Can you blame Lonergan? Sure maybe he could have schemed better. Was the offense bad in the second half? It wasn’t great, but 80 points should win you a game. So what was it then? Effort, this was mostly on effort. The dirty little secret about defense is that quite a lot of your defensive ability relies on how much effort you give to it. Sure, you need skill, and a good scheme, and athleticism never hurts, but mostly you just need to try really hard and be committed to stopping the other team and getting rebounds. GW was playing for its postseason life and they gave a ~shrug emoji~ effort. I can’t give any analysis on this. Honestly, I have no idea how this happened. Credit to Saint Joe’s because they played extremely well to come back, but for all intents and purposes this game should’ve been over at halftime. I have no idea how GW let this happen. It’s haunting. And this is how I’m going to remember this team regardless of what they do in the NIT; I’ll remember a collapse of epic proportions when it mattered most. For this, there is no one to blame but the team itself and the what if questions surrounding this team’s potential will haunt Colonials fans for a long time.

With that loss, GW was on its way to the NIT, but let’s quickly discuss what we learned from Selection Sunday. As I’m sure most of you heard, the newly formatted selection show on CBS was an unmitigated disaster, that included a bracket leak, which actually perfectly encapsulated the actual selections the NCAA committee made for the tournament. Every year after selections are made, analysts on CBS and ESPN spend hours upon hours talking about teams that got snubbed and teams that didn’t deserve to make it. Generally, the committee gets it pretty close to right with a few surprises or snubs here or there.

Across the board, this year was a mess. Now I’ll give them this: this year’s bubble, like this whole season, was WIDE OPEN so there were a lot of teams you could make a case for, and in return there were going to be a lot of teams who were “left out”. There were 4 huge bubble decisions that were messed up along with a whole bunch of big seeding questions.

Disclaimer: This is my own personal opinion so take it with many grains of salt but also please use logic and reason when coming to conclusions. That St. Bonaventure, and Monmouth were both passed up and that Tulsa got in as a First Four and Syracuse got in as a 10 seed is INEXCUSABLE. WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH ARE YOU DOING NCAA COMMITTEE. The Bonnies were co-regular season champions in the A10 (a conference that is somewhere between high mid major and low power conference) and had an RPI of 29. Monmouth won the regular season MAAC championship going 27-7 (17-3), they had an RPI of 55 and went 6-4 against the RPI top 100, let it be noted they also had 3 sub 200 RPI losses. Meanwhile, Tulsa went 20-11 finishing in the middle of the American conference with an RPI of 60. Syracuse finished in the bottom half of the ACC with a 19-13 record (15-8 with their coach 4-5 while he was suspended for previous NCAA violations). The committee said they took into account the suspension. So basically Syracuse got rewarded for playing like crap while their coach was suspended for NCAA violations. Sure sure that seems fair. Tulsa got rewarded for playing in a perceived power conference which was actually a mediocre cesspool this year. I might listen to some of the flimsy arguments about Bona and Monmouth not getting in, but the teams that replaced them should never have been Tulsa and Syracuse.

What’s the big problem? The NCAA is not consistent in the metrics they use. The committee has maintained that RPI (which in itself is a pretty terrible metric but that’s not the point here) is an important part. Likewise, mid majors complaining about not making it the last several years have been told to beef up non-conference schedules with power conference teams. Originally I wrote all of the stats on this and then realized y’all don’t care about that (nor should you); suffice it to say Bona and Monmouth seemingly followed the blueprint and yet the committee rewarded mediocrity of power conference teams. This has to change for several reasons, one being that Monmouth and Bonaventure both had better bodies of work and two, no one cares about a mediocre Syracuse team when they could watch a mid-major take the country by storm.  So in the end, my two big takeaways from this are: 1) Don’t listen to a thing the committee says because they aren’t consistent; and 2) If you are a mid-major team, bad losses (sub 200 RPI losses; Monmouth and Bona both had a few, as did GW) are a death knell for a tourney bid. From what we saw in the selections, GW probably would’ve had to win the Saint Joe’s game, as well as the next game against Dayton, to get in.

Now let’s get back to talking about GW and what’s ahead of them.

NIT Matchups and Playing for Pride

GW ended up getting a 4 seed and a home game against Hofstra Wednesday at 8pm. Hofstra went 24-9 and was co-regular season champ of the CAA. They were expected to win their conference tourney but like the majority of favorites this year, they lost in the final. Hofstra actually beat Bona and La Salle on the road in non conference play this year. They can score the ball extremely well and take a lot of threes, but they are not a very deep or tall team, and they aren’t particularly great on defense. GW should have a huge advantage. GW is also at home, so in theory this game should be a pretty solid victory. But that brings me to the big thing I wanted to talk about: the mentality of playing in the NIT.

Generally, there are two kinds of teams playing in the NIT. There are the teams that overachieved or had a very young roster and are trying to use the NIT as a springboard into big things next year; Virginia Tech is a team that falls into this category this year. Then there are the teams that underachieved or believed the should be in the NCAA tournament and are playing for pride: GW, this is us. Generally, the teams that are just happy to be there and are looking to build something for the next season do a much better in the NIT than those who are basically playing for pride (no surprises here). And hoooooooo boy is GW playing for pride. Right now my lasting memory (and probably many of yours as well) of this team and these seniors is this incredible flameout they just had. And I do not want that to be how they are remembered. They deserve to remembered for other things, better things, like starting for four years, and turning an entire program around, and making an NCAA tournament as an at-large team as sophomores when everyone expected them to be awful. And this particular team deserves to be remembered for their wins against UVA and Seton Hall, and finally beating VCU on the road. But if they mess around and have an early exit in the NIT, I promise you that won’t be the first thing that people think of with this team and these guys; it’ll be this spectacular disaster that ended this season and the many what-ifs that have plagued this season as a whole. So I hope they’re mad; I hope they’re raring to go; I hope they make a nice little run in the NIT to polish up this season and a whole bunch of careers with some positives, because more than anything I want this season and these guys (Joe, Kevin, Pato, and even Alex’s) legacy to be abundantly positive.

That said, if GW can get past Hofstra then their next opponent will more than likely be Monmouth: aka America’s darlings of college basketball 2016. For those unaware or who have been living under a rock this college basketball season, Monmouth popped onto the radar back in November when they had non-conference wins against UCLA, USC, Notre Dame, and Georgetown, all either on the road or at a neutral site. More importantly than that though, was their incredibly creative and incredibly vineable bench who put together a plethora of amazing celebration dances. Here’s a vine of some the highlights.

Anyway, they were prepped and ready to be America’s Cinderella this year before they lost in their conference tourney final and then the NCAA committee decided it didn’t enjoy magic. They’re also pretty good at the whole basketball thing. They have a bunch of quick guards (GW’s kryptonite), and they put up a lot of threes. Like a lot of mid-majors, they don’t have a lot of size or depth, which is definitely something GW could take advantage of. Reminder that the next round of the NIT after tonight would also be played at Monmouth. I think it would be very competitive and also very winnable for GW (little secret, every game GW might play in the NIT is very winnable). As always, it will come down to GW playing some lockdown defense consistently for an entire game (which unfortunately is not something I can promise you right now). For now we will just worry about GW getting past Hofstra and Monmouth (or, theoretically, Bucknell, although that’s unlikely) and if they get past both those, we can have a whole other TWIP.

And with that I’m out. Are you sick of me yet? No? Awesome, because I’ve got a women’s NCAA TWIP coming your way soon.

Raise High

Deuces