(8) Friday BE Games - Nov 10th 2017...

[Bill Marsh]

I'm looking forward to the season, but not to that first kick in the stomach that inevitably comes when you're a Johnny fan. Just hope it doesn't come Friday.

The St John's bench looked pretty short in this first game.

A wins a win but it was a little discouraging to see the Johnnies get outrebounded by 15 to a team without much height. That was the achilles heel last year and appears to still be a problem. 6'1 Shamorie Ponds led the team in boards once again.

The team they started was undersized in both the front court and the back court. Yet Yakwe spent most of the game on the bench. Very strange use of personnel in an early season game.

The good news that they had a +10 turnover margin, which made up for most of the rebounding deficiency.

[cu blujs]

Marcus Foster (9-13, 2-4 from 3) and Kyri Thomas (10-12, 2-3 from 3) are going to be a tough combo for anyone to deal with. Hard to say how good Yale is, being first game, but they weren't terrible by any stretch. Krampelj was also terrific on the inside, except for 3 TOs where he literally fumbled the ball away with little pressure (6-11 shooting). Mints is so much improved handling the PG spot over last year (3-3, 2-3 from 3, 5 A and only one TO). And freshman Ty-Shon Alexander is going to be a good one (0-3 shooting, butr 5 A and only 1 TO). Ronnie Harrell Jr. is going to be the X factor. He is so unorthodox, and sometimes gets out of control, but his body movement and high octane game are infectious. He just gets things rolling (though we will have to live with some glorious screw ups from time to time) - 3-5 shooting, 7 rbs and a couple of assists in 22 minutes. But if this were hockey, he might have had three or four times that many assists. Many times his play led to break downs in the defense leading to open shots but he didn't make the last pass or we missed the shot after a good pass from Ronnie. Also satisfying to see that we continued to move the ball inside and out, not just around the outside when Yale went to a 2-3 zone in the second half. We did not stagnate like we have done so many times over the years against zone. Maybe we will better handle zones this year and not devolve into holding and passing the ball around the perimeter and then jack a 3. Overall, after the first 10 minutes, defense seems improved over last year. Still have a ways to go on communication, but pretty happy. Only down side was that we couldn't seem to solve Yale's free throw defense (4-10). Did only shoot 32% from three, but if you take out the bench players going 1-7 after McD emptied the bench at the five minute mark, we were a more respectable, though not great 38% from 3 up to that point. A good start against a team that many predict will win the Ivy league and be in the NCAA - which should make this one a good RPI game out of the shoot.

[gtmoBlue]

Long post cu_blujs. Way too much info in it also. Let these guys watch the video if they want to glean info.
Let's just keep it at: "Jays won, Foster with 23 pts." or "4 players in dbl-figures."

[xufan02]

What is the over/under on how many times Dickey Simpkins says #splash tomorrow during the Xavier game?

Did it happen? How about "elevator to the 10th floor!"?

Dickey got some new material, surprised he didn't say it once despite X hitting a plethora of threes.

[Hall2012]

Marcus Foster (9-13, 2-4 from 3) and Kyri Thomas (10-12, 2-3 from 3) are going to be a tough combo for anyone to deal with. Hard to say how good Yale is, being first game, but they weren't terrible by any stretch. Krampelj was also terrific on the inside, except for 3 TOs where he literally fumbled the ball away with little pressure (6-11 shooting). Mints is so much improved handling the PG spot over last year (3-3, 2-3 from 3, 5 A and only one TO). And freshman Ty-Shon Alexander is going to be a good one (0-3 shooting, butr 5 A and only 1 TO). Ronnie Harrell Jr. is going to be the X factor. He is so unorthodox, and sometimes gets out of control, but his body movement and high octane game are infectious. He just gets things rolling (though we will have to live with some glorious screw ups from time to time) - 3-5 shooting, 7 rbs and a couple of assists in 22 minutes. But if this were hockey, he might have had three or four times that many assists. Many times his play led to break downs in the defense leading to open shots but he didn't make the last pass or we missed the shot after a good pass from Ronnie. Also satisfying to see that we continued to move the ball inside and out, not just around the outside when Yale went to a 2-3 zone in the second half. We did not stagnate like we have done so many times over the years against zone. Maybe we will better handle zones this year and not devolve into holding and passing the ball around the perimeter and then jack a 3. Overall, after the first 10 minutes, defense seems improved over last year. Still have a ways to go on communication, but pretty happy. Only down side was that we couldn't seem to solve Yale's free throw defense (4-10). Did only shoot 32% from three, but if you take out the bench players going 1-7 after McD emptied the bench at the five minute mark, we were a more respectable, though not great 38% from 3 up to that point. A good start against a team that many predict will win the Ivy league and be in the NCAA - which should make this one a good RPI game out of the shoot.

TL:DR. Also, paragraphs are your friend.

[X Factor]

What is the over/under on how many times Dickey Simpkins says #splash tomorrow during the Xavier game?

Did it happen? How about "elevator to the 10th floor!"?

Dickey got some new material, surprised he didn't say it once despite X hitting a plethora of threes.

He broke out the "sharing is caring" when X was sharing the ball and everyone was raining threes.

Naji Marshall is going to be a very, very good player for X. He's a 6'7 freshman skilled wing who can defend, rebound, bring it up the court. Really impressed with him last night.

Trevon and JP didn't even break a sweat combining for 43 points.

Morehead is terrible though, so hard to really get a feel for Xavier.