Shockers @ VCU- November 13th, 2012 (ESPNU)

[another shocker]

In '08, Wichita State was a young team- Murry, Kyles, Stutz etc - but Georgetown and Michigan State, two top10/15 teams couldn't blow them off the floor, not even close to it. Hell, VCU should have blown the Shockers off the floor last year in the NCAA, the way that was going- but the Shox battled back, like they ALWAYS do under Marshall. And thank god Turgeon wasn't here last New Years eve- or Creighton would have left town with a blowout win instead of a nailbiter (Creighton was locked in that night- put ALL their eggs in one basket- just like VCU did vs Wichita State last year- Shaka hates the Shockers and all that).

Marshall is coming to battle Nov 13. There will be a plan in place to maximize this group's winning potential.

[shock]

Shaka hates the shockers because Marshall is a better coach.

[DistrictBaller]

I'm not sure why a lowly 12-seed like VCU should have blown an experienced top 25 team like Wichita State off the floor last year. I remember reading the comments before the game here, and very, very few posters thought we had any chance against you guys. KC Shox actually called it right before the game and got a whole bunch of grief about it. We pulled off a shocker against the Shockers, but we definitely weren't supposed to blow you guys off the floor, it was quite the opposite if you read these boards before the game.

As for November 13th, I will not make the same mistake of underestimating Wichita State that many here did us in March. You guys are very talented and capable of pulling out a victory. Marshall is too good a coach not to have a plan for success that can lead to victory if your players play with the poise and execution to carry it out.

[CBB_Fan]

I'm not sure why a lowly 12-seed like VCU should have blown an experienced top 25 team like Wichita State off the floor last year. I remember reading the comments before the game here, and very, very few posters thought we had any chance against you guys. KC Shox actually called it right before the game and got a whole bunch of grief about it. We pulled off a shocker against the Shockers, but we definitely weren't supposed to blow you guys off the floor, it was quite the opposite if you read these boards before the game.

As for November 13th, I will not make the same mistake of underestimating Wichita State that many here did us in March. You guys are very talented and capable of pulling out a victory. Marshall is too good a coach not to have a plan for success that can lead to victory if your players play with the poise and execution to carry it out.

It sounds like he was saying that the game was starting to become a blowout, but the Shockers battled back despite a great game by VCU. In earlier years (Turgeon), battling back would not have been guaranteed.

[another shocker]

But I'm not talking about perceived slights, DB. I'm saying, the way that game started, it looked like a blowout was imminent. Marshall reigned them in, though, and actually battled them back to take a lead late. Unbelievable. Stutz and Murry then alligator arm it- the rest is history.

Hopefully, there are no alligator arms (afraid to take the big shot) on this team.

[DistrictBaller]

Thanks for the clarification man. That makes sense.

Actually that's something that was a troubling trend for VCU towards the end of the season and not all about Wichita State battling back. We built big leads on all of our teams towards the end of the year and had them come towards the ends of the games. You could almost call it. We had a troubling propensity to lose leads once we stopped pressing and tried to sit on them. We had a lot of trouble scoring out of our half-court offense since we were such a mediocre shooting team last year. Conventional wisdom when you build a lead is to be more conservative, bleed the clock, look for great shots instead of good shots, and we were bad at finishing those situations because our half-court offense was awful. We got points by pressing and forcing points off of turnovers.

Case in point, look at our last 4 games of the season. We started off the CAA semifinals against a 24-win George Mason team on a 22-0 run. The lead ballooned to 28 at 32-4 before the halfway point of the first-half. We sat on our lead and slowly watched it bleed away. We were actually at a 6-point game in the final minute of play before winning by 10. It was unreal.

In the CAA championship we led by 16 at the half 35-19 over a 27-5 Drexel squad at the time. Slowly as we tried to bleed clock, the Dragons came back. It ended up being a 3-point game with an opportunity at the buzzer for Drexel to tie the game, much like our game with the Shockers where VCU led by 13 mid-way through the 2nd-half before it came down to 3 points at the buzzer with Stutz having an opportunity to tie.

Our game against Indiana, same deal. We had a 9 point lead mid-way through the 2nd-half, led by 3 with 59 seconds left and 2 free throws by our senior leader, both of which he missed. The only difference is that we came up short in that one.

Our lack of execution in the half-court offense was a recurring problem all throughout the end of last year. It's something to consider for Gregg Marshall, and something we hope our team has grown out of this season.

[another shocker]

It sounds like he was saying that the game was starting to become a blowout, but the Shockers battled back despite a great game by VCU. In earlier years (Turgeon), battling back would not have been guaranteed.

You got it!

[another shocker]

Thanks for the clarification man. That makes sense.

Actually that's something that was a troubling trend for VCU towards the end of the season and not all about Wichita State battling back. We built big leads on all of our teams towards the end of the year and had them come towards the ends of the games. You could almost call it. We had a troubling propensity to lose leads once we stopped pressing and tried to sit on them. We had a lot of trouble scoring out of our half-court offense since we were such a mediocre shooting team last year. Conventional wisdom when you build a lead is to be more conservative, bleed the clock, look for great shots instead of good shots, and we were bad at finishing those situations because our half-court offense was awful. We got points by pressing and forcing points off of turnovers.

Case in point, look at our last 4 games of the season. We started off the CAA semifinals against a 24-win George Mason team on a 22-0 run. The lead ballooned to 28 at 32-4 before the halfway point of the first-half. We sat on our lead and slowly watched it bleed away. We were actually at a 6-point game in the final minute of play before winning by 10. It was unreal.

