MBB Game 4 @UMass, Nov. 16 (Sat) 7 PM

[cactus]

5 more minutes of watching these officials take over a basketball game, wonderful....

The refs were horrific. If this was someone's first experience watching college basketball, they'd probably never watch another game.

Lots and lots to clean up but talent and toughness wins games and they have displayed that these last two.

[Captain]

The refs were bad but I think affecting both teams.They called the charge at the end of regulation that was a close call that usually might go the home team’s way.
Exciting game to watch. Plenty of stuff to improve upon but they are tenacious and resilient.
Great job of assembling a roster. Looks like they got talent and character guys. Like the chemistry.
The triumvirate of guards will have years of eligibility barring NIL departures.
A lot to like so far.



.

[triplec2195]

Talking about the refs I don't feel that this game should have gone into O/T the foul that they called at the end of regulation certainly appeared to be an invisible foul and fouled out Sunday. Thank god UMass is a poor FT shooting team otherwise we would have been sunk. We shoot 16/20 and they shoot 10/20. That's pathetic. Our bigs left something to be desired in this game between missing rebounds and just getting out rebounded. We need the DOG in both these guys. Foul trouble did tie their hands to some extent.

Worth noting is that for the most part Robinson is coming off the bench as a 2 or 3 but not as a PG. He's not a great ball handler and doesn't run the team well. When all he has to focus on is scoring he's a far better ball player. His scoring was big in this game.

[Wags]

Seton Hall played another low-scoring game, as they beat Wagner by a score that could have come from Football. Seton Hall won 54-28. Wagner scored 14 in each half, and I wonder when the last time a team scored 14 or fewer in both halves was.

I think there may have been others since but Saint Louis didn't even reach 14 in either half (7 and 13) in a 49-20 loss at George Washington in 2008.

[triplec2195]

Seton Hall played another low-scoring game, as they beat Wagner by a score that could have come from Football. Seton Hall won 54-28. Wagner scored 14 in each half, and I wonder when the last time a team scored 14 or fewer in both halves was.

I think there may have been others since but Saint Louis didn't even reach 14 in either half (7 and 13) in a 49-20 loss at George Washington in 2008.

These scores are hard to believe especially when schools score over 100. In the days when there was no shot clock you could see how there would be low scoring games but not today when D at times seems optional.

[stuball888]

It seems like defense is coming back into the college game I think some of it has to do with the NIL
Teams reloading, and rebuilding every year now because of the Transfer portal the offenses, especially at the beginning of the year is not in sync
So how do you win these games early in the season by playing lockdown defense?
I think as the season progresses, you're gonna see the Scoring Increasing

[Wags]

It seems like defense is coming back into the college game I think some of it has to do with the NIL
Teams reloading, and rebuilding every year now because of the Transfer portal the offenses, especially at the beginning of the year is not in sync
So how do you win these games early in the season by playing lockdown defense?
I think as the season progresses, you're gonna see the Scoring Increasing

Defense has made a comeback for the past few years and I like it. We still get games and teams that score a lot and almost everyone takes a bunch of 3s now, but we've often seems dig in and win with D. Even Mihalich's teams, known more for their offense, didn't finally break through for a CAA tourney title until they focused on defense first and they really won with that. UConn's offense was good but they won the past two national titles with their defense as much as their offense. There should be a good balance. The best teams should and will have a good balance between offense and defense (and other intangibles like rebounding, getting 50/50 balls, etc.) but you can't win playing only one end of the floor. It has to be both. I love seeing teams lock in defensively. You look at the NBA today, where no one cares at all anymore if they allow 70+ point halves, and they simply try to outscore the other team, it gets a little boring even if you appreciate good shooting and good offense. It's much more entertaining when buckets are earned and good defense has to be overcome by even better offense. People said Hofstra's win over Seton Hall on Wednesday was ugly, and yeah, there were some bad shots (off the sides of backboards, airballs), but for the most part it was two teams really competing, locking in, forcing turnovers, really going after each other for 40 minutes. I don't mind that at all. No matter the sport, I always want to see athletes really compete, not just have things handed to them because there's little resistance - if that's the case, I'll just watch them practice instead of play.

[HofstraMathew]

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-me ... l-power-37

Nice Hofstra mention in #9 of the sweet 16 musings section about our two wins last week.

[EvanJ]

Seton Hall played another low-scoring game, as they beat Wagner by a score that could have come from Football. Seton Hall won 54-28. Wagner scored 14 in each half, and I wonder when the last time a team scored 14 or fewer in both halves was.

I think there may have been others since but Saint Louis didn't even reach 14 in either half (7 and 13) in a 49-20 loss at George Washington in 2008.

Thank you for that. I like George Washington. 49-20 is a more likely football score than 54-28. 49-20 happened twice in NFL history, and 54-28 never happened.

It seems like defense is coming back into the college game I think some of it has to do with the NIL
Teams reloading, and rebuilding every year now because of the Transfer portal the offenses, especially at the beginning of the year is not in sync
So how do you win these games early in the season by playing lockdown defense?
I think as the season progresses, you're gonna see the Scoring Increasing

It would be interesting to see the points per team per game broken down by month, but the problem is that it is not an all other things equal comparison. November and December have high scores that come from playing teams worse than most teams (or even all teams) in your conference or playing non-Division I teams. A power conference team could score significantly more in nonconference games than in conference games without that proving that their offense was better in nonconference games. The NCAA does provide averages per team per game for each season, so once there is a larger sample size of seasons with NIL it will be possible to find out how NIL affected offense assuming no rule changes or anything else that help or hurt offense.