Velcro’s USF BasketBlog

USF has officially broken their way out of the Big East cellar with a victory over #8 Georgetown in Washington DC.

Not only did they win, against a top 10 team, they did it on the road, after beating another ranked team in Pitt in Tampa.

And they did it after getting dominated early in the game by Greg Monroe.

These guys are actually pretty good.  USF now occupies the #8 spot in the Big East standings.  The Big East generally gets 7 or 8 teams into the NCAA tournament, so there is now a legitimate chance for something that hasn’t happened in nearly 2 decades.

There is still a long way to go, with road games against Notre Dame and Marquette coming up in the next week, but the Bulls are soon getting back their 6′10 sweet shooting power forward Gus Gilchrist, which should take some of the scoring pressure off of Dominique Jones.

Jones has carried this team on his back, averaging 37 points per game over the last 3 games.  Georgetown double teamed him constantly tonight and he quietly waited for his openings.  Quietly… on route to 29 points and a huge victory!

He is the real deal, and this team knows it too can play with the big boys on any given night.

Enjoy the rest of this season… its gonna be a fun ride.

Sorry… a bit scattered tonight… still in shock!

USF has won back to back games for the first time in conference play in the Big East, ever!  That is 5 years of not stringing 2 wins together against Big East foes.USF also won 2 OT games in a row. The Bulls were 1-9 in their last 10 OT games.

Dominique Jones and Jeremy Hazell had a great scoring duel, both scoring 28 points, but 6 of Jones’ came in overtime while Hazell went scoreless.Jarrid Famous and Herb Pope battled for a combined 31 rebounds, but Pope was quiet offensively and Jarrid Famous lived at the foul line and sunk 80% of his attempts in what is one of the most clutch performances by a USF big man in ages.

Gilchrist is still out of the lineup, but the team is starting to come together.  There are still moments of disjoint play, but effort is consistently there.  And with Gus’ 18 pts per game possibly coming back very shortly, the outlook is getting better and better for this team.

They are on pace for post season play, (even without a player who was leading the team in rebounding and scoring prior to his injury)… but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

#17 Pitt is coming to the Sun Dome on Sunday at 1pm.  Everyone needs to get out to this game and create a true home court advantage.   As the saying goes… “Win and they will come”.  This is that game. Win this game, and excitement for this program will go through the roof.

It may have just been the AWFUL announcing by the Davidson broadcaster, but that game, especially the first half, was very painful to listen to on the radio.  It is better than nothing, i suppose, but hearing the constant bashing of our team every time they missed a shot, you would have thought Brett McMurphy was their play-by-play guy.

Despite the auditory assault, USF escaped game 1 of the Charleston Classic with a victory 78-68 over a talented Davidson Wildcats that is struggling to find its identity without the face of their program, Stephen Curry, now in the NBA.

Gilchrist iced the game hitting 15-16 free throws, including 5-6 down the stretch after Davidson cut a 12 pt lead down to just 2 points with under a minute left to go.

The Davidson announce kept saying that if we can get the lead down under 10, USF would very likely ‘choke, choking is a definite possibility’.  It was very nice to see USF overcome the ice cold shooting and bad decision making down the stretch to still get the victory.

Here is a link Astro’s blog entry for this game
and also to his preview of our next game vs a very good South Carolina team, lead by Devan Downey.

The game will be played at 9:30 pm… and USF will surely be a huge underdog.  We are going to need a great team effort, and a hot Dominique Jones and Augustus Gilchrist in order to win this one.

Monday night brought ACC foe Virginia to the Sun Dome for USF’s home opener, a potentially tough test for the start of the season, but also a good gauge of how good this team could be.

Virginia jumped out to a 12-6 lead, but USF quickly clawed back.  The Bulls took the lead into half time with balanced scoring from Jones, Gilchrist and Famous.

USF used a quick 17-5 run out of the locker room to put virginia on the ropes… and they began pressing, hoisting up quick 3 pointers frequently, some ill-advised shots, and many heavily contested shots.  While they made some, USF consistently had answers from Gilchrist and Jones.   Jones led all scorers with 22 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists. Gilchrist scored 18 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 blocks, and Famous added 12 points and 8 rebounds of his own.  This dynamic trio should provide a good scoring balance throughout the season, both inside and out.

