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Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball
It was some game. I made the trek. I was expecting a close game, as King was picked to win their conference and had beaten Va State and Chowan.
The WLU fans were quite vocal as there were approximately 30 there.
Both teams played cleanly and there was not the hint of trash talking (King is a Christian school).
That first 6 minutes was some of the highest level basketball I had seen in a while. They were ahead 19-2. Bolon, Yoakum, Meininger, and Hill were on fire with Dyer stealing balls and distributing.
The energy level was through the roof.
Only 2 turnovers for WL in the first 10 minutes.
Rapid ball movement, sharp cuts to the basket, assists, and intense pressure. They forced 4 turnovers in less than 5 minutes - 5 second calls, 10 second calls during the game, plus a few more that were missed IMHO.
King had some good players and were well coached. They just were not ready for this level of intensity.
Dyer had 0 turnovers to go with 7 assists.
Hill and Yoakum are growing by leaps and bounds in every game in terms of being comfortable with the college game.
I found out Meininger was a point guard growing up, which explains some of the darts he throws from the top of the key to a teammate for a layup. King was not used to seeing a big man out front running the show.
At the initial onslaught, King gathered themselves and played WL fairly evenly, down by 19 at the half at 62-43., after being down 35-10 at one point. That was a credit to their players and coaches.
The referees were not up to the task. They could not keep up with the speed of play and wound up guessing at calls that they clearly could not see.
They called a technical on one of our bench players for standing and cheering the team when he was nowhere near the court. When the coach was kneeling and watching the play, he calmly commented a few minutes later that he
was under the impression that it was OK to cheer. And the same ref t'd him up too! Got a feeling the ref is a control freak.
Well, that lit a fire under WL and they took it out on King.
Back into full trapping mode and the lead swelled to 37 points.
One of my favorite plays was a deflected pass that led to the helter skelter chaos of WL bodies going for the ball like their scrimmages to 100 points. Bolon dove through the air horizontally and tapped the ball ahead to Yoakum on a breakaway.
He goes in for the layup and it rims out. Who is there but Bolon to put the ball back in the basket. He was on the floor near half court and got up to trail the play while WL was leading by 30!
Impressive.
With about 8 minutes left. Coach cleared the bench and let everyone play. Probably due to the unusual combination of players on the floor (benefit of the doubt comment),
but I was really disappointed with the play of this mixture of players. Some of the new transfer players went AAU playground on us, which I had not seen from West Liberty before. Not the way to get more playing time. To quote Huggins, "OK you have shown me what you can't do. Now why don't you try do things you ARE good at, for a change?"
The subs had 3 turnovers in 1 minute and were not playing defense. King to their credit cut the lead to the final margin of 21.
One funny item - One of their best players had 4 fouls. with about 5 minutes left in the game, he was chasing a WL player up the sideline in the back court, when he just decides to bump him enough to draw a foul.
The message was "I'm checking out of this game. I've had enough!" I had to chuckle. Can't really blame him but he could have fouled going for a rebound just to make it less obvious! LOL
In the first 5 minutes of the game, WL was averaging over 2 points per possession. With the reserves in their whole game stat was 1.26 pts per possession, while holding King to about 1.0 pt per possession.
Originally posted by boatcapt
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The WLU fans were quite vocal as there were approximately 30 there.
Both teams played cleanly and there was not the hint of trash talking (King is a Christian school).
That first 6 minutes was some of the highest level basketball I had seen in a while. They were ahead 19-2. Bolon, Yoakum, Meininger, and Hill were on fire with Dyer stealing balls and distributing.
The energy level was through the roof.
Only 2 turnovers for WL in the first 10 minutes.
Rapid ball movement, sharp cuts to the basket, assists, and intense pressure. They forced 4 turnovers in less than 5 minutes - 5 second calls, 10 second calls during the game, plus a few more that were missed IMHO.
King had some good players and were well coached. They just were not ready for this level of intensity.
Dyer had 0 turnovers to go with 7 assists.
Hill and Yoakum are growing by leaps and bounds in every game in terms of being comfortable with the college game.
I found out Meininger was a point guard growing up, which explains some of the darts he throws from the top of the key to a teammate for a layup. King was not used to seeing a big man out front running the show.
At the initial onslaught, King gathered themselves and played WL fairly evenly, down by 19 at the half at 62-43., after being down 35-10 at one point. That was a credit to their players and coaches.
The referees were not up to the task. They could not keep up with the speed of play and wound up guessing at calls that they clearly could not see.
They called a technical on one of our bench players for standing and cheering the team when he was nowhere near the court. When the coach was kneeling and watching the play, he calmly commented a few minutes later that he
was under the impression that it was OK to cheer. And the same ref t'd him up too! Got a feeling the ref is a control freak.
Well, that lit a fire under WL and they took it out on King.
Back into full trapping mode and the lead swelled to 37 points.
One of my favorite plays was a deflected pass that led to the helter skelter chaos of WL bodies going for the ball like their scrimmages to 100 points. Bolon dove through the air horizontally and tapped the ball ahead to Yoakum on a breakaway.
He goes in for the layup and it rims out. Who is there but Bolon to put the ball back in the basket. He was on the floor near half court and got up to trail the play while WL was leading by 30!
Impressive.
With about 8 minutes left. Coach cleared the bench and let everyone play. Probably due to the unusual combination of players on the floor (benefit of the doubt comment),
but I was really disappointed with the play of this mixture of players. Some of the new transfer players went AAU playground on us, which I had not seen from West Liberty before. Not the way to get more playing time. To quote Huggins, "OK you have shown me what you can't do. Now why don't you try do things you ARE good at, for a change?"
The subs had 3 turnovers in 1 minute and were not playing defense. King to their credit cut the lead to the final margin of 21.
One funny item - One of their best players had 4 fouls. with about 5 minutes left in the game, he was chasing a WL player up the sideline in the back court, when he just decides to bump him enough to draw a foul.
The message was "I'm checking out of this game. I've had enough!" I had to chuckle. Can't really blame him but he could have fouled going for a rebound just to make it less obvious! LOL
In the first 5 minutes of the game, WL was averaging over 2 points per possession. With the reserves in their whole game stat was 1.26 pts per possession, while holding King to about 1.0 pt per possession.
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