Game#21 vs Northeastern

[stuball888]

Wow! Northeastern lost to Delaware on the road. They are a much different team on the road than when they are home. Any thoughts> Watch out for TJ Williams. He has not scored less than 16 points in any game this season. Does he get his career high against us today?

[HUSID80]

Wish they didn't lose to Delaware...would have liked them to come in fat and happy...another tough game in a tough season...we desperately need a W!

[ProudofPride]

Chris Weidman is on campus with his son watching the wrestling match. Would be cool if he stays for the basketball game. Could be motivation for the team to be playing in front of one of the greatest athletes Hofstra has produced, despite being a completely different sport.

[EvanJ]

http://gohofstra.com/news/2017/1/20/men ... ath=mbball is Hofstra's preview.

http://www.gohofstra.com/documents/2017 ... game21.pdf is Hofstra's Game Notes.

http://gonu.com/news/2017/1/20/mens-bas ... ath=mbball is Northeastern's preview.

http://gonu.com/documents/2017/1/20//Ga ... df?id=3532 is Northeastern's Game Notes.

http://static.caasports.com/custompages ... m#team.ind has Northeastern's statistics.

http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=148173 will have statistics

[EvanJ]

Hofstra is starting Powers, Wright-Foreman, Pemberton, Gustys, and Bernardi.

Northeastern is starting Alex Muprhy (forward), Shawn Occeus (guard), TJ Williams (guard), Devon Begley (guard), and Anthony Green (center).

https://portal.stretchinternet.com/hofs ... Type=video has video.

Edit: The video keeps starting and stopping.

[ProudofPride]

Best 3 point shooting team against the worst 3 point defense in the CAA, NU is already 3 of 4 beyond the arc.

[ProudofPride]

Do we get to play the final 1.3 seconds of the half without Northeastern on the court? This is bizarre.

Northeastern should get some sort of penalty for that, you can't just leave the court and go into the locker room before the half is over.

[EvanJ]

Greer, Powers, Wright-Foreman, Bernardi, Pemberton, and Gustys are the six Hofstra players who have attempted field goals, and all of them have made at least half of their field goals. Wright-Foreman has 13 points, Bernardi has 11, and Pemberton has 7. Powers has 4 points and 3 assists. Hofstra has only 4 fouls and 5 turnovers. Devon Begley leads Northeastern with 12 points and TJ Williams has scored 9, but he has more turnovers than assists. WRHU says Williams hurt his ankle. Hofstra has made 10 out of 13 two-pointers and 6 out of 13 three-pointers. Northeastern has only 9 rebounds.

Edit: Hofstra leads 57-46 with 12:49 left. Nobody on either team has more rebounds than Bernardi! Wright-Foreman and TJ Williams have 20 points each.

[ProudofPride]

Refs taking over now, late in the second half.

[ProudofPride]

Looks a decent turnout on the video, at least in this section of the arena. Good to see.

IMG_4745.JPG

[DCDUTCH]

Gustys is so frustrating.

[ProudofPride]

Huge layup by Powers with 17 seconds left to put the good guys up 5. Hofstra fans can finally go to bed happy, Northeastern is a very good team. Credit to the whole team for playing the most complete game of the conference season so far. I hope this gives them some confidence, there's still time to turn the season around.

[EvanJ]

Hofstra won 78-73. The attendace was a season-high 2,629. Wright-Foreman scored 30 points and made 11 out of his 15 field goals. Bernardi made 4 three-pointers and has made 9 out of his 20 three-pointers in his last three games. He made only 3 out of 19 three-pointers in the three games before that. Bernardi, who scored the second most on Hofstra, and Devon Begley, who scored the third most on Northeastern, scored 16 each. TJ Williams scored 25 and Alex Murphy scored 18. Murphy made 6 out of 8 field goals and had 9 rebounds and 4 assists. His bad statistic was that he made 3 out of 7 free throws. Murphy led all players in rebounds ahead of Gustys with 8 and Wright-Foreman with 6. Powers and Bolden Brace tied for the most assists with 6. Hofstra had 17 assists and 9 turnovers, which was their fourth best assist/turnover ratio this season behind games against St. Bonaventure, Stony Brook, and Delaware. Pemberton scored 9, Gustys scored 8, and Powers scored 6, with each of them attempting 6 or 7 field goals. Here are our points per game leaders:

1. Wright-Foreman: 14.5 (was 13.8)
2. Pemberton: 13.8 (was 14.0)
3. Powers: 13.2 (was 13.5)
4. Bernardi: 12.3 (was 12.1)

Our three-point field goal percentage went from .376 to .377. Hofstra didn't block any shots. In the last 365 days, Hofstra is 4-0 when they don't block any shots. The previous times were against Bradley and Florida Atlantic this season and against College of Charleston when we clinched the 2015-2016 regular season title.

[EvanJ]

Hofstra reached the milestone of 500 games played since they joined the CAA. Hofstra is 257-243 (.514) including games against all opponents, even non-Division I teams.

[ProudofPride]

Vote JWF for the top performer of the day! https://twitter.com/CAABasketball/statu ... 3232100353

[Cards]

Kind of an odd game. We went small again (not that we have too many choices) and by the second half, NU followed suit. They took out Green and had Murphy (6'7") playing the 5. Don't know what happened with Jeremy Miller (6'10"). He plays at the 4, has 20+ minutes every game, but was not there today (not even on the bench). Maybe we caught a break.

