Rough start yesterday by the women, but in the end they found a way to claw back into the game and get the win. A nice win for them. There are going to be bumps in the road, but its nice to see we are not going to just fold when things dont go our way early

i watched the game friday night at charleston. we gave it our best effort. we had a possession where we had 4 or 5 offensive rebounds. that shows our hustle but you also have to miss 4 or 5 shots to get that many rebounds. i'm just not sure we have the fire power this year to get it turned around.

arie bluestein was talking about baker getting going. maybe there will be a breakout offensive game for her. mcgurk hasn't been able to follow up that big lasalle game but she's also a freshman and her minutes have been inconsistent. i'm just looking for shot makers somewhere.

The defense is still there, but we will continue finding baskets and points. It was a concern to start the season and doesnt appear to have an end in sight this season

we almost drove up to stony brook today. thankfully we went to the pa auto show instead. i'm not surprised we lost or even that we got blown out. i watched some of stony brook against charleston and they're the type of team that always gives us trouble...good size and athletic.

a few things that stood out from the box score since i didn't watch. getting shutout in the first quarter is pretty embarrassing. i'm curious why we only played 7 players...especially with brooke mullin going 1-15 from the floor. i'm assuming momo laclair is hurt since she didn't play. if our plan this year is to sink or swim based on mullin then a. we might as well just shut it down for the season because we have no chance and b. it shows a lack of understanding of what a player can do or should be expected to do.

imagine if spiker expected monroe to come in and score 20 points per game. that's the equivalent. mullin was a solid defender and role player at villanova just like monroe at penn.

saatman was 0-6. i'm not sure what we're accomplishing there. i feel like she's gone backwards through her time with us. that falls on the coaching staff unless she's not doing things they ask her to do.

i hate to bury the women's program. they've earned the benefit of the doubt. i still think losing the two nepa recruits really hurt us. i was right they're riding the pine at penn state but i was wrong about the penn state program being on life support. they smoked maryland today so lavelle/murray will likely be on the bench at ncaa tournament games. i guess that's better than being key players for us?

We knew this was going to be a rebuilding year and there would be many struggles. We also knew scoring was going to be a difficult task since Kei did everything and she isnt here now. But it seems worse than expected. One would hope to be seeing progress or some emergence of somebody at this point, and we havent and arent. Getting shut out against anyone in a quarter is really bad. Our defense has done fine but we aren't winning many more games without having any way to score the basketball. I hope Amy is scouting hard in the portal

Delaware/Drexel WBB on the way Friday. The Blue Hens might have just figured something out Sunday in a home win over Towson. Delaware was buoyed by freshman center Ande'a Cherisier's career-high 21 points (5-of-12 FG, 11-of-12 FT).

Cherisier started over incumbent starter Klarke Sconiers, and Sconiers didn't skip a beat with 17 points (4-of-7, 9-of-10). If that seems like a lot of free throws for Hens, it was: UD led TU in team FT (27-34) vs. (5-9).

The charity stripe chances helped alleviate a putrid Delaware FG start early, and it helped matters that Towson didn't capitalize with its own shooting. DEL scored 10 and 16 points in the first and second quarters, respectively, before heating up late in the third to total 25 in that quarter.

I recap all that just to say it was a surprising performance by the Hens, in my book. I went into the day expecting an extension of the squad's losing streak suffered in games against tough Stony Brook, W&M in OT, NC A&T, and NE.

Boiled down to finishing strongly against a good conf opponent: Delaware ended the game on a 20-4 run over 8:11 and held Towson scoreless in the last 3:44. I am unwilling to predict that that will carry over into the DAC. I think the Dragons' most recent showing, while discouraging, is just the right amount of eye-catching in a negative way to create false sense of security in this UD team that is just now rediscovering the joy of victory.

honestly i haven't given much attention to delaware mostly because we have our own problems to deal with. seeing that towson-ud score made me think of that caa semifinal a few years ago where somebody from towson wound up running into the lobby looking for a ref. you wonder what would have happened if towson had won. dan made good points on the men's side that towson tends to play physical and that gives our men's and women's programs issues.

i still can't help but think ud wasn't going to be denied in that final with jasmine dickey finally performing in a big game. she should have owned us every time yet somehow we found a way to win. we had no business winning the title the year before at elon.

drexel and ud haven't rebuilt well since that year. ud arguably lost more since the coach left. in some ways i think we got spoiled having so much individual talent and players that could create their own shot. we got away from a team that moves the ball to create most of its opportunities. we've struggled to score without that type of talent and haven't developed as much new talent after brugler and then washington left.

while i'm talking about jasmine dickey...

