Stayed in Philly the entire trip

Agree about the freshmen. They have given us absolutely nothing.

But they aren't the ones who are supposed to be leaders and that's the bigger problem.

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The wild fact of the day is that Des led the team this game with 36 minutes. He was a complete no-show today. The freshmen have not wowed me, but today would have been a perfect day to throw them out there for at least 12 minutes in the second half if only to see what they could do. Plus, a benching in a game like this might send the message to the starters that embarrassing losses like this are unacceptable

We stayed in Philly. No classes, no travel and we laid this egg.

I have to throw this out there. Injuries or not, we are digressing. Has Drew and this staff lost this team? The effort today was lousy. Anytime anyone challenges us defensively, we absolutely crater. I was excited at the beginning of the year, but just sick now.

Yeah, I don't get why anybody needs to pay 36 minutes in a game like that.

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Here's another one:

Miles was 2-2 at the line. Everybody else? 1-8.

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36 points has to be the worst loss in years -- anyone know the last time we lost by this much? I think it's clear by now the Drew the coach has a ways to go to catch up to Drew the recruiter/portaller. There's losing because of injuries and then there's this -- these guys are playing way below their talent level, and the question is what the hell happened compared to last year? Did losing Will Bailey make that much of a difference? Ay yai yai.

We were force-feeding Deloach down low in heavy traffic, and he just got subsumed over and over and over. The color commentator mentioned that it was odd we were throwing it into the post to him and then parking Miles right next to him. She also mentioned that we needed better spacing, and I completely agree -- the 4 out lineup was very productive against La Salle, and we went with our big lineup today, with disastrous results. We kept driving right into heavy traffic and they kept turning us away, to the tune of 8 blocks.

Speaking of blocks, does it seem like Miles' rim protection has gone MIA? As bad as our perimeter defense has been, it seems like the guards are defending like they have a monster rim protector, and then he just isn't there. I feel like after a few easy uncontested layups, the guards sucked in, giving SJU rooms to rain all those threes on us. I wonder if he is checked out because he is transferring -- the more we lose I'm sure the more he has his mind made up. I'm ready to see what Brayden Young can do, he looked electric in the exhibition, definitely has elite leaping ability and could end up being a more complete player than Miles. Just a hunch.

He is redshirting of course, and probably does need to gain weight. But man, as others have noted our freshmen are giving us nothing. Seif is nowhere near ready, and Glaskov gets minutes and doesn't make any impact.

Last point: by now Quinn has had plenty of time to step up, and he just hasn't. He plays like a backup, and seems like that's where he belongs. His stat line today was about as paltry as you can get in over 20 minutes of playing time. I believe Houinsou is due to come back on Wednesday, and I think we have to try him running the point -- can't be any worse than what happened today. I like a lineup of Houinsou, Des, Sheldon, Dawson, and Miles/Deloach/Nwakorie. Gets our best shooters out there, with plenty of length at the wings. When we need more size, we bring Nwakorie in since he can shoot as well -- no more having Miles and Deloach on the floor at the same time.

The difference between last year and this year (for me here) is point guarding.

Hard for any PG, transfer or holdover, to duplicate what Braden Norris did for us last year and in the prior years. We all knew this was an irreplaceable, massive loss going into 24-25.

Norris’s floor leadership last year was huge. He was a coach on the floor. This year we don’t have this.

Little did we know or see at the time of injury, Moore was turning into a really good floor general, offensive conductor, and distributor.

In Drew’s postgame there was admission the impact of J-MO’s injury was underestimated and now we are realizing it.

I was personally expecting immediate impact from JQ as the new starting PG. I mean two years as a Norris understudy and backup you’d think there was good preparation for this moment. We’ve seen some greatness in spurts throughout this season but we need full games from JQ at this point.

Most college teams carry 2 or 3 PG’s on the roster in case of these injury catastrophes. But 7 games since Moore went out we are no better playing point guard-less than we are with any of our backup PG’s. Ugh……

Thoughts also on Miles and the Trilly Donovan portal rumors, but I’ll keep them private……

Trilly Donovan's lists like coaches hot seat and portal candidates are really just a dude spitballing. Sure he's probably an insider, but any underclassman in a non P5 conference that makes a preseason all-anything conference team is a portal candidate. Putting Miles' name out there was really a guy speculating and trying to generate clicks and a few bucks too considering his original account got hacked when he tried to create his own crypto coin.

If there's any news about movement, it'll start with the coach. In this era of basically free agency in college sports, you hire the coach and he brings his team with him. An example is our old friends at Drake, although there are countless ones all over the sport. If we right the ship, DV could land a bigger job by "promising" or "recruiting" the players who we would typically expect to be big contributors on a 2025-26 LUC team (Dawson, Miles, Houinsou, Love, Moore, etc.) to the new school. Obviously though if we flame out, Drew probably doesn't have many calls coming his way.

I definitely could see Miles getting tampering calls from other schools. That has literally happening to him and Des and Jayden for the last 12 months; they were getting texts on the bus ride down to Bradley for the NIT. I just don't see how you can say that he's definitively leaving for the portal like that twitter burner said. TBH the most likely scenario is Miles doesn't even know what he's doing at the end of the year.

If?

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