AU keeps winning, we keep wondering
It was another impressive win for American Saturday.
The Eagles pretty much handled Ohio U., a team that admittedly looked a lot better when it left Athens for a two-game road trip east than it did when it boarded the bus to go home last night.
O.U. was 3-0 at home, with wins over San Francisco, Butler and Navy. San Francisco is a pretty decent team, 5-3 with wins over the likes of Delaware (4-3 with a win over Drexel), St. Joes (OK, not the Hawks of last year), and U.C. Santa Barbara.
Butler has a win over the same Miami Oh. (5-1) team that has beaten Purdue and Xavier.
Navy . . . O.K., that one is not that impressive. Still, the Bobcats 104 RPI is pretty respectable for a Mid-Major.
Then Ohio went on the road, losing at St. Francis and now at American. That St. Francis loss is the one that makes me wonder about the Bobcats.
I saw the Red Flash in its win over Bucknell and I was not impressed. Right now St. Francis (4-3) has an impressive No. 41 RPI, but that has more to do with its losses (at American (RPI=64), Pittsburgh (RPI=37) and yesterday at George Washington (RPI=8)) than its wins. St. Francis has not beaten anyone with an RPI lower than Ohio's 104.
Nonetheless, a Patriot League win over a Mid-American Conference team? We will take that any day. Especially in these days when most of the rest of the Patriot teams are busy losing to the Harvards, Columbias and Cornells of the world.
I am still not ready to anoint American as league favorites in the Patriot, though. The concerns I pointed out after the win over Towson last week showed up again in the box score yesterday.
American got just 10 points from its bench, which got 28 combined minutes of PT. Andre Ingram didn't have to play 40 minutes like he did against Towson, but he did play 39. Jason Thomas added 38. Until the bench picks up its production, you have to be concerned about how well AU is going to hold up over the course of the whole season.
AU winning a game in which Ingram was held to 10 points is a good sign. Thomas is beginning to make folks wonder if they picked the right AU guard as the conference's preseason player of the year. Thomas poured in 26 points for the second game in a row, including an impressive 5-for-6 showing from the arc. That followed his 5-for-5 3-point night at Towson.
When you have a guy stroking the three like that, good things happen.
My worry, from an AU perspective, is about what happens to jump-shooting teams when they cool off. Right now, AU has three guys shooting over 50 percent from 3-point range. How realistic is it to expect that pace to continue.
I keep hearing from folks like Matt at the Patriot League Blog about AU's quartet of big men, but against Ohio, they combined for just 18 points. When someone is raining threes like Thomas was yesterday, it should open up the middle. And since I am including Matej Cresnik, who prefers to step outside to shoot the J, in that 18-point total, I am not sure how many of those 18 can be considered as inside. According to the final box, Ohio outscored AU 28-22 in the paint. AU had 12 fast break points, presumably mostly layups that would count as in the paint.
For now, I still think Holy Cross has been the most impressive Patriot team in the early going. But only a fool would say American is not right there with the Crusaders.
As we break for finals (just two league games over the next week, only one against a D-I foe), it is looking like a typical Patriot League season on tap when conference play begins in January. It seems like there is always a divide between the upper and lower division in the league, with four teams battling for the title and four battling to stay out of the cellar.
It might be slightly different this season. Right now, I am thinking we could see the emergence of a middle class. AU, HC and Bucknell appear locks for the contending class. Lehigh looked that way in the preseason, but their stock has fallen with losses at Stony Brook and, especially, at home to Columbia. And I still think Lafayette is going to have a spoilers say in who claims the crown.
Army appears to have a lock on last place, though Navy could challenge them for that dubious distinction. Or at least they did look that way before yesterday's overtime loss to Stony Brook (box score). Even given the clock controversy that allowed the Mids to send it to OT, Navy's effort against a team that has owned the Patriot League thus far could be a sign of improvement in Annapolis.
We'll save our criticism for the D.C. media's lack of coverage of the AU game for another day. Suffice to say neither the Post nor the Moonie is the Philly Inquirer or Daily News.
I make that comparison because, on paper, the two cities are similar in a hoops sense. D.C. has AU, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Maryland and Navy. Six D-I programs. Phily has the Big 5 (Villanova, Temple, St. Joes, LaSalle and Penn) and Drexel.
Best I can tell though, the Post staffed only one game Saturday, Georgetown's win over San Jose State. G.W. is a top 25 team, yet the Post couldn't bother to send someone to Loretto for their game at St. Francis, Pa. AU and Navy were included in a wrap.
We checked Mapquest; it's about a three hour drive from D.C. to Loretto. Mostly interstate.
Is that too much to expect from one of the nation's leading papers?
Apparently so. Ditto for driving up four miles up Mass Ave. for the AU game.
Contrast that with the Inquirer (feel free to use our e-mail ... hoopt_time@hotmail.com and password ... hooptime3 to check the Inky's stories), which yesterday staffed Villanova-LaSalle and the Drexel-Quinnipiac game, had a correspondent at the Temple-Alabama game and only used the wire for St. Joe's at San Francisco.
So much for saving the critique for another day, eh?
