Week in Review 12.11.09

Every Friday I'll break down the week that was in Flyers basketball, as well as whatever is else is on my mind at the time. It'll be my chance to overreact to the UD's most recent game as well as renege on everything I said in the podcast earlier in the given week. Or, at the very least, it will give you something distracting to read when you should be working on a Friday.

One half at a time
Somebody should feel free to tell these Flyers that they're allowed to put together two good halves in a row. It's not against the rules or anything. Just when you thought Dayton was a "second half team," the Flyers come out and put a hurting on George Mason in the first frame in Fairfax to the tune of a 16-point lead at intermission. I won't get into the second half because we could argue all day about who's to blame for UD's poor performance there. Bottom line: When you shoot 5-20 in a half (0-7 from downtown), you're going to let a lot of teams come back on you. For the game, though, UD shot better than and outrebounded the Patriots. Hell, the Flyers even made 70% of their free throws. Six assists versus sixteen turnovers is a little worrisome, but road wins always seem to be a premium so I'll keep my griping to a minimum.

While I'm on the George Mason game, did anyone else catch the small roar that went up from the home crowd when GMU hit that meaningless 3-pointer at the buzzer on Tuesday? "Wooooo we only lost by one!" Way to know the score and situation, Patriots fans ... Unless, of course, that 3-ball covered the spread in which case I can't blame people for getting nuts.

Earlier in the week, Dayton played Lehigh and won.

ODU
In one of the podcasts I predicted UD would lose both at Miami and tonight's game at home to Old Dominion. When that happened I think I was still hung over from Puerto Rico and bitter about the Towson game. Four straight wins upon return from San Juan have me singing a different tune, but I do think this will be a tough, hard-fought game.

Old Dominion returns all five starters from a team that went 25-10 last season and is favored to win the Colonial. George Mason, as a point of reference, is picked to finish fourth in that same league. According to its web site, ODU captured the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Tournament title last year. What is that? Did they change the name of the CBI and nobody told me? Or is this a fourth postseason college basketball tournament?

Anyway, the Monarchs are supposed to be pretty good and they're led by Gerald Lee, a preseason co-player of the year pick in the CAA. Further, ODU has been tested playing at Richmond and getting games against Missouri and Mississippi State in some preseason tourney. Granted, they lost all three of those games, so I'm changing my mind and picking the Flyers to win by six.

TV or not TV
As a Dayton fan, one of my favorite pastimes is complaining about the fact that the Flyers are never on TV and that the team gets no national exposure whatsoever. Seriously, how ridiculous is that I live 50 miles from campus and have to watch almost all of the games on a tiny laptop screen with grainy video? BUT let me just say what a blessing this has been through the first eight games of this season. I'm so glad no one outside the Miami Valley got to see the Towson game (or even the games against Miami and Mason, for that matter).

If you've got a vote in one of the polls, all you know is that Dayton is 6-2 with a win over Georgia Tech, and the two teams it lost to are a combined 17-1 right now. Filling out my ballot, hmmmmm, I'd say they're about 35th in the country. Sounds like a winner.

MJ Injured?
During the Mason game, Hartsock busted out the ol' "Oh, Marcus Johnson's been playing with a wrist injury" nugget and did it real casual-like. I'm not one to speculate (okay, that's pretty much all I'm qualified to do), but does anyone else think something's fishy here? If I'm a senior guard and one of the guys expected to lead this team back to the NCAA Tournament and I'm shooting 36% from the field, 13% from three, and 40% from the foul line, I might suddenly develop a mysterious "wrist injury" too. Seriously, read those numbers again. 40% FREE THROWS and 13% from the arc. Yeesh. I hope your head, errr I mean wrist, gets right soon, MJ.

Coming up big down low
The Huelsman versus Searcy debate continues, and it will likely go on all season long. I'm taking a different tact though and just treating them as one player. They/it needs a sweet nickname though if I'm going to track them as one person for the rest of the year. Suggestions welcome. Right now, they (he?) are averaging 8.5 and 5.5 a game. I'll take that all season long.

A scheduling question
How does putting together a D-I men's college basketball schedule work? I feel like I should know more about this, but I find myself almost completely in the dark. When fans think a schedule isn't up to snuff, I hear the AD get criticized more than anyone, but doesn't the coach have a lot to do with it? I thought I read somewhere that coaches had as much influence, if not more in some cases, as to who their team played and where. Am I way off base here? If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged.

John Wall
Ready for the off-topic rants? Good, because I know I am. Growing up in Northern Kentucky (Cincitucky, if you will) I came to love all, at least most, things Cincinnati and hate a lot of things Kentucky. One of the things I hated most during my formative years was University of Kentucky basketball. It just didn't make that much sense to root for a team who played its games 90 minutes away when there were not one but two Division I college basketball programs within a ten minute drive from my house. I rooted for Cincinnati and hated Kentucky as a kid.