i've learned some of the evils of the wnba over the last year by following maddy siegrist from villanova who was dickey's teammate with the dallas wings. neither player really got a fair shot to show what they can do. they randomly cut dickey at the end of the season which apparently isn't an uncommon thing to happen. it looks like she wound up in australia. they only have a handful of rounds in the draft and you're lucky to even make a team unless you're drafted high in the first round. they tend to cut most of their draft picks and the small number of teams in the league make it unlucky you'll find another place to land.

i was excited to have an excuse to follow the wnba. i ended up being pretty put off by the whole thing. all the people arguing for equal pay should be doing more to advocate decent treatment of women's basketball players.

we went down to william and mary. going down there reminded me that it's cool to be in their conference. one of a kind school and nice place to visit.

the story of the game was a possession where we got one wide open midrange shot...missed it...got the rebound...and then missed another wide open shot from the baseline from almost point blank range. 20 turnovers didn't help. a few times we worked hard for a turnover and then gave it right back. their post player nylah young killed us. she did a nice job getting position right under the basket and just kept dropping in layups. really nice touch from the free throw line too.

i was grumpy with my post above about saatman. she had a nice game today which was good to see. hopefully something to build on for her.

i'm hoping mcgurk will play early and often the rest of the year. we wouldn't have won today if she got more minutes and i wouldn't expect her to be a spark to a strong finish. she needs to play for next year and hopefully the years to follow. she's the best chance for an offensive threat on our roster.

I was glad after a quick start against Delaware we found enough to pull that one out. Wins are going to be ugly and a struggle to come by, so it was always nice to beat Delaware who is also struggling. I was not expecting a win at W&M but glad you got a chance to visit and watch the game.

(01-30-2024 08:23 PM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  while i'm talking about jasmine dickey...

i've learned some of the evils of the wnba over the last year by following maddy siegrist from villanova who was dickey's teammate with the dallas wings. neither player really got a fair shot to show what they can do. they randomly cut dickey at the end of the season which apparently isn't an uncommon thing to happen. it looks like she wound up in australia. they only have a handful of rounds in the draft and you're lucky to even make a team unless you're drafted high in the first round. they tend to cut most of their draft picks and the small number of teams in the league make it unlucky you'll find another place to land.

i was excited to have an excuse to follow the wnba. i ended up being pretty put off by the whole thing. all the people arguing for equal pay should be doing more to advocate decent treatment of women's basketball players.

There's just not enough teams in the WNBA and expansion is needed. It's just way too hard from many professional quality players to get into and stay on a WNBA roster. One may argue that their pay is low due to lack of interest in the league. Part of the reason for lack of interest is that there's just not enough teams, and interest in the league may be limited to fans who have teams in their local market. WNBA players will never make big money, but I feel that there is enough interest in double the size of the league, which could bring in some extra TV money, not much though.

(02-05-2024 11:29 AM)J.B. Wrote:  There's just not enough teams in the WNBA and expansion is needed. It's just way too hard from many professional quality players to get into and stay on a WNBA roster. One may argue that their pay is low due to lack of interest in the league. Part of the reason for lack of interest is that there's just not enough teams, and interest in the league may be limited to fans who have teams in their local market. WNBA players will never make big money, but I feel that there is enough interest in double the size of the league, which could bring in some extra TV money, not much though.

I said this elsewhere, but it's crazy to think about how few WNBA players there are. Somewhere around 132 active players total.

I have read all those stories about how there is no Philly team and I still don't understand it. They're not gonna sell 18,000 tickets a game, I get it, but surely they can draw in the high single thousands.

(02-05-2024 11:52 AM)JonP Wrote:  

(02-05-2024 11:29 AM)J.B. Wrote:  There's just not enough teams in the WNBA and expansion is needed. It's just way too hard from many professional quality players to get into and stay on a WNBA roster. One may argue that their pay is low due to lack of interest in the league. Part of the reason for lack of interest is that there's just not enough teams, and interest in the league may be limited to fans who have teams in their local market. WNBA players will never make big money, but I feel that there is enough interest in double the size of the league, which could bring in some extra TV money, not much though.

I said this elsewhere, but it's crazy to think about how few WNBA players there are. Somewhere around 132 active players total.

I have read all those stories about how there is no Philly team and I still don't understand it. They're not gonna sell 18,000 tickets a game, I get it, but surely they can draw in the high single thousands.