The Eagles pretty much handled Ohio U., a team that admittedly looked a lot better when it left Athens for a two-game road trip east than it did when it boarded the bus to go home last night.
O.U. was 3-0 at home, with wins over San Francisco, Butler and Navy. San Francisco is a pretty decent team, 5-3 with wins over the likes of Delaware (4-3 with a win over Drexel), St. Joes (OK, not the Hawks of last year), and U.C. Santa Barbara.
Butler has a win over the same Miami Oh. (5-1) team that has beaten Purdue and Xavier.
Navy . . . O.K., that one is not that impressive. Still, the Bobcats 104 RPI is pretty respectable for a Mid-Major.
Then Ohio went on the road, losing at St. Francis and now at American. That St. Francis loss is the one that makes me wonder about the Bobcats.
I saw the Red Flash in its win over Bucknell and I was not impressed. Right now St. Francis (4-3) has an impressive No. 41 RPI, but that has more to do with its losses (at American (RPI=64), Pittsburgh (RPI=37) and yesterday at George Washington (RPI=8)) than its wins. St. Francis has not beaten anyone with an RPI lower than Ohio's 104.
Nonetheless, a Patriot League win over a Mid-American Conference team? We will take that any day. Especially in these days when most of the rest of the Patriot teams are busy losing to the Harvards, Columbias and Cornells of the world.
I am still not ready to anoint American as league favorites in the Patriot, though. The concerns I pointed out after the win over Towson last week showed up again in the box score yesterday.
American got just 10 points from its bench, which got 28 combined minutes of PT. Andre Ingram didn't have to play 40 minutes like he did against Towson, but he did play 39. Jason Thomas added 38. Until the bench picks up its production, you have to be concerned about how well AU is going to hold up over the course of the whole season.
AU winning a game in which Ingram was held to 10 points is a good sign. Thomas is beginning to make folks wonder if they picked the right AU guard as the conference's preseason player of the year. Thomas poured in 26 points for the second game in a row, including an impressive 5-for-6 showing from the arc. That followed his 5-for-5 3-point night at Towson.
When you have a guy stroking the three like that, good things happen.
My worry, from an AU perspective, is about what happens to jump-shooting teams when they cool off. Right now, AU has three guys shooting over 50 percent from 3-point range. How realistic is it to expect that pace to continue.
I keep hearing from folks like Matt at the Patriot League Blog about AU's quartet of big men, but against Ohio, they combined for just 18 points. When someone is raining threes like Thomas was yesterday, it should open up the middle. And since I am including Matej Cresnik, who prefers to step outside to shoot the J, in that 18-point total, I am not sure how many of those 18 can be considered as inside. According to the final box, Ohio outscored AU 28-22 in the paint. AU had 12 fast break points, presumably mostly layups that would count as in the paint.
For now, I still think Holy Cross has been the most impressive Patriot team in the early going. But only a fool would say American is not right there with the Crusaders.
As we break for finals (just two league games over the next week, only one against a D-I foe), it is looking like a typical Patriot League season on tap when conference play begins in January. It seems like there is always a divide between the upper and lower division in the league, with four teams battling for the title and four battling to stay out of the cellar.
It might be slightly different this season. Right now, I am thinking we could see the emergence of a middle class. AU, HC and Bucknell appear locks for the contending class. Lehigh looked that way in the preseason, but their stock has fallen with losses at Stony Brook and, especially, at home to Columbia. And I still think Lafayette is going to have a spoilers say in who claims the crown.
Army appears to have a lock on last place, though Navy could challenge them for that dubious distinction. Or at least they did look that way before yesterday's overtime loss to Stony Brook (box score). Even given the clock controversy that allowed the Mids to send it to OT, Navy's effort against a team that has owned the Patriot League thus far could be a sign of improvement in Annapolis.
We'll save our criticism for the D.C. media's lack of coverage of the AU game for another day. Suffice to say neither the Post nor the Moonie is the Philly Inquirer or Daily News.
I make that comparison because, on paper, the two cities are similar in a hoops sense. D.C. has AU, Georgetown, George Washington, George Mason, Maryland and Navy. Six D-I programs. Phily has the Big 5 (Villanova, Temple, St. Joes, LaSalle and Penn) and Drexel.
Best I can tell though, the Post staffed only one game Saturday, Georgetown's win over San Jose State. G.W. is a top 25 team, yet the Post couldn't bother to send someone to Loretto for their game at St. Francis, Pa. AU and Navy were included in a wrap.
We checked Mapquest; it's about a three hour drive from D.C. to Loretto. Mostly interstate.
Is that too much to expect from one of the nation's leading papers?
Apparently so. Ditto for driving up four miles up Mass Ave. for the AU game.
Contrast that with the Inquirer (feel free to use our e-mail ... hoopt_time@hotmail.com and password ... hooptime3 to check the Inky's stories), which yesterday staffed Villanova-LaSalle and the Drexel-Quinnipiac game, had a correspondent at the Temple-Alabama game and only used the wire for St. Joe's at San Francisco.
So much for saving the critique for another day, eh?