Having said that, watching John Wall play so far this year has been awesome. The kid is sick and will almost certainly be the #1 overall pick in this spring's NBA Draft. (I have Derrick Favors two and Chris Wright three, in case you were wondering.) The UK-UConn game ended after my bed time, so I didn't see the finish, but it's been talked about all day today. If you can escape the Brian Kelly media blitz that's taken Cincinnati by storm, you'll find a lot of people talking about UK and John Wall. Seeing as this will be his only season in college, I really feel the need to get to Lexington and watch the kid play in person. Who's coming with me?

Tiger Woods y'all
I don't know how the whole Tiger saga is going to play out and, frankly, I don't particularly care. I do find it amusing that women are suddenly tripping over each other to come out and say they slept with him, but that's about where my interest ends. Nothing earth shattering is going to come out of this anyway. Nobody's getting arrested. His wife is either going to divorce him and get tens of millions of dollars or "reconcile" with him and get to spend half of his billions of dollars. Big deal.

I will say this, though, and you can bank on it. Tiger Woods will at some point go into rehab for sex addiction like that dude from the X-Files did. Think about it: If you cheat on your wife with one chick, you just made a mistake and maybe she gets over it, maybe not. If you're having dozens of ongoing affairs with women all over the country, if not the world, it's a little tougher to backpedal your way out of that. So does he admit he's a scum bag and a downright despicable human being? No way, he's Tiger; his image can't take that hit. But if you're addicted to something, if you physically and psychologically have to have it, if you've lost all control of yourself, it makes it easier for us, the public, to stomach. Some time in 2010 Tiger Woods tackles his "addiction to sex."

Social Networking
I'm about to turn 26 and never in my life I have felt older and less cool. Well, I probably felt less cool when I was about 14 maybe. (Note to any middle schoolers reading this: Getting straight A's in high school and junior high is the least important thing you'll ever do and a complete waste of your time. Try to figure out ways to make out with chicks instead - or at least work up the courage to talk to them - and you won't be such a d-bag in high school. You're welcome.)

Back to the present, can someone get me up to speed on what's cool and what's not in social networking? I mean, we can all agree that being on Facebook is cool, yes? As long as you're not a big enough tool that you play Farmville and Mafia Wars, you're fine. And I'm pretty sure MySpace is only for 14-year-old girls and creepy internet pervs who want to stalk 14-year-old girls, right?

Recently I find myself getting more and more hooked on Twitter (UDFlyers). I tweet more frequently and check the site multiple times per day. Does this make more of a loser, less of a loser, or about the same? What about LinkedIn? Does anyone know what that even is? Is there other social networking stuff out there that's so cool I don't even know about it? (Tim just renewed his eharmony membership, but that's another subject for another post.)

Twitter baby with a capital T!
And finally, while I'm on the topic of Twitter, I have started following Dick Vitale on there. No matter if you love Dickie V or hate him (put me in the "don't like him but think he's harmless" camp), I think it's hilarious that he tweets. If Twitter was ever targeted specifically toward one person, it would be Dick Vitale. Hell, you could make the case that he practically invented Twitter. Vitale has been speaking in sentence fragments and 140-character exclamations for almost 40 years now. Plus, it's great to get his dining out tips as well as his thoughts on the Heisman. You know, stuff on which Dick Vitale is in no way qualified to give an expert opinion.

Flyers Week in Review 12.04.09

I figured I would start writing a weekly post breaking down the week that was in Flyers basketball, as well as whatever is else is on my mind at the time. It'll be my chance to overreact to the UD's most recent game as well as reneg on everything I said in the podcast earlier in the given week. Or, at the very least, it will give you something distracting to read when you should be working on a Friday. Let's give this thing a whirl.

Two wins
I wouldn't exactly call wins against Towson and Miami (OH) "big" wins, but I would definitely call them important ones. The Flyers seem to have, however temporarily, righted the ship after a disappointing trip to Puerto Rico. Running the table until a New Year's Day showdown at New Mexico now becomes a distinct possibility.

CJ > CW?
Okay we've all come to grips with the fact that Chris Johnson is the best player on this year's edition of the Flyers. He certainly has been through six games and I don't really see that changing any time soon. But here's the thing ... Somebody needs to print this (other than our little blog that nobody reads) or start talking about it. Especially to Chris Wright. I don't know much about Wright other than what I see on the basketball court, but he seems like a player driven by motivation. He feeds off the crowd at UD Arena, he plays his best in the biggest games (XU and WVU last year), so somebody call him out. BG? One of the assistant coaches? Tell him that until he steps up his play, he's playing second fiddle to Chris Johnson on what is supposed to be HIS team.

