After a massive win against Delaware our guys head south for a Carolina swing, the first of which is A&T. A&T is 5-4 in their inaugural CAA season. They are 5-3 at home. They have some talent so this is not a game we can look past. They have wins over Stony Brook and W&M with double digit losses to UNCW, NU, Towson. Kam Woods is their top player and he is scoring 19 a game. He will get his so we have to do our best while defending everyone else. He is also just a sophomore, so he will be a player to watch if he sticks around this conference. Coming off a huge emotional win, I am expecting us to come out flat. I do hope we can recover. If we have any aspirations of a top 4 seed, we are margin the rest of the way is razor thin. This is not one of those we can drop. However, I think we do.

DU- 71
NC A&T- 76

North Carolina A&T is the only team to win at Hofstra. Hofstra made a 3 to go up 13 with 9:57 left, and North Carolina A&T won 81-79 at the buzzer. That was with Woods scoring only 12. Demetric Horton scored 21, and Duncan Powell scored 18. Marcus Watson averages 13.9, Horton averages 11.1, and Powell averages 7.0. They have balanced rebounding with players averaging 5.8, 5.1, 5.1, 4.7, and 4.0. They have ten regulars, including six players who started at least half of their games. Nobody other than their top five scorers averages many points, rebounds, or assists. Woods is their point guard. He averages 3.3 assists and 1.7 steals. They made exactly half of their twos, and shoot threes .031 better than their opponents. They have 50 percent more steals than their opponents. They average 3.8 fewer rebounds and 2.5 more fouls.

3 point favorites. Still hoping we dont drop this one. Keep momentum heading into next Thursday

There are 2 problems on this team as I watch Drexel piss away a double digit lead against a mediocre at best team.

The first is Amari Williams. I have been tired of his attitude since the last game I went to at Towson. His body language is terrible. He thinks he’s a guard but has a terrible shot. Somebody called him an elite passer and he has four turnovers right now. I wanted Coach Spiker to send him to the locker room at Towson. Players like him are a cancer to a team.

The second is coach Spiker. He is allowing this cancer to grow. He has a record of this with Harper a few years ago. On one hand he keeps a great kid like Luke House on the floor like he’s making some statement that this program is based on attitude and work ethic. On the other he will leave a player like Amari Williams on the floor. It’s just one of many examples of our program being confused about who we want to be.

Spiker and his staff should be deciding how we want to play and what he wants his players to do. It seems like it is too often the other way around. Let Amari transfer if he wants to waste his potential elsewhere. If Spiker’s not going to take charge, then we need to find somebody who will.

Looking forward to watching the women tomorrow night because win or lose I know the effort will be there to play the right way and anything other than that won’t be tolerated. That’s why they have been so successful above any other reason.

How did we win this?

Nice contingent of Drexel supporters at the game

Id say this was a tale of 2 halves, but it really wasnt. We played terrible in both halves. In the first half A&T took bad shots that didnt fall so we built the 12 point lead and we hit some 3's. Our shots stopped falling and A&T started making and everything cam unraveled. At one point A&T went on a 19-0 run and we were just over 7 minutes (I believe) without a single point. It was an absolute no show of a game for us. The 2nd half was easily one of the worst halves of basketball this team has played under Spiker.

I agree with hiroshima about Amari in that his body language is not good and we continue to play him out of position. We want him to shoot instead of parking him down low and let him work in the post. It makes no sense. He is not a shooter. He is not a facilitator. Put him where he can be successful. Additionally, this team whether we want to admit it or not, is a live by the 3 and die by the 3. If we are making we can beat about anyone in this conference, when they arent falling we are just not a good team. We have almost nobody know can create their own shot. Nobody who can go get a bucket to stop the bleeding if a team goes on a run. We keep hammering through a stagnant offense hoping to get different results. The shots never fell and we saw the consequences of that last night. Just a tough game overall that really brought to light our deficiencies.

(01-26-2023 09:23 PM)westcoastaggie Wrote:  How did we win this?

Did you guys win or did we lose?

I don't ever recall seeing a collapse like this in the second half after paying so well in the first. They went from up 12 to down 20 in a blink of an eye. It's like the aliens from Space Jam showed up at halftime and stole the powers away from the Drexel players.

(01-27-2023 09:07 AM)J.B. Wrote:  I don't ever recall seeing a collapse like this in the second half after paying so well in the first. They went from up 12 to down 20 in a blink of an eye. It's like the aliens from Space Jam showed up at halftime and stole the powers away from the Drexel players.

The problem is I dont think we actually played well in the first half. Shots fell and A&T played very poorly (especially shot selection). When shots stopped falling, it felt like it exposed the entire game we were playing and it made the poor play really show itself in the worst way.

Brutal loss. Would have been OK with a road conference loss against a decent team, but can't just be completely uncompetitive in the second half like that.

Should have a palate cleanser against Elon before the big one next Thursday.

To add insult to injury A&T losing at home to Monmouth by 12 halfway through the 2nd half. Ugh