Game Thread - @ GW Saturday 1/24 3pm USA

We’ve known for years that Moon is slow as a turtle in making adjustments. He is wedded to his system come hell or high water. Yesterday’s repeat makes perfectly good sense given that. Yesterday was actually worse than the loss at our house because he knew what to expect, and it appears that he made no adjustments and chose not to. No surprise.
It's crazy. The best coaches may have tried and true systems. But they also have multiple options and fall backs and adjustments.

Just crazy when listening to that one interview when Mooney said watching Florida last year opened his eyes to the positives of offensive rebounding. I mean WTF!!!

I mean we all thought he was a little slow and unimaginative. Opening his mouth and speaking it just really enforced it. Just crazy.
 
It's crazy. The best coaches may have tried and true systems. But they also have multiple options and fall backs and adjustments.

Just crazy when listening to that one interview when Mooney said watching Florida last year opened his eyes to the positives of offensive rebounding. I mean WTF!!!

I mean we all thought he was a little slow and unimaginative. Opening his mouth and speaking it just really enforced it. Just crazy.
Wait until he hears an interview about something called "defense."
 
GW and SLU really exposed our lack of A-10 talent. It looked like the varsity playing against the JV out there. We are undersized, under athletic, undertalented in comparison to GW.

Of course, you can close that gap with really good scheme, but we have Mooney so that is a disadvantage for us as well. Again, I don't know how anyone at the Robins Center can look at our program and see any hope. We don't have the players to compete nor do we have the coaching scheme, adjustments to do so either.

Future is not any brighter. Next year, AA will be the only player on the roster who is a legit A-10 player. The rest our role players but not starter level material.
 
GW and SLU really exposed our lack of A-10 talent. It looked like the varsity playing against the JV out there. We are undersized, under athletic, undertalented in comparison to GW.

Of course, you can close that gap with really good scheme, but we have Mooney so that is a disadvantage for us as well. Again, I don't know how anyone at the Robins Center can look at our program and see any hope. We don't have the players to compete nor do we have the coaching scheme, adjustments to do so either.

Future is not any brighter. Next year, AA will be the only player on the roster who is a legit A-10 player. The rest our role players but not starter level material.
I'm afraid AA may be somewhere else next year.
 
GW and SLU really exposed our lack of A-10 talent. It looked like the varsity playing against the JV out there. We are undersized, under athletic, undertalented in comparison to GW.

Of course, you can close that gap with really good scheme, but we have Mooney so that is a disadvantage for us as well. Again, I don't know how anyone at the Robins Center can look at our program and see any hope. We don't have the players to compete nor do we have the coaching scheme, adjustments to do so either.

Future is not any brighter. Next year, AA will be the only player on the roster who is a legit A-10 player. The rest our role players but not starter level material.
Yep. And VCU does not have one of their best teams out there this year, but the talent level difference compared to us will still be dramatic. It is inexcusable to have back to back years where our talent level is not close to where the top 4 A-10 teams are, and possibly behind even the mid tier teams.
 
Well, going back 15 years, I have pointed out many a season where moon could not fill out a roster. We had the kid from Northeastern who averaged 1.5 and we needed him to be a solid backup. Another power forward from France. Etc. Etc. Nothing new here. Harder to tell this season because all these transfer guys had big stats. But as one random Twitter guys evaluation proved, all just terrible on defense. But that never gets talked about. I admit I tried to be hopeful.
 
Yep. And VCU does not have one of their best teams out there this year, but the talent level difference compared to us will still be dramatic. It is inexcusable to have back to back years where our talent level is not close to where the top 4 A-10 teams are, and possibly behind even the mid tier teams.
Maybe there's a lot of talented kids that don't want to play for Mooney. Education isn't as important as it used to be so facilities, NIL and coach have to be sold. Facilities and I guess NIL aren't problems. So.....
 
Well, going back 15 years, I have pointed out many a season where moon could not fill out a roster. We had the kid from Northeastern who averaged 1.5 and we needed him to be a solid backup. Another power forward from France. Etc. Etc. Nothing new here. Harder to tell this season because all these transfer guys had big stats. But as one random Twitter guys evaluation proved, all just terrible on defense. But that never gets talked about. I admit I tried to be hopeful.
Maybe we couldn't fill out a whole roster, but most of the 15 years through 2024, we did have a pretty good starting 5 and some decent bench guys. The last 2 years, it is not that we have had all bad players, it just seems like most of our starters are more bench type A-10 guys that are less talented than a good A-10 team's starting 5. We have gotten some good transfers, but, except for a few exceptions, have recruited so poorly this whole decade that we just can't hang with the top teams right now.
 