JWF is clearly a huge offensive force, the guy simply can score! He and EP will be quite a pair for the next few years.

Its really a shame with RG and his FT shooting. Not only does his poor shooting take him out (Literally) of the game in the last few minutes, but I'm beginning to wonder if it causes the guards to shy away from passing to him down low. Of course I don't mean every time, but I wonder if its in the back of their minds when they think of passing it off to him or do they look for another option. We'll probably never know.

I was watching the game thinking to myself that DP had not scored that many points, and yet the offense was pretty potent. It was very evident that DP played a role today, a true PG role, and did a good job at it. It was good to see, I'd love to see it continue. He still gets points, and actually made a great drive for the last basket, but he is definitely most valuable to the team not as the high scorer, but rather as a guy that dishes, controls tempo, and remains and option on offense. I watched the postgame presser and heard JM say the same thing. I hope DP can consistently play like this going forward. We've seen him do it before, he just has to do it more often.

One thing that does cause me some concern, and that is we are getting back to the same problem weve had in recent years - and that is playing a very short rotation. JR had been essentially taken out of the rotation, and TG is getting much less time than he had been. Of course HS is only in to spell RG. That's pretty much the team right now. Not very deep at all. Add to that that EP was limping the entire second half (pretty badly I might add, sometimes I was watching him thinking he probably should not even be on the court). Hope he is OK.

Good to be back in the W column. Good turnout today. Boy Scout day at the Mack, but heck, 10 year olds in the seats are still better than empty seats

[Hofstra]

Very happy to see we won.. Especially after the crap performances we have been putting up lately. Awesome win.

[Wags]

Most important win of the season to date. Team needed it badly. Obviously, JWF was brilliantly efficient (matching his career high of 30 pts on 11/15 fg), Powers had the huge 3-point play late to seal it, the crowd was much better (which helped the team) and the D was not great, but better and good enough to win after a rough start to the game.

But credit to Joe and Bernardi. They spoke yesterday. Bernardi was upset and putting a lot of pressure on himself. Joe got him to relax, relaying some great advice from Dr. J, who once said it's only pressure if you're being asked to do something you don't know how to do, like flying a plane. But when you know how to play hoops, just play.

Bernardi did look a lot more relaxed and confident with his shot from the beginning of the game. Was 5/12 overall and 4/10 from 3. Not amazing, but solid, and his 16 pts, 11 in the first half, were very important in helping Hofstra build the big lead so they could hold on for the W. They don't win without his contributions in this game.

I've been one of leading voices here calling for him to get less minutes as a spark off the bench over starting. But I have to hand it to him and Joe. How can you not root all out for a guy who cares so much, to the point he's that upset about putting too much pressure on himself and can't perform well as a result? Good job by Joe to get Bernardi to relax, and by Bernardi to use that advice and step up in a big way. Still think he should come off the bench, but even if he remains a starter (which he probably will), I hope he succeeds -- not only for the team, but for himself. Good guy who cares a lot. Inconsistent production aside, the type of player who's very easy to root for.

[Wags]

Matching his career high with 30 pts in this game, and with Pemberton scoring just 8, JWF has become Hofstra's leading scorer for the season at 14.5 ppg... one year after TOTALING just 44 points as a freshman. And while averaging only the 5th-most minutes on the team this year.

[Dooku25]

Good win yesterday in front of an enthusiastic crowd which was nice to see. Although it wasn't a perfect win, after 6 straight losses, we'll take them any way we can. We do have the tendency down the stretch to get stagnate on offense along with never getting a stop on D when we need one. It happened again yesterday in the last 7 minutes in which our 15 point lead shrunk to 3. But we held on somehow and obviously the biggest play of the game was DP's drive to the basket with the shot clock winding down to seal it.

Nice bounce back game for BB. I have always been fine with him playing those minutes even with his deficiences because he scores 15 a game and stretches the floor on O because opponents have to respect his range. The issue lately is that he hasn't been scoring at all. So it was nice to see him put 16 pts. Usually sharpshooters shoot with swagger and BB definitely hasn't been looking confident out there lately so hopefully this performance gets his confidence going in the right direction.

I'm glad Joe finally took out RG late in the game because honestly, when he gets fouled late in these games, it's basically a turnover. Although he replaced him with Ty Greer instead of Sabety which I didn't understand. I really like what Sabety gives us off the bench, would like to see him get more minutes wherever possible.

And finally, the superstar that is JWF. Between him and EP, we really have 2 special talents in our program which should give us great hope of reaching the NCAA tournament in the next 2 years. JWF is starting to remind me of a lefty version of Speedy Claxton. He is virtually unguardable 1 on 1 with his explosive first step and his leaping ability is on the same level as Speedy. I would even go far as to say he is an even better outside shooter than Speedy. This kid can do it all, shoot the 3, has a good mid range game and can finish his drives with ease. Sky is the limit for JWF.

As for this season, we are still 2 games back of the 6 seed and that is all I am focused on right now. We need to get in the top 6 to save the season and have a chance in the tourney. We got a win and the next 4 are all winnable. We need them all!