David Adelman, who is the Sixers minority owner who is trying to build the new arena, said that he would like to invest in a WBA team for Philadelphia, but that the NBA does not want NBA owners having controlling interest in WNBA teams. I don't understand why. NBA owners are the ones with the deep pockets who could sustain ownership in WNBA teams and are the ones who should be owning WNBA teams. Many of these owners also own the arenas so it makes even more sense for the WNBA teams to be an extension of their NBA counterparts from a financial perspective....
Kind of like Comcast Specatcor owning the Wings in the NLL and basically using Flyers employees to operate the Wings. CS can just look at the Wings as 9 extra mini home games for the Flyers and generate extra revenue for the arena on dates that would normally be dark.

they're missing an opportunity to grow the game. we went to see caitlin clark last year at maryland. i think i bought tickets within a few weeks of the game. they were reserved behind one of the baskets. we went to the game saturday night and xfinity center was sold out. there was a massive line outside when we got there 90 minutes before tip. thankfully i got ga tickets back in november.

it was a crime to not have lsu play iowa in a nonconference game.

the good part for the women's game is it sounds like there's more money to be made in college so the best players will stick around. they know they're very dispensable in the pros too. this is one of a variety of reasons why i think the women's game is better right now. power 5 men's basketball is not interesting to me.

i was talking to somebody with more knowledge about this who wants former or current nba players to step up and start expansion teams. there was discussion last year about expansion and then they back pedaled. i can't remember why.

since i have peacock it didn't really dawn on me how many people were missing out on caitlin clark breaking the record. this is why streaming in general sucks. i heard a bunch of services are getting together to make a sports package. i would expect more of this to happen over time. we'll see how flo positions itself.

(02-16-2024 11:44 AM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  since i have peacock it didn't really dawn on me how many people were missing out on caitlin clark breaking the record. this is why streaming in general sucks. i heard a bunch of services are getting together to make a sports package. i would expect more of this to happen over time. we'll see how flo positions itself.

Since I was at the game last night, I didn't see the Iowa game nor did I know what channel it was on. I would have assumed ESPN, but I guess not.

The new sports package is really just a YouTube TV type bundle for people who only want to pay for sports channels and TBS/TNT and nothing else. For those of us who have cable, it won't be needed since we already get all of those channels.

And Flo will continue to be Flo, a second rate streaming service that doesn't advertise their product and will just focus on charging a lot of money to a niche market that is interested in some sports and leagues that are not covered by the major outlets. Flo won't have anything to do with this new sports bundle.

that is certainly a fair criticism of flo. there is no advertisement in the main stream. in fairness they're not attached to a tv network like peacock with nbc or espn+ with espn. it will always make them seen second rate if they don't bother to get their name out there.

We went down to Towson. Beat the snow home although it looks like this storm was a bust. I didn’t feel like shoveling this morning anyway.

I actually take away some positives. We had some semblance of an offense at times with good ball movement and lots of motion. Hodges got most of her points off cuts. Mullin ran things from the wing like Aubree brown used to. It looks like we want to go inside which makes sense since that’s where our experience lives.

Trouble is saatman and valentine keep struggling to make simple plays. Too many lazy passes and missing easy shots and rebounds. Hodges was hit with 6 TOs including 3 in OT but I don’t think they were all her fault.

Amy is doing her best to squeeze every drop out of this team. They play hard. Grace had 10 rebounds and made every other hustle in play you can think of. They’re just so limited offensively. I didn’t want us betting the farm on mullin but 0-12??? Hopefully she can at least improve with finishing in the paint or start getting to the line because we got her some good looks within the offense. She needs to stop worrying about the refs and drive to the basket with some conviction so she’ll get more calls.

Towson had a vintage Towson night where they could have blasted us if they ratcheted up their pressure sooner or bothered to put in much effort until the end. Their last coach could get them a playing the right way and it got them to the tournament. I believe she has temple playing well now too.

I tried to watch last night, but the Flo feed was so awful that it was unwatchable. I would have thought it was my internet, but other guys on the Slack channel were complaining too. I was watching the Rider game on ESPN+ on the same device and the picture on ESPN was perfect. Even when the game went to OT I decided not to tune in. Sadly, I've pretty much tuned out of Drexel WBB for the season. There's only so much sports I can follow at a time, and I guess I've been spoiled by their success over the last 15 years. Hopefully they can get it together and return to the top of the CAA in the near future.

The way that both Drexel/Delaware games ended this season is nothing short of remarkable.

On 2/2 at Drexel, Delaware led 47-44 with 6:29 left and Drexel finishes on a 9-2 run to win 53-49.

Today at Delaware, Delaware led 57-47 with 8:35 left and Drexel finishes on a 14-2 run.

It's crazy for a team to do that once, but twice against the same opponent...just WOW.

This game brings Drexel's record to 6-6 and in a tie with Towson for 5th. Both teams are two games behind W&M for 4th, so it's unlikely that they'll get a bye in the CAAT.