The Atlantic 10 Thread

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

No better time to do it than Thursday at XU. I feel for you on the injuries though. On the plus side for them, their schedule isn't too bad these next 4-6 weeks, even though it is a huge chunk of games. If you look at now to 2/24, their toughest games will be against Xavier (2x), @ Rhody, vs Charlotte, vs Temple, and vs Duquesne. Lots of tough games but most are at home. Also, they should win @ Richmond, vs SLU, @ GW, and @ La Salle. If they finish that stretch only losing 4 times at most, they'll be in good shape by the time Chris Wright comes back.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Final score tonight that caught my eye...

St. Joe's-81, UMass-77

The score at halftime was 29-16 St. Joe's. Are you kidding me? The 2nd half must have been absolutely nuts to get to that final score! UMass outscored them 61-52.

[CM1847]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

The league is going to continue to beat each other up, it's going to be tough to get more than 3 at-large bids at this pace, it could quickly turn into 2 if things continue to be so crazy. At least Rhode Island is looking like they will take care of business tonight agaisnt GW.

[P2K]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Final score tonight that caught my eye...

St. Joe's-81, UMass-77

The score at halftime was 29-16 St. Joe's. Are you kidding me? The 2nd half must have been absolutely nuts to get to that final score! UMass outscored them 61-52.

I watched the second half. St. Joe's were beating UMass up by 15 and so on.

Then in the last few minutes, they got sloppy with inbounding the ball and beating the full court press and also laid down on defense. That's how UMass made it a close game. Until the last 3-4 minutes, it was a butt whoopin'.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

I watched the second half. St. Joe's were beating UMass up by 15 and so on.

Then in the last few minutes, they got sloppy with inbounding the ball and beating the full court press and also laid down on defense. That's how UMass made it a close game. Until the last 3-4 minutes, it was a butt whoopin'.

Wow...I'm sure Martelli will have something to say about the way they played at the end. I was just amazed at how many points were scored in the second half. 113 points is a lot for one half.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Well, Xavier won the big game over Dayton 69-43. I feel bad for UD. XU didn't get their best shot out of them. It's tough losing two important guys like Wright and Little. They looked completely overmatched tonight without them added to the mix. Burrell shut Roberts down, Binnie looked nervous the whole game, and nobody other than Marcus Johnson contributed for UD. XU was firing on all cylinders. They would have beaten a lot of great teams tonight other than a great team like UD. They'll meet again on 2/24. I'll be in the stands at UD Arena enduring the taunts from the Flyer faithful again, but I'll enjoy the win now. Hope Wright or Little will be back for that one. It was not pretty tonight for UD fans.

[boomhauertjs]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

It's a shame that UD's season has been derailed by injuries. Hopefully, they can keep it together enough while those guys are out and that the NCAA selection committee will take those injuries into account on Selection Sunday.

[khujo711]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Well, Xavier won the big game over Dayton 69-43. I feel bad for UD. XU didn't get their best shot out of them. It's tough losing two important guys like Wright and Little.

The rebound numbers are where you can see how bad UD missed those 2 guys.

XU was killing them on offensive put backs early. It was painful to watch UD play solid D for like 25 seconds and then X would miss the jumper only to get an easy tap in.

One of these days the Flyers will start hitting 3's again...I hope. Off the top of my head I think they are 6-48 in their last 2 games.

[CM1847]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

It's terrible to see how badly the injuries are killing Dayton. They are a legit top 15-20 team when healthy, they just need to keep their head above water over the next few weeks and get healthy in time for the conference tournament. Thanks to their great OOC results, they can afford some losses to the likes of Xavier and UMass, but they have to make sure to hold their own against the bottom half of the conference.

Xavier becomes the front runner again, but road games against UMass, URI, Dayton, St. Joe's and Charlotte are still out there.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

It's terrible to see how badly the injuries are killing Dayton. They are a legit top 15-20 team when healthy, they just need to keep their head above water over the next few weeks and get healthy in time for the conference tournament. Thanks to their great OOC results, they can afford some losses to the likes of Xavier and UMass, but they have to make sure to hold their own against the bottom half of the conference...

Well put. Feel the same way. And, yeah, khujo, UD just got destroyed on the boards. That was a huge factor. If Wright and Little are down there, the margin would not have been that big. Hopefully the Flyers will bounce back against Richmond tomorrow. Brian Roberts needs to go crazy.

[PdiddyPop]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Bad Bad Loss by the Flyers last night. The injury bug is taking its toll on them. I agree with Slim that Roberts' just needs to put the team on his back till the rest of everybody gets healthy. I like watching Dayton play, but watching the replay today on CSTV man that game was a mess from the get go. Xavier tore them a new one.

[khujo711]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

The problem for Dayton right now is that teams can just smother Roberts and no one else can make them pay. Rhode Island and Umass were running doubles at him pretty much all game, but couldn't totally stop him. XU was doubling him off of every pick and forcing him to give it up, which wouldn't be so bad if anyone could hit a wide open 3.

[CM1847]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Roberts was also sick for the Xavier game. Yes, teams are going to continue to pay a ridiculous amount of attention to him every game, but they aren't going to hold him to 5 shots every game.

The injuries are huge when playing good teams, but I imagine they will bounce back nicely agaist Richmond and I think they'll be much more competitive in all of their remaining games even with the injuries. Tip the hat to Xavier, they got the job done, but with those two injuries and a sick Roberts, I think last night may have been the worst Dayton team we will see all year.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Roberts was also sick for the Xavier game. ...

I wondered why he didn't play much in the 2nd half. Makes sense now. They were down by 30 and he was in bad shape. No need to force it for a January conference game.

Honestly, I thought/hoped X would shut Roberts down, or at least Burrell would since he's been doing it to guys all season. If I was a little worried about someone heading into the game it was Marcus Johnson. I think he led the team in scoring. Johnson and Binnie need to be the ones to step up their game. I think Johnson can do it but based on what I saw from Binnie, I have no faith he'll help them out. He looked awful last night.

[kodiak]

Re: The Atlantic 10 Thread

Dayton drops another one in Richmond 80-63. Richmond hit 11 3's and shot over 50% from the floor. It was 46-27 Spiders, at the half.