The most damning part of Mooney’s tenure to me has been his complete inability to capitalize on the three times we actually did make the tournament and the one time we won the A10 regular season. The KA teams that made it led to a recruiting classes with Terry Allen (good player, couldn’t get us over the top), ShawnDre same), Deion Taylor (bust) and Tre Davis (average A10 player at best). Couldn’t win with those guys and it killed any momentum we’d had.

Then we make it with the Gilyard/Golden crew and immediately follow that up with a clunker and terrible HS recruiting. Strike gold with Jordan King and win the league, which translated into an 8-win season. You just can’t operate like that. Momentum is fleeting.
 
CM loves to find a diamond in the rough. But I think that’s his default approach, so you end up with a lot of lumps of coal.
 
The most damning part of Mooney’s tenure to me has been his complete inability to capitalize on the three times we actually did make the tournament and the one time we won the A10 regular season. The KA teams that made it led to a recruiting classes with Terry Allen (good player, couldn’t get us over the top), ShawnDre same), Deion Taylor (bust) and Tre Davis (average A10 player at best). Couldn’t win with those guys and it killed any momentum we’d had.

Then we make it with the Gilyard/Golden crew and immediately follow that up with a clunker and terrible HS recruiting. Strike gold with Jordan King and win the league, which translated into an 8-win season. You just can’t operate like that. Momentum is fleeting.
Agreed, plus the fact that the number of high level recruits in a class maxes out at 1 (maybe 2) regardless of the year. I think that may intersect with the diamond in the rough theory that Tbone mentions. Always gets the high risk guy (injury late in HS) or a guy that needs a couple years of development. Very hard to build a team if the majority are projects or long shots.
 
The most damning part of Mooney’s tenure to me has been his complete inability to capitalize on the three times we actually did make the tournament and the one time we won the A10 regular season. The KA teams that made it led to a recruiting classes with Terry Allen (good player, couldn’t get us over the top), ShawnDre same), Deion Taylor (bust) and Tre Davis (average A10 player at best). Couldn’t win with those guys and it killed any momentum we’d had.

Then we make it with the Gilyard/Golden crew and immediately follow that up with a clunker and terrible HS recruiting. Strike gold with Jordan King and win the league, which translated into an 8-win season. You just can’t operate like that. Momentum is fleeting.
I would take Terry Allen and ShawnDre on any team you want to throw out there. Not sure why you would use them as examples of poor recruiting.
 
As I stated somewhere recently, a Moon specialty is having quality players or all-A10 caliber players and not filling the roster around them properly. Glaring weaknesses in spots, weak benches, etc. Wasn't Joe Kirby in the bench rotation for TJ and Shawn'dre's final season. No slight to him, but he was a walk on, where if there was a strong bench, that was probably an NCAA team. The gap between TJ and Shawn'dre and the freshmen that year (Buckingham, Sherod) had what, only Fore in it? The portal should be able to provide immediate patches, but the system...

And as stated here and many other times, an inability to string together quality recruiting classes year after year, with upper level players in them nonstop, is a big issue, particularly after NCAAs/2+ years of success. It's almost like the staff is trying to recruit role players who will never threaten starters' minutes. But then when the big class or star(s) graduate(s), you're left with a bunch of role players and maybe 1 or 2 top level A10 type players, the Burton senior year being the most recent example.

We have had offensive success with short guards, but I think at this point is has to be said that we are generally poor defending the 3 as a result of those same small guards, especially when we go 5'9", 6', 6'3" in the guard/wing positions. We are not altering shots, affecting sight lines, and generally making things tough on shooters. And the switching onto bigs is obvs a 20 year problem.

I'll also say that for whatever reason, especially the last decade, Moon only recruits white guy centers, even for the project guys or the backups like Friendshuh, big Luke, who were total non-factors. Seeing Hunger as a backup on GW, reminded me that we recruited him and failed to land him, so even our misses are the same archetype. It's a second example of the staff being indoctrinated in the Moon rut of what a position is, they cannot envision it another way or recruit outside of that archetype.
 
Nelson-Ododa was the same class as Luke.
Nelson-Ododa also was an ill fit for Mooney's scheme and ended up transferring. So, I think this may have actually reinforced to Mooney to only recruit a very specific type of big man, which is a center can that can operate out of the high post mainly and is a gifted passer. Even when he does get a center with a slightly different skill set (like Walz) he hammers his system home as to how we wants centers to operate and than you get what we have now with Walz. A big strong center who plays his best around the basket but Mooney rarely has him there, instead he puts him out the 3 point line with his back to the basket.

I can only get slightly irritated with Walz because Mooney has him constantly in a position that is not optimal for his skill set. It would be akin to having your point guard, trying to post up all of the time in your offense and then getting pissed at the PG for not having more assists and running the offense.
 
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