West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Fyi
Here is replay of king versus Wlu game. Some great passing and shooting. Think Bolon hit 4 threes in a row

https://conferencecarolinasdn.com/king/

Click on on demand then select wlu

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

The emergence of Hill and Yoacum has been a bit surprising. Maybe not as much with Hill as some had him penciled in for greatness even before the season. But Yoacum has been a bit of a pleasant surprise...I think most thought he'd be good but not AS good as he has been thus far.

Yea...I think this qualifies as a "down" year for WLU from an experience standpoint. Players are just now learning to really play with each other. King was a huge game for them. Tourney team last year picked to win their conf and sitting at 7-2 when we went to their house to play them. WLU certainly could have lost this game with a young inexperienced squad. Obviously that didn't happen. Hard to say that a 2 loss team will be better at the end of the season but I think you are right. As this young group plays together more and starts to instinctively understand how each other plays, they could be very dangerous come tourney time...of course, between now and then their could be additional head scratching losses as they continue to grow together.

French coming back could be a big boost (obviously depending on how he rounds into shape). More than legit shooter who is also an experienced veteran. Think he starts on the second platoon but it wouldn't be surprising if he finds his way into that starting lineup come conf and NCAA tourney time. If they are looking for minutes for him the likely place to look first is to Saben who is NOT having a good sophomore campaign.

So what's up with Bolon's eye?

Horrific finger in the the eye injury. Has double vision without the patch. Hopefully it will heal eventually.

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Tough question. We lost Dennis, justice and guillozet. Monterosa masked the impact. Much of The inconsistency is due to their youth imho, starting 2 freshmen, 2 Sophomores And a senior. Inexperience Hurts them on team defense and makes them vulnerable to mismatches on switches. Losing Evan French hurt as he was the best shooter on the team and would make second platoon much stronger. He may be back by January.
Which is saying something as they were averaging about 45% from 3 as a team before FSU.
We also tend to stand around on offense sometimes when we have a lead. Coach yells for them to move.

Good news is that hill is amazing for a freshman and is getting better every game. He is starting to school veteran guards. So is yoakum. By end of year we will likely be a tough out.

Folks better get us this year. For next year Boswell hits the court.
Also I saw commit hazelbaker play wed and he is a man among boys. I believe he is taller than 6-6 and has a non stop motor and strong defensively. 35 pts and 14 rebounds hit 4 threes and he was not hogging the ball. He just keeps moving and gets open. They won 55-39. We need a physical guy like that.
What are your thoughts?

The emergence of Hill and Yoacum has been a bit surprising. Maybe not as much with Hill as some had him penciled in for greatness even before the season. But Yoacum has been a bit of a pleasant surprise...I think most thought he'd be good but not AS good as he has been thus far.

Yea...I think this qualifies as a "down" year for WLU from an experience standpoint. Players are just now learning to really play with each other. King was a huge game for them. Tourney team last year picked to win their conf and sitting at 7-2 when we went to their house to play them. WLU certainly could have lost this game with a young inexperienced squad. Obviously that didn't happen. Hard to say that a 2 loss team will be better at the end of the season but I think you are right. As this young group plays together more and starts to instinctively understand how each other plays, they could be very dangerous come tourney time...of course, between now and then their could be additional head scratching losses as they continue to grow together.

French coming back could be a big boost (obviously depending on how he rounds into shape). More than legit shooter who is also an experienced veteran. Think he starts on the second platoon but it wouldn't be surprising if he finds his way into that starting lineup come conf and NCAA tourney time. If they are looking for minutes for him the likely place to look first is to Saben who is NOT having a good sophomore campaign.

So what's up with Bolon's eye?

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Just think what you could have done with the 45 minutes it took you to read that post!! Hahahaha!!!

Columbuseer...What's your take on the Toppers thus far this year? Seem to be times when they are focused and appear unstoppable...but there also seems to be times were they are kind of sleep walking. Not that they are playing poorly when they are sleep walking, just that they seem to get comfortable trading buckets and letting lesser teams stay closer than they should be. Almost like they need something "negative" to wake them up and get them focused...Tonight being the second T. Vs Shepherd, they didn't really have that "thing" that motivated them and they sleep walked to a much to close W against a team they should have beat by at least 15 points.

Tough question. We lost Dennis, justice and guillozet. Monterosa masked the impact. Much of The inconsistency is due to their youth imho, starting 2 freshmen, 2 Sophomores And a senior. Inexperience Hurts them on team defense and makes them vulnerable to mismatches on switches. Losing Evan French hurt as he was the best shooter on the team and would make second platoon much stronger. He may be back by January.
Which is saying something as they were averaging about 45% from 3 as a team before FSU.
We also tend to stand around on offense sometimes when we have a lead. Coach yells for them to move.

