time they wanted it? I mean it was obvious that that was the case, particularly in the second half. They had a player just keep running to the corners and they were honestly always open. Now it could be the zone and/or bad coaching, but I really think Mihalich is to blame for not playing his bench. I think it's totally wrong. These are division 1 athletes and you're telling me you can't have a couple of impact players play a couple minutes down the stretch off the bench? I feel like from 15 left in the game on no one came off the bench. That's a recipe for disaster. Anyone that plays basketball (or really any sport) knows how serious a problem fatigue is. You don't feel like driving, and if you did it wouldn't be effective. Ball movement suffers and the ability to chase people around on defense is negated. It's sad because there is no way you can convince me that our bench is that bad. Once there's 10 minutes left in the game and less, prepare for the 3-point show until he starts giving role players a chance to have a role! That's his biggest weakness at coach and after x amount of years he still has not learned. It's a shame. There's still next game though...Go Pride!

[EvanJ]

I do see some positive for sure, team is learning life without JWF, but should’ve had a W here.

Last season we shot threes .385. Taking out JWF, Wormley, and Radovic brings it down to .369. Tonight we shot threes .276.

Burgess committed 2 fouls in 4 minutes, and Silverio commited 3 fouls in 5 minutes. They're not going to earn more playing time with no shots and that many fouls per minute. Miranda had 2 rebounds in 4 minutes without any negative contributions. Schutte didn't play in the second half. If he and/or Trueheart are injured, we have less depth behind Kante. Our bench had a positive +/-. Pemberton's 18 field goal attempts were double Kante's 9. In JWF's last three season he usually had more than double the attempts of the player with the fifth most. Last season JWF had 3.06 times the attempts of Ray, who had the fifth most, and JWF had 3.63 times the attempts of Taylor.

Edit: James Madison beat Charlotte 79-74. With forward Dwight Wilson out and getting an MRI on his ankle, Matt Lewis (who scored 40 to ruin our Senior Day) had a career-high 13 rebounds, but he made 7 of 14 free throws, and they made 12 of 28 (.429) as a team. Deshon Parker shot great and had 17 points to tie his career-high, a career-high 8 rebounds, and 6 assists.

[Jojogunne]

Miranda checked in before Silverio... guess he is not redshirting.

However he is still wearing #3?????

I'm sorry but that is bullshit

Agree. No one should be wearing #3.

[daHUPride]

HMMMM

Not that start to a season that I'd hoped for.

SJS was a big team - big teams are going to give us a problem - especially if they are going to impose their will on us. SJS played a nice controlled game and we played into - SJS played and exposed our weakness and our lack of interiror (D and O).

Pemberton has O skills - he has to go to the basket - he is going to have trouble on D against bigger teams (and that is where he gets the crap beat out of him)
Buie has O - he needs a big that can catch the ball - Kante can but Kante didn't tonight.
Couborn is as streaking a player as Ive ever seen - he to is outsized on the D boards.
Kante looked out of synch - I see his talent/I see his skill/I see his athleticism - he needs to do it more. Our biggest missing element is going to be what last years talent that Taylor brought to our team. Kante has game ( a few nice passes/a few nice mid range pops) - it is going to be tough if we don't get more from Kante and something from another big (Truehart/Schutte)
Ray/Silveo/Miranda/Burgess - mah

Our D - what D?
Coaching - man.

Sellout crowd? Really?

Bad loss - its a non conference - but we need to improve - I think the talent is there.

[Jojogunne]

Still wondering about this sellout nonsense? What was that all about? The place was empty. The loss stinks, but not for nothing, this team without JWF wont be much. I am just super curious about why they considered this a sellout.

I know an alum (and generous donor who's funding a scholarship for some lucky HU students) who called the box office for tickets this week and was told there were none -- the game's a sellout. That should never happen.

[Jojogunne]

I wouldn't be too concerned about this loss. The team is essentially new and has a lot of rust to shake off. If we lose the next two or three "tilts," then I would worry.