FanPost

Positive PostGame Prognosis: Memphis

Holy Shit that Game was Awesome! I'm sorry I let Christmas get in the way of writing this post.

The Hoyas Rolled into Memphis with their sick black Jerseys and delivered a whooping the likes of which Memphis had never seen. Since moving to the Fedex forum Memphis has only lost by double digits 3 times prior to this loss: Lost by 11 to texas 05-06 by 12 to Ole Miss 04-05 by 13 to Providence 04-05. And yes the black jerseys are awesome. I too prefer us jsut to wear blue and gray, but the recruits love the black jerseys, so I say go with what works. I'm fine with us wearing alternate jerseys here and there.

The offense was a thing of beauty getting lay up after lay up. Memphis played as good as they have all season, and we were still up 4 at half in a hostile environment. Some people want to label this win a C+. As much as I enjoy the thought of us blowing out a top 25 team on their home court with a C+ performance, I just can't agree with that. In my mind a win can't grade out any worse than a B-. I agree we can and will play even better than we did last night and that's whats important. Rebounding was pointed to as a weakness. I don't think it was that bad. 1) It definitely improved int he second as we out rebounded them in the second half. 2) They collected 4 team offensive rebounds aka the ball went off our hands out of bounds. that's mostly just luck. 3) Most of their rebounds were off their poor shot attempts which favor the offense. Like that freethrow that his the underside of the rim, you just can't prepare for that.

We had a virtuoso performance in the second half slashing through the memphis Defense and shutting them down on the othere end. We had a Off Efficiency of 127.7 in the second half and held memphis to 91.6. We came out of the locker room grabbed a double digit lead and never looked back. The game never got closer than 9. Something that really impressed me was the fact we took care of the ball so well. 15.6% for the game which very good. This against a team known for stealing the ball. They only recorded 8 steals against us and their total number of steals and %s were identical to ours.

The big east season is upon us. I see no reason why Georgetown cannot win the conference. Our schedule shook out pretty favorably. We get home games against WV, Pitt, Lousiville, Marquette with out a return. Our hard away games with out a return are ND, Nova, and Uconn. Our H/Hs are challenging, but we're good enough to sweep St. John's and Cinci. I think at worst we're 13-5 in BE play. We should go undefeated at home. The schedule is pretty favorable for us as despite all the ranked teams we only play back to back ranked teams within conference once this year@ Nova followed by home vs Louisiville.

Player Evaluations:

Austin Freeman: Wow. Austin was unreal. He just abused memphis. The pull up jumpers were truly spectacular. It was nice to see Austin takeover a game again the way we know he can. He'll have to do it again at some point this year. When Austin gets in the zone like that he is unguardable. They showed the stat at one point where he had 6pts from layups 6 pts from 3's and 6 points from pull up jumpers. His game is so well rounded. I think he ended the game with 8pts for layups and 4pts from the line. That's incredible balance.

Chris Wright: Chris picked up his scoring this game instead of his assists. Which is fine. We'll need games like this from him. It's nice to know he can still put on his scoring hat and drop 20. What really impressed me is the way he buckled down on defense in the second half after a shaky start on the defensive end. Chris showed veteran leadership in this game. He was especially valuable in breaking the press.

Julian Vaughn: Julian accounted for 30.3% of the team's rebounds. He reeled in almost 30% of our misses when he was on the court 4/14. He was the 5th leading OR% in the nation coming into this game. Kenpom hasn't updated his player stats yet, but based on hoyaprospectus' numbers assuming no major movement from anyone else he should be up to 3rd now. 15pts 10 rebounds 4 blocks. Hot damn! But don't call it a come back. Julian has been playing great all year despite his critics. In this game however the opponent didn't double team him. When that happens Julian will score consistently. Our outside presence really opened up things for julian. Oh yeah he also had 2 assists and a steal. He had more than 4 blocks, but what are you going to do.

Hollis Thompson: 9 points 2 assists and no turnovers. Solid game for Hollis. shot 50% from 3 and it was a big shot he hit on the secondary break an area that the stats suggested we need to utilize more often. Perhaps hoya prospectus can look and see if we are taking advantage of the secondary break or not.

Jason Clark: saddled with foul trouble due to bogus calls that should've been steals. Still managed 8pts and 2 assists. Oh well. Keep up the good work Jason.

Nate Lubick: Also limited by foul trouble but did a good job on the boards. 4 rebounds in 11 minutes. Best moment for nate was when he ripped the ball away from Henry. Lol love lubick's attitude.

Henry Sims: For the second game in a row henry led the team in assists with 5. His passing ability is great. He's a regular greg monroe out there. I'm serious he's not quite greg out there, but he's doing a damn good impression. He had 3 huge blocks where he sent the ball 8 rows into the stands according to the announcers. The first one was very improtant as it stopped memphis from scoring at the half to cut it to 2 and killed their momentum going into halftime.

Jerrelle Benimon: He's really winning people over. What's changed. Mostly I think it's the fact that he's finishing better at the rim recently. That's only part of what he's doing better, but it's the part most people notice. 4pts 6 rebounds more importantly and 2 good blocks. Great game by the benimonster.

Vee Sanford: He game is just so pretty. Another possibly secondary break 3(not positive, but it was fairly early on in the shot clock) and his patented tear drop floater. He also recorded 2 steals. Oh yeah he's now up to 75% from 3.

Markel Starks: Limited playing time. His 3 was halfway down before it popped back out. I really liked his defensive effort. He did a good job on that end of the court today.

Stay Casual, my friends.