Fordham has a young team. Tom Pecora is running out freshman and sophomores in a number of key places in the rotation. Typically when people think “youth” in college basketball it automatically equates to “turnovers,” but as the Rams’ 56-50 loss to St. John’s on Saturday in the MSG Holiday Festival proved, there’s much more to the equation.
Continue reading “Turnovers don’t tell the story of Fordham’s youth”
I’m going to be live-blogging the MSG Holiday Festival that includes two of the blog’s teams (Stony Brook and Fordham) for Rush the Court starting at noon from Madison Square Garden. The Seawolves are a slight underdog against Rutgers (Ken Pomeroy’s numbers say this is a SBU home game, which it definitely isn’t). Fordham should be a big underdog against the Red Storm – around 13 points according to Vegas and Pomeroy. It’s a little surprising that the absence of Nurideen Lindsey hasn’t pushed that line down more. It should be an entertaining double-header. Feel free to chime in on the live-blog once it gets started around 11:45 a.m.
The battle of the boroughs was a pretty one-sided affair for the boys from Queens. St. John’s ran out to an early lead and had a comfortable working margin for the entire game against St. Francis (NY) before capturing the 63-48 victory. Below is the shot chart from the second half and some thoughts about the game in general.
Continue reading “Quick thoughts from St. John’s vs. St. Francis (NY)”
A box score! This is how you dominate lesser competition. The Red Storm put up an offensive efficiency of 1.36 points per possession thanks to shooting 75.8% (44-58) on two-point attempts. Phil Greene put up a “perfect” 100% effective field goal percentage too. (8-10 overall, but 4-6 from three.) Also, for putting a bunch of new faces together in live game action for the first time a 12.3% turnover rate is great. Not so great? Allowing C.W. Post to score almost a point per possession (0.99) and only going to the free throw line 10 times against a team that was overmatched physically. But everyone needs something to work on. Right? (More from: Rumble in the Garden, Sweet Sweet Lavin.)
St. John’s is going to be young this season, historically young. At Red Storm Tip-Off on Friday night the men’s basketball team eschewed the typical scrimmage because there were just eight bodies available. While St. John’s will add a few more players with walk-ons (tryouts were this morning) so that it can actually practice, it’s going to be a young team, so young that it’s really hard to predict what will happen. But let’s give it a shot.
Tonight it all begins. Midnight Madness is here! Here’s a list of scheduled events around New York City.
In addition: Columbia is holding a Meet the Coaches event on Oct. 26 and Iona is holding its own version of Midnight Madness, Maroon Madness, on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.
If you’re curious about what other BCS programs are doing events check out CBS College Sports’ list. Check out the Mid-Majority’s Twitter feed for a bunch of ridiculously named events that the Other 24 schools are holding. Hilltopper Hysteria is a pretty awesome name for a season opening event!
Last season Steve Lavin surprised some people by taking a veteran St. John’s team and going 21-12 to earn a six seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Red Storm played a rotation with eight seniors. The players had been around for a long time, but none really became household names until 2010-11. Maybe that would’ve changed if people knew they’d already seen these guys before?
Continue reading “Summer Wrap Up: New York’s Best Players According to Value Add”
Noted basketball stats maven Ken Pomeroy tried to solve the NCAA’s poor first week of the season by scheduling interesting, local match ups using a system he created and dubbed Schedulematic. Some of the results are really feasible, but when there’s a top mid-major team in a local area the results get a bit harder to fathom.
Two big pieces of news broke late on Monday night and both could certainly impact the 2011-12 basketball season. First, Arizona’s Lamont “MoMo” Jones is transferring from Arizona. He averaged 9.7 points and 2.4 assists in 26.7 minutes per game last season for the Wildcats. (Adam Zagoria has a bit more.)
Jones is looking to transfer back to the east coast. The early rumors are that he might find a home at St. John’s, but if he’s looking to drop down a level might Manhattan and new head coach Steve Masiello be able to offer him a comfortable landing spot that can guarantee a lot of playing time? (I think it’s a longshot, but new head coaches due tend to bring roster turnover with them.)
Continue reading “Jones and Gomez highlight big day in college basketball”
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