In the CAA championship we led by 16 at the half 35-19 over a 27-5 Drexel squad at the time. Slowly as we tried to bleed clock, the Dragons came back. It ended up being a 3-point game with an opportunity at the buzzer for Drexel to tie the game, much like our game with the Shockers where VCU led by 13 mid-way through the 2nd-half before it came down to 3 points at the buzzer with Stutz having an opportunity to tie.

Our game against Indiana, same deal. We had a 9 point lead mid-way through the 2nd-half, led by 3 with 59 seconds left and 2 free throws by our senior leader, both of which he missed. The only difference is that we came up short in that one.

Our lack of execution in the half-court offense was a recurring problem all throughout the end of last year. It's something to consider for Gregg Marshall, and something we hope our team has grown out of this season.

That's nice, but the modus operandi is Marshall teams don't get blown out by anybody (WuDrWu), even when they play like crapola, like they did against VCU, for example.

sidenote: play crapola against the Shockers, and you're getting run out the gym.

[DistrictBaller]

I certainly have no qualms with that statement, but it definitely goes both ways. You haven't played in our arena yet, and things can get pretty ugly for inexperienced teams in there. We've beaten much more experienced Shocker teams away from our home floor twice now in consecutive years in games we led for much of the game before Wichita State made late comebacks, and we are a different beast on our home floor which anyone who has had to play us there regularly will tell you. That doesn't mean a blow-out will occur, but much like you didn't expect our game last year to be close and were surprised, that kind of thing can and has definitely happened with better teams than the one Wichita State will be bringing into Richmond.

It's one thing to put out a platitude, it's quite another to show a trend over several games that shows a common tie to how we approached the second-halves of games late in the season. Playing like crap will lose us a lot of games regardless of who we play. The same will be true of Wichita State if you play that way. If you make mistakes, VCU will make you pay. We forced teams into mistakes better than any team in the country last year and return most of them back this year. We'll see how it goes.

[Kung Wu]

One of the reasons Stutz was ineffective against VCU was that he was perhaps the least athletic player in the entire NCAA, and not really suited to playing a hyper-fast team like VCU.

Dude.

[CBB_Fan]

I certainly have no qualms with that statement, but it definitely goes both ways. You haven't played in our arena yet, and things can get pretty ugly for inexperienced teams in there. We've beaten much more experienced Shocker teams away from our home floor twice now in consecutive years in games we led for much of the game before Wichita State made late comebacks, and we are a different beast on our home floor which anyone who has had to play us there regularly will tell you. That doesn't mean a blow-out will occur, but much like you didn't expect our game last year to be close and were surprised, that kind of thing can and has definitely happened with better teams than the one Wichita State will be bringing into Richmond.

It's one thing to put out a platitude, it's quite another to show a trend over several games that shows a common tie to how we approached the second-halves of games late in the season. Playing like crap will lose us a lot of games regardless of who we play. The same will be true of Wichita State if you play that way. If you make mistakes, VCU will make you pay. We forced teams into mistakes better than any team in the country last year and return most of them back this year. We'll see how it goes.

On the other hand, one positive for Wichita State under Gregg Marshall has been playing on the road. The last two years, the Shockers were (at least one point last season) the best team in the nation on the road. However, the Shockers have not been nearly as good on neutral floors (except Madison Square garden), either in the MVC tournament or in our preseason tournaments. It is reasonable to say that they will be one of the team less affected by playing you guys at home, but I think that if VCU wins, it will because they are just better at that point in the season, not because of any home court advantage.

[CBB_Fan]

Dude.

It is true. Perhaps I should have said "least athletic effective" player, but Stutz was the slowest player I watched in any game over the last year. He was good despite his athletic faults, but don't discount the fact that they existed.

[Kung Wu]

It is true. Perhaps I should have said "least athletic effective" player, but Stutz was the slowest player I watched in any game over the last year. He was good despite his athletic faults, but don't discount the fact that they existed.

You watched each of 300+ teams play their full rosters last year, even the players that never played a single minute? Then analyzed everyone to see if they were faster than Stutz? And then drew a conclusion that because a player isn't "fast" at running, he is a bad "athlete"?

[DistrictBaller]

Fair post and I agree with your points. I'm sure playing in a raucous arena like Koch desensitizes your players to that kind of atmosphere on the road. Very reasonable.

I think it will come down to match ups as opposed to who is better. I think it's fairly obvious that Wichita State was the better team last March, but the better team that night was not Wichita State, and that was largely because we neutralized or won some key match ups.

I happen to think that if Carl Hall wins his match up in the post, which he is perfectly capable of, that the Shockers could have a chance to follow our script from March and catch us by surprise. That in turn depends on how the guards handle VCU's pressure and get him the ball. WSU is capable of pulling out a W here. No doubt about that.

[C0|dB|00ded]

DB,

Thanks for stopping by, now scurry on back to your home board. How long have you been following VCU Goats basketball? I only ask this because almost every post you've made is laced with slightly defensive remarks. Any comment of ours that could even slightly imply that we have a chance against your team is met with more defense of yours. The point I'm trying to make is, act like you've been there before and stop selling us on how "good" your team is. You aren't here to find out about the game, you are here to try and build your confidence in yours.

Last year we lost by 3 points and this year we are bigger, faster, and more talented. Several of our players lack D1 experience, and several of our players have lots of D1 experience. Talent can make up for experience depending on the apportion of it. Marshall is one of the top coaches in the country and probably the hardest recruiter. He has turned down multiple jobs offerings in the neighborhood of $2M. HCGM is not an amateur, he will have his players ready for war.


T


...:cool: