Before I get into likes and dislikes, let me address the Patrick Heckmann situation. He's been diagnosed with Mononucleosis. This explains a bit of his lackluster play of late. The illness will sideline him for most of the season. Speculation is that he will be back in late February or early March. While unfortunate for him, I don't think the team will face much of a setback. Heckmann's been a non factor lately. While the team has had problems, I don't think he would have been the difference maker. Now he gets a chance to sit, decide if he wants to stay in the U.S. and the other players get to develop.
Likes
-- Matt Humphrey's effort. Smart shot selection for the most part and really strong defense. He can set a tone with his D.
-- The trapping and rotation on defense. The guys looked good for long stretches doubling their big and rotating around.
-- Daniels driving to the basket. He can convert those. If he does it will open shots for other guys.
Ryan Anderson making his foul shots. His role will be as a post player. If he converts his free throws, he'll be that much more effective.
Dislikes
-- Turnovers. Even before Miami's run the passing was very sloppy. Everyone was guilty and it was often making passes that didn't need to be made.
-- Not having an answer for their run. Donahue called a timeout, but their was no stopping Miami. He need a calming influence and some plays that can get the tempo back on our side.
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11 comments:
This sort of thing is to be expected, given the makeup of this team.
We must look for small, incremental improvements, and hope the players don't lose whatever confidence they had coming in.
This is a huge transition for freshmen, especially a guy like Heckmann. I'm not surprised that it has all caught up to him.
I hope he comes back next year.
heckmann looked like our best player early in the year. he has the season high with 32 points against UC Riverside. he got to the free throw line 54 times in the first 9 games, which is pretty remarkable and shows that he can penetrate against college defenses and get in the lane.
that said, he has definitely stunk since ACC play started on january 7th, likely because of the mono.
ATL, you have mentioned a few times the possibility of him leaving...i don't see where he would go. i don't think he's good enough to be in top tier european competition, plus he'll be 1 yr into his degree. i hope he stays -- is there anything more to those thoughts than speculation that b/c he's foreign, he'll want to go back to germany?
if clifford and anderson can put on some muscle weight this offseason, and heckmann, daniels, and jackson can work on their ballhandling and shooting, i think we will be in the top half of the ACC next season. 5 freshman can definitely play ball, and 2 others (odio and caudill) are projects that, with improvements in certain facets of their game (for caudill it seems to be conditioning) should be able to contribute.
not a bad first real recruiting class, and it looks like donahue is targeting some pretty high profile players that are sophomores and juniors in HS, per ESPN's recruiting page.
also, we stand at 7-14 right now, and have shown a total lack of being able to close out games. consider the following six losses (2 in ACC play) that were anybody's ball game with less than 10 minutes to go and wound up being fairly decisive losses:
-- lost to penn state 62-54; game was tied at 48 with 7:42 to go.
-- lost to BU 75-61; it was 51-48 with 9 minutes to go.
-- lost to providence 64-57; it was 49-48 with 8 minutes to go.
-- lost to URI in double overtime.
-- lost to UVA 66-49; game was tied at 44 with 10 minutes to go. (outscored 22-5 over last 10 minutes)
-- lost to Miami 76-54; BC was up 48-47 with 8 minutes to go (outscored 28-7 over last 8 minutes)
such is life when trying to finish games with 4-5 freshman on the floor at the same time.
In other news, Cristobal is going to be the next head coach at Rutgers. I thoroughly believe this hurts BC. He is loved by HS HC's in Florida and there's no reason to doubt it won't be the same up in the northeast. Students rave about his enthusiasm for football and the team, so he's the opposite of Spaz. I'd argue he'd have been a great candidate for BC next year if Gene and Spaz finally give in and leave, but it's hard to argue he's walking into a much better situation at Rutgers, despite my disdain for the Scarlett Knights.
the reason for close games turning into blowouts is clearly about strength and conditioning. even donahue has said so. it's easy to see why when you see the upper class bodies of opposing teams against the undeveloped bodies of our freshmen. they simply get tired at the end of games. an offseason in the gym will fix that.
I certainly agree that as these guys get stronger and more experienced, things will be better.
And this week, we'll be able to talk about some FOOTBALL.
Let's see who finally signs on the dotted line. I will always support the players, whoever they are.
Go BC.
agree BJK. i am very eager to see how the football recruiting shakes out.
according to my own calculations, we are losing 11 players:
OL (2): spinney, richman
TE (1): anderson
WR (1): momah
FB (1): dan williams
P (1): quigley
D-line (2): holloway, ramsey
LB (2): kuechly, thompson
DB (1): fletch
i assume that montel is coming back. also not sure if kaleb ramsey is getting another year, i think i recall him being potentially eligible for one.
there are 16 juniors who will be seniors:
OLine (3): goodman, wetzel, cleary
TE (2): pantale, foxen
WR (2): Larmond, Elliot
QB (2): shinskie, marscovetra
RB (1): javorski
DT (2): o'neal, murray
LB (1): clancy
DB (2): noel, hughes
P (1): levano
as of now, we have 12 commits, as well as daniels (academic eligibility issues) and hood (may sign with someone else). really hope to get a few more bodies in, as replacing 11 guys with 12 is giving the team small margin of error, given the chance for transfers, academic ineligiblities, guys being dismissed from the team, and injuries.
El Miz - isn't there also a WR who just transferred in from Iowa? So that gives us one more player. He will sit next year and then have 3 years of eligibility.
I hope Ramsey will be back, along with Harris, of course.
Ramsey would give us great experience and added depth to the interior D-Line.
12 commits or 14 commits - this doesn't cut the mustard for a coach in his 4th year - and who was always here anyway. Maybe he can score some good undecided's with the late coaching changes and so forth.
The coaching complaint has been lack of depth and lack of experience. Well, bringing in an under-capacity class certainly isn't going to help the depth situation. I don't care what the reason is - we have to aspire to be better than this.
I'm hoping for some surprises on signing day.
Go BC.
We were down single digits to Harvard with 10-12 minutes to play and got blown out, also. The refs didn't call an obvious goaltend, Donohue called timeout and the refs didn't give us any calls for the rest of the game. Everything went to hell and we got smoked.
The point being that our team can hang with anyone outside of the top 20 right now. The team loses concentration when something bad happens. Some vetern players would curb this kind of situation.
Next year will be MUCH better.
I would like to see Clifford make a quick move to the hoop or hold the ball and look for a cutter more often. He is going to be very good in the long term.
Donohue did a great job with getting him to go to BC.
I remember way back in the nineties BC had a saftey named Rob Clifford. He was a ball hawk. Wonder if they are related. There has to be a reason that UCONN, FLA, or Providence didn't poach him from us late.
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