Sports Analysis
As Brian Gilmore drained a three-pointer late in the first half of last season’s NCAA Tournament game, an upset seemed imminent. The Eagles went into halftime up by double-digits against Villanova, the third-ranked team in the bracket essentially playing a home game at the Wachovia Center.
The AU men’s basketball program was on top of the world, but since then the mighty have certainly fallen.
Nova outscored AU 49-26 in the second half and watched a double-digit lead transform into a double-digit loss. The program has looked like a mere shadow of its former self ever since. With three straight losses, including a soul-crushing double overtime loss at Colgate University on Saturday, a simple question has surfaced: why are they so bad?
Obviously the loss of seven seniors has hurt this year’s team. The likes of Gilmore, Garrison Carr and Derrick Mercer were without a doubt some of the greatest players AU has ever had. This year’s squad has had to deal not only with losing their talent, but also their lack of experience. AU started the season as the fifth youngest team in the NCAA. The two returning players who had any role on last year’s team, Stephen Lumpkins and Nick Hendra, averaged 3.4 and 6.3 points per game respectively. As a whole, the Eagles lost 81 percent of their minutes and 84 percent of their scoring from last year.
Anyone with half a brain, including Head Coach Jeff Jones, knew that this year was going to be tough. Freshmen and sophomores were going to have to step up and some of them have. At this point in the season however, there is no excuse for how poorly they have played.
Much of this burden falls on the players because, after all, they’re the ones playing the game. Yet it feels like it hasn’t been completely their fault. Vlad Moldoveanu, the polished Romanian star, has averaged 19.9 points as well as 6.4 rebounds this season and is in the running for Patriot League Player of the Year honors. Lumpkins and Hendra have both doubled their production from last year and younger players like Simon McCormack and Daniel Munoz have evolved into solid contributors as well.
It leads one to believe that it’s not a lack of talent that AU posses, but rather a misuse of what the team has. Unfortunately, this falls squarely on the shoulders of Jones and his staff.
Of course none of these guys, with the possible exception of Moldoveanu, can compare to the seniors who were lost, but it’s not like Jones has nothing to work with. AU’s roster went from spectacular last year to very good this year. This slight dip in talent doesn’t explain the huge gap in record.
One key problem for Jones has been his inability to adapt the system to fit the players. AU shoots a three-point attempt once every four possessions, which comes out to roughly 18 threes per game. This would be a great strategy if the likes of Mercer, Carr and Gilmore were draining them 40 percent of the time like they did last year. Unfortunately for Jones, Joe Hill is no Garrison Carr.
Logically, this would prompt Jones to alter his offensive strategy a bit in order to get more layups and less threes. He is most likely trying to do this, but it’s just not working. The ball enters the low post to Lumpkins or Moldoveanu, the opposing defense collapses around him and it’s another three-point attempt. The Eagles have become incredibly one-dimensional and teams are finally discovering that if you can stop Moldoveanu, you can stop AU.
Instead of living and dying by the three, Jones should be adapting his system to promote a more aggressive style of play. The Eagles like to gently prod the opposing defense and make a few space-creating cuts, but they rarely attack the rim. A poor jump-shooting team like AU should work harder to create easy layups and Jones’ current system is not conducive to this goal.
Jones has always stressed the large role that energy plays in his team’s success or failure, yet this is another issue that is partially his fault. One of the head coach’s key jobs is to motivate and inspire his players, but Jones’ outbursts seem to have lost their effectiveness as the season has progressed. He’s also failed to address this issue by maintaining a strict rotation of players, allowing the starters and key role players to be overly carefree on the court. Giving second chances to fresh faces like Blake Jolivette and Mike Bersch may provide the spark that a young team like AU craves.
Looking at the AU men’s basketball team on paper, the squad should not be 7-18 at this point in the season. Certainly the team itself could be playing better, but the blame cannot all be placed on quality basketball players like Moldoveanu, Lumpkins and Hendra. For these reasons, a majority of blame must fall on Jones and his staff.
You can reach this writer at sports@theeagleonline.com.
