MBB vs. UNCW

[Wags]

Hopefully we can regain some momentum in the second half. You have to assume their cold shooting won't last forever.

That's what happened with Elon's bad start and they nearly won here. First 5 minutes of the second half huge. HU needs to put UNCW away.

[ProudofPride]

UNCW so far has only made 15 out of 51 shots. They only have 4 assists, and we've blocked 7 of their shots, 4 courtesy of Juan'ya Green. So far the Seahawks are looking like a bunch of ball hogs, not passing and settling for bad shots.

[RollPride15]

They cut the lead from 14 points to 7 points in a minute. I'm wondering why we're settling from jumpers (per live stats) when they're a foul away from the double bonus. Can anyone clue me in?

[Wags]

They cut the lead from 14 points to 7 points in a minute. I'm wondering why we're settling from jumpers (per live stats) when they're a foul away from the double bonus. Can anyone clue me in?

Don't ask me. https://twitter.com/JonathanJWagner/sta ... 9985131521

[ProudofPride]

Our only offense in the 2nd half is free throws... We're shooting 16.7%, UNCW against cuts it to a 4 point lead, 61-57.

Update: UNCW now leads 63-62, and we've officially blown a 20 point lead.

[Wags]

Our only offense in the 2nd half is free throws... We're shooting 16.7%, UNCW against cuts it to a 4 point lead, 61-57.

Update: UNCW now leads 63-62, and we've officially blown a 20 point lead.

Have missed the last 9 shots, 12 of the last 13 and 16 of the last 18 after making their first shot of the 2nd half.

[ProudofPride]

4 seconds left, we're down 3. UNCW shooting 56% this half. The team wanted fans and students here, they got that, and now that look like absolute crap in the second half of the most important game of the season. As unfortunate as it is, good luck getting them back now.

[RollPride15]

Yeah I think I'll skip the usual post-game chat for fear of giving myself an aneurysm...couldnt find the net, couldn't get tough when it mattered. This team is great and I love them but this game feels like the same old Hofstra song. Praying to bounce back on the road against some more tough competition.

[PrideFan22]

Sadly couldn't make it to the game, but very similar feeling of disappointment and heart break after the last 3 pointer to the William and Mary semi-final game. The same old Hofstra story of "A tale of two halves" I had a feeling that the lead would be reduced in the second half, and it always seems like they kinda just let the last 5-7 minutes of the second half run out and hope for the best. They never seem to give up fully and very often come up with the win, but we've ben saying it since the begging of last year, they gotta play the full 40 minutes. Otherwise, very impressive first half with what seemed like a decent crowd against a very tough team. Yes, a heart breaking loss, and yes it is pretty inexcusable to lose a 20 point lead but you have to look on the bright side and see that things could be much worse. Not very long ago there was no conversation to be made besides negativity about this team. They're still towards the top of the CAA and have to move onto Saturday and take what they can with this game and put the disappointment behind them. No matter what, this team is easily the best team we've seen in years, with plenty to critique, but plenty of talent.

[cactus]

Joe has to stop being so stubborn and play the bench in the second half. ESPECIALLY in a game where you are being pressed on every possession. They were completely gassed down the stretch.

[Polito]

Un effing believable

Worst loss of the season – looked like absolute sh!t the last five minutes of the game – and don't anyone tell me that this team was not tired, they looked completely Gast – wide-open shots wide open lanes miss cues turnovers bad free-throw shooting… I could go on

This was a must win in front of a great crowd with national media and they once again freaking blew it

And this is exactly why I have maintained since the beginning games of the season that this team is not winning the CAAT - this game was a blowout, a BLOWOUT, and these guys could not finish, YET AGAIN – and they have not been able to finish all season long – I love these guys too but I am furious at their inability to win games that matter

And Bernardi, good Lord, as great as that young man played to start the season he is absolutely horrid right now – he is legitimately the worst player on this team at this point in time, and he's killing em

How this game is so big, this might be a major factor in preventing them from even qualifying for the NIT

Sick to my stomach, and really getting sick and tired of the Overpromising and under delivering of this team in this program.

And please do me a favor and spare us any posts about how close the game was, that it was a tight race, a tough opponent, and blah blah blah blah blah – Hofstra was up by *20* and couldn't get the job done – there is absolutely no excuse for the way that they finished this game. Absolutely none.

[ProudofPride]

Joe has to stop being so stubborn and play the bench in the second half. ESPECIALLY in a game where you are being pressed on every possession. They were completely gassed down the stretch.

Especially when the bench was decent for the most part in the first half. All 3 contributed. Another thing that bothered me was that JAM did not call timeout to break UNCW's momentum. He's too stubborn to do that as well.

[EvanJ]

Green and Gustys became the first Hofstra teammates with at least 4 blocked shots each since January 27, 2010, when Greg Washington blocked 10 shots and Halil Kanacevic blocked 4. That was also hosting UNC Wilmington, and it was 199 games ago.

Delaware's Kory Holden scored 1 point, and Green passed Holden for second in the CAA in points per game. Green averages 17.8. David Walker of Northeastern leads at 18.5.

Edit: Gustys did not have a double-double because he scored 9. He had a season-high 21 rebounds.

[Cards]

I'm absolutely sick to my stomach! Same old, same old. Play the same guys so much they cant perform when it matters. They were dead out there. It was obvious that UNCW was going to put pressure on them all game, pressing on every inbound, wearing us down....wearing us down. Our guys had nothing left halfway into the 2nd half. No subbing the second half, the guys were dragging! We had four freaking baskets the entire second half. Four. Four. that's right Four

Why did coach have RG setting picks 25 feet from the hoop, the guy couldn't get back into the offense - - what da heck was that all about?? Nobody can stop the guy inside, so what do we do, we keep him outside and pass the ball to him down low ONCE the entire second half. ONCE!!!!!! He's shooting almost 70% inside averaging 17 ppg - so our approach is to throw up threes and shoot 18 % in the second half! I am just soooo sick!