It seems a little silly saying a guy who averages 16 and 6 needs to be "called out." But I think CW is capable of a lot more. He could - and should - be averaging a double-double, and I'm not wild about his team-high 19 turnovers.

No zone after all
I tweeted about this during the game, but I can't believe Charlie Coles played 40 minutes of straight man-to-man defense. I would have bet Adam's life savings that he would play zone for two-thirds of the game if not more. Maybe that white piece of paper he kept checking during Wednesday night's game really was a take out menu.

Kurt will be missed
I can't believe I've become the chief Kurt Huelsman apologist in the UD blogosphere but then again, most days I can't believe I'm even a part of the UD blogosphere. I despised Kurt Huelsman the basketball player (as a person, we're cool) last year. This year I like him. He plays the best interior defense on the team by far, and he's averaging 3 and 3 right now. I think come A10 play, he'll average 5 and 5 and everybody will hate him a lot less.

But here's something for you to chew on. Will Kurt Huelsman be missed more than any other graduating senior come the 2010-'11 season? I could make a pretty strong case that he will. Searcy and Benson are much more accomplished on the offensive end, but they don't D up like Kurt. They also don't do the dirty work Kurt does. Huelsman has become something of an enforcer for this year's UD team.

When you think about it, the tandem of Staten and Parker seems more than capable of replacing London and Rob Lowery. Paul Williams is waiting in the wings to inherit MJ's two guard spot, and Mickey Perry is a solid role player but nothing more. I think KH is the most-missed senior come this time next year.

Speaking of...
Mickey Perry, he saw more court time than London against Miami, 22 minutes to 18. Perry had six assists and only one TO in the game. Under different circumstances, I'd be interested to see if this starts a new trend for the PG position. But with Lowery's likely return on Saturday, it probably becomes moot. Let's not forget that Perry was nothing short of cancerous in Puerto Rico, but at least he's come around a little in the last two games. I think Perry still sees 15+ mpg in the coming weeks - some at the point while Lowery gets his sea legs back, some at the SG if Marcus is still struggling and because he's a little bit better defender than P-Will.

Props to Tim
I pretty much laughed Tim off when he predicted the Big Ten would come away victorious for the first time ever in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. And, while it means absolutely nothing, he was right. It did happen. Obviously, I blame Oliver Purnell for this as his Clemson team blew a 23-point second half lead AT HOME to a mediocre Illinois team. (If there was a way to place some of the blame on Trent Meacham, I'd do that as well.) Anyway, the Big Ten won the challenge 6-5, but I still think the conference is overrated and not underrated as Tim claimed. Michigan was the most overrated team in the country preseason and, to me, Purdue looks more like the 20th best team in the nation than the 6th. No way the Boilers make it past the Sweet Sixteen especially with their starting PG sidelined by injury.

Off Topic
The other day I had a random thought about the future of Duke basketball. It's probably its own full post, and it probably has no place on a Dayton Flyers b-ball blog, but I wanted to run it by the masses. Basically, I see some major parallels between where Duke is headed and where Notre Dame football is right now. I think that when Coach K hangs it up, Duke finds itself at a major crossroads as to the (near term, at least) future of its program. The wrong hire at that time could send them into a similar tailspin. Just think about some of the similarities:

• Having to replace a legendary head coach who was the face of the program
• High academic standards make fewer super-stud high school athletes available to them
• Duke won't take one-and-done guys (notable excpetion: Corey Maggette); Notre Dame doesn't redshirt its players
• ND has its own TV network (NBC); Duke has its own TV announcer (Vitale)

It's weird because the media treats Notre Dame as if it is a relevant player in the national championship picture every single year when it hasn't been since the days before Bobby Bowden was castrated and Charlie Ward was his star quarterback. The media (mainly ESPN) treats Duke in the same manner even though the Blue Devils haven't been past the Sweet Sixteen since '04 and have, if I remember correctly, been knocked out by a higher-seeded team each of the past five seasons. Maybe it's coming or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part.

I'm working on Saturday but I still plan to watch the internet feed of Dayton-Lehigh. I'll tweet if I'm able to, so follow us on Twitter under the name UDFlyers. You can also check out our podcasts on the right side of this very page.

The Kurt Conundrum*

Game one of the 2009-'10 UD basketball season is in the books, and what does that mean? It's time to overreact and make sweeping generalizations about an entire season based on a mere forty minutes of play.

