It's pretty simple and it doesn't have to do with heart or leadership or stuff like that. Shaver only cares about one side of the ball. That one side isn't good enough to bail out the defense this year.

That's the elephant in the room thanks.

I think you have to realistically expect down years. Mid-majors tend to down cycle more frequently/harder than those in high-major conferences. What you hope for are (1) the down cycles to be short, (2) the good years to be a lot of fun, and (3) the team to give effort in the down cycles.

I'd say that the jury is out on this down cycle's length. Our last down cycle lasted 3 years (2010-2011 to 2012-2013). The good years lasted a little longer this time, and made it fun to watch the team.

I'd feel better about this season if (i) our good years were better and (ii) I thought the team was giving great effort but was simply missing a piece/young.

Good Years: The fact that we've only beaten three teams in the top-100 RPI over the last four seasons (our "good" years), including this year, is a big disappointment to me (we're 3-25 over that period). Our wins came against UNCW (46th in 2015-2016), Wofford (47th in 2014-2015), and Towson (100th in 2013-2014). That's not that high of a bar, considering the 100th-ranked team is unlikely to even make the NIT. During that period we also lost to seven teams ranked over 250th: Hampton at 333, Howard at 328, Elon at 259, Delaware x2 at 253, Charleston at 297, and Hofstra at 279. There are an additional four losses to teams ranked 200+. We're not talking about low-end CBI/CIT teams.

So all of that is to say, I wish our good years were better. Winning 20 games doesn't mean anything if you're just going 25-5 in 30 games against Jamestown High School. Who you beat and who beats you matters more than raw wins.

Effort: In addition, if I felt like the effort was there, it would be a different situation. These are players the coach recruited and it's the coach's job to make them play hard. The coach can utilize different methods, including relying on a team captain to help push his players, but ultimately it falls on the coach to have his team play hard. We can all accept a valiant, but losing, effort. That wouldn't be nearly as concerning to me. I will leave discussions on substitution patterns and defensive schemes for another day. Down cycles are an inevitable part of mid-major life (unless you're Gonzaga, etc.), but it would be much more palatable to have a team giving 100% and still coming up short.

I'm not sure what a down cycle means any more. Let's just put this in perspective.

Over the last 50 years (starting with the 1966-67 season) we have had

6 20 win seasons
18 seasons with a 0.500 winning percentage or better, or 32 under 0.500
16 seasons when we didn't get 10 wins

This season we're going to be somewhere around 0.500. I'll call that an okay season, but not what we want going forward. Down seasons used to be really, really bad and lasted for a decade or so.

We've only had two good eras in those 50 years. First under Bruce Parkhill and the last 10 under Shaver. The rest were bad.

I think this IS our down cycle in the new CAA. Tony has gotten the team to a point where even in our worst years we should be hanging with the middle of the conference. It's a marker of how far he's brought the program.

It hurts to be losing to Elon in both football and basketball. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't consider Elon to be a middle of the pack team. However, given the brutal play on the road this year and the front loaded road schedule, we might still finish somewhat high.

We need to sweep both Delaware and Drexel. Assuming we lose both other road games to JMU and Towson, that would leave us 7-6 with the five remaining home games(UNCW, Towson, NU, Hofstra and Charleston). We would only need to win 3 of those to be above .500. If we go 5-6 or less, we will likely be in one of the Friday games in Charleston. The next 4 games could change the entire course of the season if we can win them all.

BTW, if this is a down year, we had 20 of them from the time I arrived at W&M until the first finals trip under Shaver. Only Charlie's great team of the late 90's was exempt from that stretch. I know an argument can be made that the league is not as good now, but we are also much better than we were for most of those years. It also shows the impact that Rustoven, Sheldon, Britt, Thornton, Tarpey and others made in the last 4 years, with Thornton and Tarpey being the best two. I still think Omar and Daniel have had good careers and hope there is one more run coming this season.

Will be interesting to hear Tony on the coaches show tonight.

.....and if that's the case, it's not all that bad. I'm excited we can even say something like this after the decades of futility. Let's not talk about not making it to the NCAA tournament as "bad luck". We have been very bad. Now that we're honestly competitive maybe we will have some "good luck" in a year like this one.

The next 2 weeks could be a confidence builder for us. Beating Delaware is a must, but then the games against UNCW and Northeastern tell us if we can compete with them. I know that it is a different year and with a different team, but in 2013, we beat Charleston in the tourney after losing to them by more than 30. We beat Towson after getting blown out by them in Williamsburg and losing to them twice, and we were 1 minute from beating Delaware after losing to them twice. We need to win enough games to get a reasonable draw in the tournament. But, Pierce, Knight, Rowley, Tot, Burchfield and all of the starters have 5 weeks to figure out how to be playing their absolute best the first weekend in March. If you watch some of Dixon's best, some of Cohn's best, Omar's best, and Malinowski's best, they can play. But, none of them can win the championship tourney by himself. If one person's will and play was enough, Marcus would have done it(or Terry would have). Most frustrating team of the last 4, yes. But coach would not be fighting so hard if he didn't think this team has a chance to be good. Plus, it will likely take their best 40 minutes to beat Northeastern and/or UNCW. Given the great progress we saw with Sheldon, I still think we might see more improvement this season from Whitman and Knight. Whitman has already improved significantly already.