I Bleed Blue and White

Nice easy win, just as it should have been. The GU wins looks even better tonight after they took out unbeaten Pitt. It’s going to be a dogfight for first place in the Big East between Nova, Cuse, GTown, Pitt, and WVU.

Sad thing to see Fred Hill have such a hard time as a head coach. I agree he’s gone after this season, I just hope he can hold out until the end of the season. REALLY nice to see Cheek in double digits, he’s a scorer that we need to get going if we want to win a national championship this year.

Brian you’re my boy and all but how is there no mention of Cheek here?!Kid had the best game of his career, and TOOK OVER in garbage time haha.

Anyways yes, Brian and I will both be there on Saturday. I know I’m going to be at the preGame brunch, I’ll let Brian comment on his status.

Hope to run into some of you.

Haha fair enough. Cheek did play very well, but I’ve been waiting for Stokes to show me something, anything on the offensive end. I was just happy to see him knock down some shots tonight. Don’t know my exact plan yet in terms of when I’m arriving in NYC, but I have a ticket, so I am definitely going. Will follow up in the next few days.

Like NovaNation2001, I too loved seeing Cheeks have a breakout offensive game. It will help his confidence through the rest of the season. However, in terms of winning a national championship, it is going to be more important for Mouph and Armwood to develop their inside games to give us balance. Armwood looked much more confident and comfortable tonight. Mouph had a poor game, but I am glad Jay stayed with him and let him play. He is making freshman mistakes but he will get better and I think he had 9 rebounds, which is great.

I was there tonight and not for one second did I feel that Rutgers had a chance to win. Cheeks great game and I think the reason Stokes offense is suffering is because he is working really hard on defense and helping to rebound the ball. We can really use Stokes 3 pt shot its a killer. Also Fisher and Wayns are basically unstoppable when they are driving to the basket. They look like twins.

Scottie what can u say it looks like he is on ice skates and everyone else is trying to catch up to him. He has incredible poise.

Finally I feel sorry for Rosario, its too much to ask him to carry that team. See you guys Saturday. Go Nova!

I think we are being hard on Mouph. 9 pts 9 boards. Yes he had some turnovers, but he is a frosh and looked like he was trying to bowl over his defender. He’ll figure it out. Glad Jay let the young ones play a lot. The more experience these guys get now will pay dividends when we have to face some of the tougher squads in the beast. Saddness though. I remember when a win at the RAC meant something. Sort of like beating St. John’s.

Sorry 6 pts, 9 boards.

Thanks IBBW for the recap. Missed the game doing client relations. The ability of big men to score on Nova concerns me come March. If this team makes a run to the elite 8 or final four, how can they match up with the likes of Kansas and Texas down low? Mouph is key – need him to keep coming along.

The elite teams all have a quaility centers and the best way to stop a center is to get them is foul trouble. Fisher does a great job of drawing fouls on the bigs but right now our big men don’t have the low post moves to draw fouls. Although Pena & Armwood can defend post player, Yarou is the only treat on the low block.

mouph looked lost a lot of the time

I was at the game, was fortunate to get 1st row seats which gives you a really different perspective:

1. On Mouph – yes, he really didn’t have a great game and still needs to develop. I’m ok with him not producing a lot of offense right now, but his defense is really weak. He is almost always out of position for rebounds. I think he is still not in top game shape either. The other team seemed to be a step ahead. This looked like conditioning to me more than his athleticism.

2. Armwood is likely to be a bigger contributor this year. He is taller than I thought and is all over the place – reminds me of Dwayne Anderson in that way.

3. It was nice to see Cheek breakout even if it was garbage time. By far the most surprising thing sitting so close was to see how truly quick and fast he is, it makes him a terrific defender and holy crap can he jump.

4. Stokes did have a better game – but he seems to do that against sub par teams. Solid defender, but seems good teams can lock him down offensively, but with our depth we don’t need him to drop 16 in every game.

This really is a good team, and our biggest strength is our depth. We are going 10 deep and there is no drop off in talent. This allows us to survive a bad night by Mouph, or any of the players. Remember when Ray would have a bad game and the majority of the scoring pressure would go on to Foye? We would often look stagnant on offense. we will continue to have trouble with the good big men out there, but my hope is that the depth will compensate.

How many teams in the BEast have a “dominant” big man anyhow? We already faced the two best, Samuels and Monroe.

Vinnie-

Yancy Gates from Cincy will definitely be a challenge and obviously, Harangody. Anyone see that Marquette-Depaul ending last night? Would have been much better for Villanova if Marquette won.

Damn, forgot about Gody. Maybe b/c his team his weak.

Maybe Marquette will finally drop below us in the Pomeroy Rankings!

Upset we have to face Monroe again. But then again I think we’ll adjust and just give him a heavy dose of Armwood, who seemed like the only guy to have any sort of success slowing him down, or at least making it difficult for him.

On a different subject, I’m loving the fact that Duke and UNC are struggling in their league right now. The pretty boys of the ACC are not enjoying themselves right now at all, and that is fine by me. There will always be a special place in my heart for ANY opponent of UNC after our game against them in the 2006 tourney, and then again in last year’s Final Four. As for Duke, I think we made our point against them pretty strongly during that run.

He probably didn’t intend it to be arrogant, but Roy Williams was quoted after their loss last night with the following: “The freshmen are trying … but they haven’t been through these wars yet,” Williams said. “If I live long enough, maybe it will help us a couple of years down the road. But I don’t know if I can live through this.”

If he wants a war he should come to the Big East. And seriously, he can’t live through a 3 game losing streak? What a schmuck. I remember the days when ‘Nova was happy just to make the NCAA tourney, and we had to endure a 5 game losing streak just last year before picking it up in March and going to the Final Four.

You really won’t find a lot of people outside Carolina that like Roy Williams. Just my experience. He’s kind of a whiner.

and that’s why everybody loves Coach K: the man’s a prince.

Expecting big things from Mouph at this point is unrealistic. He is a freshman who lost 6 weeks with a medical problem. Progress will come in small steps — not biting on a ball fake, jumping straight up to block a shot, the clean box out for the rebound, the pin point outlet pass, looking for someone to pass out of the low post when confronted with 3 defenders (rather than trying to score over/through them). Seeing fewer of these is more encouraging to me than how many points he scores.

I will be at the Garden, doing a live blog for the folks at Rush the Court.