One thing that I am concerned with is the production from bench.  In the opener vs Southern Methodist, the bench was held scoreless.  Tonight, the bench provided 9 key points… all from Justin Leemow 3 pointers.  Leemow, who looks like a new man, was posing after each shot, knowing they were good.  He went 3 for 3 and played solid defense the entire night, in a 3 guard rotation with Howard and Mercer, both of whom were fairly quiet in the game offensively, but also played great defense most the night. Burwell, Noriega, and Dumars were relegated to mop up duty with under 2 minutes to play when the game was already well out of reach.  Both Dumars and Burwell went 0-1 on 3pt attempts.

There were some defensive breakdowns that resulted in layups for the Cavaliers… but nothing that can’t be fixed with good coaching.  Overall, everyone played with heart and hustle.  They were very disciplined and did not reach and pick up many ticky-tack foul and were aggressive in contesting most shots near the rim.

Offensively, the team started slow, but ended up shooting 54% from the field, 45% from behind the arc, and 72% from the FT line.

It is still tough to judge how this team is going to be, but they took some major steps today in gelling as a team. We’ll learn much more over the next couple weeks with games against teams like Davidson, and possibly South Carolina, but beating Virginia is certainly a step in the right direction.

Exhibition games in the past have had pretty lousy turn outs… but surprisingly, this game had a much better attendance than even some of the lower tier non-conference games from previous years.  Was it locals coming out to support one of their own, Toarlyn Fitzpatrick from King High School?  Was it Florida Southern fans coming out to see their top 10 DII team play against a Big East team?  Or was it due to the influx of talent that has come into the program this off season paired with the Big East likely having a drop off in talent as a whole is having some people thinking USF may take a huge step this year?  I think it is a combination of the three, but I am not complaining.

As for the USF roster this season, it is full of talented youth and new faces.   First and foremost is the arrival of highly touted Jarrid Famous, the Juco center that chose USF over Missouri.  Famous is 6′11, on a thin athletic frame.  He has no end to his energy and athleticism.  He scored 20 points, eight rebounds and six assists in his debut in a Bulls uniform.  Granted, he towered over even the biggest Moc players, but his points were mostly scored by his energy and aggressiveness.

Another newcomer, Fitzpatrick, provided some toughness to go along with some soft hands. Scoring 14 points of his own.

A familiar face returned to the roster this season in Mike Mercer, whom was kicked off the team last year, but earned his way back into Stan Heath’s good graces with hard work off the court.  Mike tore his acl for the 2nd time last year yet showed great energy and athleticism, especially on defense.  He scored 17 points.

Three freshman guards are expected to provide a 3 pt shooting punch, including Jordan Dumars, the son of Piston great Joe Dumars, Shawn Noriega, and Mike Burwell.  Dumars hit the very first 3ptr that he took and you could  see the confidence in his shot, the nice technique.  I have a great feeling about him.

Noriega also made a couple nice 3ptrs, one that was very closely guarded, while falling away, from a couple feet outside the arc.

Both Dumars and Noriega went 2-4 on the evening.  I’ll take .500 3pt shooter any day of the week.

Burwell on the other hand didn’t score his first (and only) basket until the last 30 seconds of the game on an uncontested layup.  His 3 pts shot missed wildly… perhaps nerves, who knows… but my guess is that Dumars is going to be the guy with ice water in his veins, Noriega is going to be a tough energy guy that can and will hit open shots and Burwell is going to be the guy that needs to hit the weight room a bit.  I just don’t know what to expect from Mike based on what I saw.  He seemed lost on occasion… so we’ll keep an eye on him.

And of course, we can’t overlook the returning players, few they may be.  Dominque Jones looked as confident as i’ve ever seen him, putting in 20 points of his own.  Howard seemed to defer a lot to get others involved.  He made a couple nice drives and scores while getting fouled, but was relatively quiet.  Justin Leemow played defense with an intensity that borders on insanity.  He is so quick laterally, it just drives opposing guards nuts.  He drew one 5 second call and caused a few poor passes.

Overall, the team made plenty of defensive errors that resulted in open shots for the Mocs, and being a good team, they hit many open looks.  But it was clear that the size and talent alone was easily enough to overcome these mistakes… but that won’t be the case during the season.  They need to learn to gel together.   The defense needs to block out and look for the rebound.  They were caught standing around on occasion and Stan let them know about it.