Chris Johnson is a sure-fire First Team All-A10 performer and will average a double-double this year. Chris Wright has moved from late second rounder to lottery pick in next spring's NBA Draft. Freshman Matt Kavanaugh is resigned to a career riding the bench as Flyers fans hopelessly wish for his scholarship back. Kurt Huelsman needs to stay out of foul trouble and be on the court more if UD is to have success this year.

Wait ... what?

Many followers of UD hoops may think that last sentence is the most ludicrous of all. Perhaps, but it is, at present, the only one I actually believe to be true. Kurt Huelsman, he of the 0 points and 1 rebound in the season opener, needs to be on the court more. And the reason for that is simple: his defense.

Josh Benson struggled in the opener, especially on the defensive end. This has been well documented. Devin Searcy is a really solid player, and I hold high hopes for the last two seasons of his career as a Flyer. Also, I'm just as sick of the whole tangibles vs. intangibles debate as you are. That's why I wanted to bring the topic of Kurt's playing time back around to something that is, in my mind at least, very tangible. And Huelsman is, simply put, Dayton's best interior defender.

To me there were two key differences at the beginning of the second half when the Flyers made their run against Creighton. Those were the presence of London Warren and Huelsman, both of whom were forced to sit out much of the first half with foul trouble. With those two guys on the floor, UD is lightyears better as a defensive squad.

Huelsman's weaknesses have been discussed ad naseum at this point, and I've been one of his bigger critics especially last season. The fact that a guy who is (allegedly) 6'10" can only grab four rebounds a game still boggles the mind, but I've come to grips with Huelsman's limitations. And I'm of the opinion that what he brings to the defensive end outweights his lack of offensive output for this particular Dayton team.

So what does all this mean? Basically, I think Kurt needs to start, defend the opposition's best post player, and play 20-24 minutes a game ... which is convenient because that's exactly what's going to happen. Brian Gregory has been fiercely loyal to his senior center and seems hellbent on starting Huelsman every single game of his college career no matter how well or poorly the big man plays.

I'm embracing Gregory's stubbornness because I've convinced myself it's what's best for the Flyers. I also think Kurt slows down Georgia Tech's heralded freshman big man on Thursday (notice I said slows down, not shuts down) and helps lead the Flyers to a W. I also think a part of UD's game plan is to go inside to Kurt on offense and maybe pick up a quick foul or two on Favors early in the game.

In the podcast, I said UD wins 82-77. I'm amending that pick because I don't know that the Flyers can really score 82; I got all caught up in the excitement of scoring 90 against CU. I'm still going Flyers by five, 76-71.

Wright named co-player of the week
According to daytonflyers.com:

University of Dayton junior Chris Wright has been named Atlantic 10 Co-Player of the Week after his 25-point performance, including 18 in the second half, to lead the Flyers to a 90-80 win over Creighton in the season opener for both teams.

Wright shared this year's first A-10 Player of the Week award with Duquesne junior Damian Saunders. This is the second time that both players have been named players of the week, and in an odd coincidence, they also shared co-player of the week honors last season when they were named on November 30.

Wow, that is a whacky coincidence.

Perry struggles in opener
I had high hopes for Mickey Perry entering his senior season, but he had a rough afternoon Saturday against Creighton. I really thought an entire offseason of playing the point coupled with his strong performances in two exhibition contests meant he was ready to take the reins of UD's offense behind London Warren. Instead, he turned the ball over three times and the offense just doesn't seem to flow when he's in charge. If LW gets into foul trouble in Puerto Rico, it could be a long couple of games for the Flyers. And Rob Lowery can't get healthy soon enough for me.

Miami (OH) might be good?
Or it might not. I watched a good chunk of the Kentucky-Miami game last night, and the RedHawks gave UK everything it wanted and then some. Miami led by as much as 18 in the first half, but the Wildcats clawed back and John Wall hit the game-winner with 0.5 left. Could have been a fluke, though, as MU shot a ridiculous percentage from three. Some dude named Winbush hit eight himself. He hit four or five in a row to start the game prompting UK's announcer to exclaim, "A windfall for Winbush!" (I'm Mike Hartsock and I approve this call.) This is the same Miami team which lost by 11 to Towson -- another team on UD's schedule -- in its season opener, so take that for what it's worth.

Here's how Charlie Coles reacted - hilarious.



*During my senior year at UD, I was the assistant sports editor for the award-winning Flyer News. One of the things the sports editor and I would do is try to write the most atrocious headlines possible for our stories. The worse the headlines, the better as far as we were concerned. We especially loved to use alliteration, as in "Dominant Dayton defense downs Drake." (I'm not sure why we were so easily amused by this. College kids.) All things considered, "The Kurt Conundrum" is a pretty weak effort. Here's a classic one that I wrote featuring puns!