Well JM just got some humble pie - sticking with 5 guys and being totally out coached. Having our starters watch guys drive by for layups because they cant pickup fouls because JM wants them to get 35 - 40 minutes each game!! They simply wore us down and JM never adjusted. Say goodbye to the students....that's all she wrote for this year!!

[daHUPride]

Joe has to stop being so stubborn and play the bench in the second half. ESPECIALLY in a game where you are being pressed on every possession. They were completely gassed down the stretch.

Especially when the bench was decent for the most part in the first half. All 3 contributed. Another thing that bothered me was that JAM did not call timeout to break UNCW's momentum. He's too stubborn to do that as well.

JAM used the bench to perfection in the 1st half and went back to his "play my five until they die" in 2nd - it made no sense to me in November and it makes no sense to me now - Walker isn't as good as I thought he'd in beginning of the season but he certainly warrants minutes - JFW is a pure athlete - and Buie has moves - those three deserve minutes - this was a game that Nicols was sorely missed - we have no one to stop the ball and UNCW had guys attacking our basket - bad loss the way we had them at the half

[ProudofPride]

The CAA just tweeted the updated standings (https://twitter.com/CAABasketball/statu ... 1310386177). It has UNCW 1st, and us and W&M tied for 2nd, but they list W&M first. Shouldn't we technically be ahead of the Tribe since we both lost to UNCW, but we have the head-to-head win over the Tribe? Not that it matters all that much when there are still 7 games left, but something like that will matter at the end of the season. There's a big difference between being the 2nd and 3rd seed, since the 2nd seed gets to play a team that's tired from playing Friday night.

[Flying Dutchmen]

This was a plain choke job.

I thought Green and Tanksley tried to carry this team through, Rok was pretty good, but he just didn't get involved in the second half, credit to those guys. But we missed shots, missed so many goddamn free throws, and our guard play defensively was weak, we allowed them to penetrate too frequently and get easy looks.

The coaching staff made almost no adjustments like usual, Bernardi was the worst player on the court for the whole second half, he got abused defensively plain and simple, Joe kept him in there way too long. He should not be playing over Buie, if Bernardi can't score 15 points a game, he shouldn't play the minutes he does. Also, great job fouling with 7 seconds left in the first when we had solid defensive positioning... there was a differential between the shot clock and the game clock, it just gave UNCW more time for the alley-oop. Stupid.

I personally don't even think the players were gassed or anything like that, UNCW hit a lot of shots in the second half that they did not in the first, I give them credit. The game winner was an incredibly tough shot. I don't even know if UNCW is great team or not, they looked like shit for large portions of the game, but they were more focused on winning the game than we were in the second half, no doubt.

The loss just puts us in a bad position in the conference, with huge road games at JMU and W&M next on the docket. We needed that win for the fans too, to keep the buzz going, and we have routinely choked those away. The fans and students sucked tonight, it was really embarrassing, the place was dead for such a huge game, but at least more people showed up.

Tough one to swallow, let's see if we can get the huge rebound win at JMU.

[Dooku25]

It always comes back to lack of depth unfortunately. I love this team but the concerns for Baltimore remain. How in the world can this team win 3 games in 3 days? I just don't see it.

Joe was out coached badly tonight. He used the bench in the first half but not the 2nd. The only reason Gustys came out was because he asked out! Walker altered shot after shot in the first half but couldn't sniff the court in the 2nd. Bernardi was absolutely atrocious, can we sub JWF for just a few minutes? My goodness.

Brilliant gameplan by Keats to full court press the ENTIRE game. They stuck to their game plan down 20 and never lost composure. I'm not overly impressed with their talent but they are certainly a well coached team.

And oh by the way, I wasn't impressed at all with the turnout. Attendance was 2057 and that's counting what seemed like hundreds of Freeport HS band members. I mean what will it take for actual Hofstra students to attend a basketball game? I just don't get it. The ones that were there were loud and definitely gave the team extra energy at the start of the game. But will they come back?

At the end of the day, this was a very disheartening loss that could cost this them an auto bid for the NIT. If they lose in Baltimore and also miss the NIT, this season would be an epic failure. I hope they can find a way to avoid that from happening!

[ProudofPride]

JAM in the post-game referring to Gustys who only took 1 shot in the 2nd half: "Yeah, we probably should've gotten him the ball more "

Gee ya think? The inside game was working in the first half, and then as soon as we stopped going inside halfway through the 2nd half and settled for 3's we weren't making, there went the lead.

And as other people have said, Bernardi was pitiful yet again. 9 points, but only 3-12 shooting. At this point, he's almost more detrimental to the team being on the court than he is helpful. I do feel bad though, something has to be up. A player isn't in a slump for this long without there being something deeper going on. He's been virtually non-existent in terms of scoring essentially the entire conference slate. Hopefully he and the coaching staff can sort this out soon, we need his scoring now.

[ZMAN3]

Joe has to stop being so stubborn and play the bench in the second half. ESPECIALLY in a game where you are being pressed on every possession. They were completely gassed down the stretch.

Couldn't agree with you more! Totally disgusted! Season's best win turns into season's worst loss.
Postscript - My friend usually shows up late - Hofstra is always ahead when he gets there - and they always give up the lead (obviously they've won a number of those games). Today he decided to go to dinner with wife before they showed - HU up 20 - wife looks at score and comments how good they must be playing. You know the rest. I now call him Mush