My scoring predictions for the season:

Jones 19   <– defenses will still try to key on him, but it didn’t help them out out in stopping him last year, and now he has help
Famous 15 <–  energy and aggressiveness should get him this total
Mercer 13 <–  this is my question mark… I see no reason he can’t achieve this average.  He was on pace for near that amount before his injury.
Gilchrist 15  <–  he averaged 10 last year, and seemed to play with more toughness last night than I have seen out of him in the past
Howard 7 <– he didn’t really try to score much… will this be a trend… he is very capable now of knocking down open shots from anywhere
Dumars 6 <– 2-3 tres per game out off Jordan
Noriega 5 <– 2-3 tres per game out of Shawn
Leemow 4 <– hustle points
Fitzpatrick 5 <– how will he play vs bigger players?
Burwell 2 <–
In  doing the math, that adds up to 90 pts per game…which makes me sound crazy as can be, but based on what I see on the court, I have trouble taking any of those numbers and reducing them.  Averaging 90 pts per game is seemingly unrealistic… but who isn’t going to get their points?  The 4 freshmen might have a tad high predictions, but even if they averaged 3 pts a piece, it would still have us averaging over 80 pts per game.  I see this team playing an up-tempo style pushing the ball off out of defensive stops.  They have the energy and depth to never need to slow the game down and let teams regroup.

It was an exhibition of potential, energy, talent, and also a demonstration that there is still a lot of work left to go to get this team out of the basement.  The talent appears to be there, but talent alone won’t cut it.  It should be an interesting year.

Wow.  What a way for our team to play their final home game of the 2009 season, and win one for the seniors against a team that has been our kryptonite (along with L’ville) for ages on the hardcourt.

Two of our seniors didn’t play (Verdejo and Ajayi), but it still must have been sweet for them, nonetheless.  And for aris williams, who hit a couple big drought busters from 15 feet.

Dominique Jones took over the game, nailing big shot after big shot.  Chris Howard was dishing dimes left and right and Justin Leemow shot his way out of a monumental slump spanning at least a couple weeks, maybe more.  Three huge 3 pointers for Justin in the send half spurred the Bulls to a 7 point lead that Cincy could not overcome, despite a valiant effort by Cincy’s Deonta Vaughn.

(side note… Deonta Vaughn and DoJo were in the same recruiting class, and Vaughn seriously considered playing at USF… can you imagine both of those guys on the court at the same time, for the same team? yikes)

On a day where USF’s team uniforms were lost in a luggage miscue at the airport, you could feel that the luck of the Irish might be in play.  USF was forced to play the game in its black practice uniforms.  It isn’t a huge deal, but it is something that can take a young team out of its comfort zone.   And ND jumped out to a big lead, but credit the bulls for hanging in there making big shots and making big shots throughout the game to prevent ND from extending the lead and giving themselves a shot to come back, and that they did.

It seems the two main problems this team has, other than the well known depth issue, is the ability to rebound (due to the lack of size down low, among other things) and the ability to guard the 3 point shot.  These two things reared their ugly head yet again, in the 10 point loss @ Notre Dame Sunday afternoon.  The Bulls made a game of it, despite the hot shooting by Kyle Mclarney, who was hitting from 28 feet early on (reminiscient of the Reggie Kohn years).  If he was in stride, he was taking the shot.  He got cold in the second half and by no coincidence, USF made its run to tie the game.  But Once they got tied, the Irish Bomber lit the fuse again and started draining shots from all over.

The Bulls played solid defense on Luke Harongody, which had to be their #1 concern.  And it seemed they finally caught on to his pattern.  Spin right= score; spin left= miss.  He is money when he goes to his right shoulder, but seems to struggle from his left shoulder.  (I know, tough to say someone is struggling at all when he averages 24 and 13 and is the raining Big East player of the year, but it is true).  We started taking away the right shoulder and he went cold.  That combined with McLarney being face guarded by howard and espinosa forced someone else to beat us.  Enter Nash and Jackson.  They made big shot after big shot while their stars were stuggling.

Once the star power returned, they pushed the game out of reach down the stretch, as good teams do at home.

Good effort by the Bulls, just not enough in the tank.

Stan Heath has done something no other USF coach basketball coach has ever done.  USF pulled out a win against a top 10 team for the first time in its history friday night.  It was something the team, the fans, and the coach needed.  It validates that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  It shows recruits that if we can do this with limited roster, what could we do if some top notch talent signed on.  It shows the fans that they have something to be excited about with their hoops team, even if the record isn’t quite there yet.  It will come.  Time is the answer.

Any reasonable person knew that time was the answer… that Stan would have his work cut out for him.  But explaining that to others was tough, considering all the doom and gloom surrounding the USF hoops program.  Friday night gave us something that we can hang our hats on to show these people that there is direction to this Heath coach team and it is upward.  This might be the turning point.  Beating depaul twice was great, but only that we weren’t the worst team in the league.  This shows that if we ride out low, we will be getting somewhere.  Faith in coach Heath, his system, his recruiting, is all that is needed from us as fans.  We need to show up, bring that energy to the Sun Dome every night and our team will continue to grow.  Recruits and the nation will notice.  They noticed last night.  Lead story on ESPN.

Yes, some will say Marquette missed alot of shots, and alot of free throws.  No kidding.  We do that when we lose too.  But others say that is because the other team is better.  Well hmm.  Now Marquette is the one with that, and it is just b/c they beat themselves… not because we contributed to them missing shots.   It’s a two way street.  Marquette is a very good team.  We played very tough defense, espectially on Dominique James.

When we get production out of 3 offensive players, including Verdejo, this team is decent.  We don’t have the depth due to injury(ajayi/mercer)/other issues(mercer) , and we don’t have the size of most other teams… but what we do have is heart.  There is no other way to explain how this team keeps on fighting, learning, growing, despite having such a hill to climb.

We should be proud of this team, shorthanded or not, as they are doing things we didn’t think was even possible… well most of us.  For others, it just came sooner than expected.

If only we could play Depaul every game.  They have some talent on that team… but the have been very theraputic for us bulls fans.  We are happy that our team has shown fight against the top teams in the conference, but we need wins to boost confidence going forward.

Despite missing Jesus Verdejo to a concussion, the Bulls prevailed in hard fought, back-and-forth game, pulling away down the stretch, showing the killer instinct that we lacked in the UVa and UAB losses.  Dominique Jones was unstoppable last night.  He couldn’t be guarded one on one, as he’d drive to the hole every time, get fouled, and complete the 3 point play.  He couldn’t be zoned as he was able to get off shot after shot.  And double teaming continuously left others open, like Justin Leemow and Gus Gilchrist for easy scores.  Gilchrist showed excellent mobility driving to the hoop for layup after layup, despite being known for his excellent mid-range and 3-pt range.  This is very encouraging as the development of this dimension is what will take him from being a solid freshmen to a great player in coming years.

And Chris Howard, while he started out cold, got to the rim over and over.  Both he and Leemow had 5+ rebounds and contributed important and timely points when the team’s offense started to stagnate.

It may have only been Depaul, but a win is a win, as they say, and we’ll take every win we can get in this league.

Finally, a first half effort worthy of celebration.  I have not seen our guys play with so much energy as they did in the first half.  And the 3000 bulls fans in attendance fed of their defensive energy.  Most of the energy came from Augustus Gilchrist and Dominique Jones, blocking 3 early layups, causing the crowd to erupt.

But the 2nd half was not quite the same energy.  Too many times, when a run seemed imminent, a bad mistake blew the momentum and allowed the Cardinals to extend the lead.

Overall, UL and its press was just too much for USF, as has been the norm for the past decade.  Our strength at the basket was definitely proven as a weekness.  Even when we tried to go strong to the hoop, the shots were getting blocked regularly.  It is good to see the guys attempt to get to the rim more, but Gus is not strong enough right now, and Espinosa lacks confidence to really go up over people.  On one occasion, was at the 2nd hash and could have just elevated with one step and dunked, but opted to pass to Rivas on the opposite block where it was bobbled and taken away.

The team is learning how difficult these games are in this league… but these two opponents should help them prepare for what is to come.  Both play very different styles, but play them very well.

Side note… i heard more booing from both home and away fans last night directed at the refs than usual.