Good news is that hill is amazing for a freshman and is getting better every game. He is starting to school veteran guards. So is yoakum. By end of year we will likely be a tough out.

Folks better get us this year. For next year Boswell hits the court.
Also I saw commit hazelbaker play wed and he is a man among boys. I believe he is taller than 6-6 and has a non stop motor and strong defensively. 35 pts and 14 rebounds hit 4 threes and he was not hogging the ball. He just keeps moving and gets open. They won 55-39. We need a physical guy like that.
What are your thoughts?

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Columbuseer...What's your take on the Toppers thus far this year? Seem to be times when they are focused and appear unstoppable...but there also seems to be times were they are kind of sleep walking. Not that they are playing poorly when they are sleep walking, just that they seem to get comfortable trading buckets and letting lesser teams stay closer than they should be. Almost like they need something "negative" to wake them up and get them focused...Tonight being the second T. Vs Shepherd, they didn't really have that "thing" that motivated them and they sleep walked to a much to close W against a team they should have beat by at least 15 points.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Just think what you could have done with the 45 minutes it took you to read that post!! Hahahaha!!!

Lol you guys are in fine form today! Good one!

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Just think what you could have done with 45-50 minutes it took to make this post. Lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just think what you could have done with the 45 minutes it took you to read that post!! Hahahaha!!!

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

You misspelled Gannon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lol good one!

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

You misspelled Gannon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Gannon isn't a really a bad team on offense. The only reason they are scoring in the 50s per game is because they shoot bad.

It's like in the past two meetings between IUP and Fairmont State. The Falcons put up season lows in both games (59 and 64 points). They just shot bad. IUP didn't have anything to do with it. #wink

[IUP24]

West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

lol. you're right. could have watched a replay of iup scoring 15 points lol.


thank goodness for the next key lol

You misspelled Gannon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Just think what you could have done with 45-50 minutes it took to make this post. Lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

lol. you're right. could have watched a replay of iup scoring 15 points lol.


thank goodness for the next key lol

[IUP24]

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.

Just think what you could have done with 45-50 minutes it took to make this post. Lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

WLU marched into Tennessee and took down a very tough King University squad 116-95. Toppers lead from the opening shot and never trailed pushing out to 25 point leads in the first half and 37 point leads in the second. WLU shot a blistering 61% from the field and dropped 55% of it's threes against the defensively outmatched Tornados while the Topper D smothered King's three ball attempts to the tune of 20%. Every Topper had a hand in scoring with Bolon leading the pack with 30. Other leaders included Dyer with 7 assists, Mehininger with 6 rebounds, Dyer and Moore with 3 steals each, and Yochum going 3-3 from three.

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.

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

WLU marched into Tennessee and took down a very tough King University squad 116-95. Toppers lead from the opening shot and never trailed pushing out to 25 point leads in the first half and 37 point leads in the second. WLU shot a blistering 61% from the field and dropped 55% of it's threes against the defensively outmatched Tornados while the Topper D smothered King's three ball attempts to the tune of 20%. Every Topper had a hand in scoring with Bolon leading the pack with 30. Other leaders included Dyer with 7 assists, Mehininger with 6 rebounds, Dyer and Moore with 3 steals each, and Yochum going 3-3 from three.

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

That one note you keep playing is getting a bit off key, Boat.

The road to the Elite 8 goes through Indiana this year, so whatever WLU needs to do to prepare to play a tough opponent on the road, they should do. Challenging a red hot Jolly in Retton yesterday is a first step. Playing a tough King squad at their place should be a good test as well. These are big-time, character-building games. Yahel Hill grew up a ton yesterday, and that might pay dividends in March. Meininger is getting a ton of experience banging with top-notch bigs (he did out-rebound Burgess in the Shepherd game, but FSU seemed to own the boards yesterday). Those are big match-ups for Meiny to get under his belt. He's going to have Diaz to deal with on his home floor in the Regional, so Meiny needs these games right now to get used to banging in there (without fouling so frequently). This is all good experience. Boat, you can wish for the days of WLU lapping the field with a 30-1 record, but those days are gone. FSU has caught up. IUP is back and better than ever. Shippensburg is for real. The region is stronger, so WLU needs to work to get stronger. You don't get stronger spanking Point State by 60 points. Period.

Losses have consequences. We are effectively 1/4 of the way through the season and as it stands right now, WLU is behind undefeated IUP, Chowan and one loss Mercyhurst...we are behind (based on H to H) Fairmont...we are tied with two loss Shippensburg, ESU and Shaw. Obviously the playoffs are not right now but if they were, best case is WLU would be the #5 seed and worst case we wouldn't even be in the playoffs.

Can talk all day long about being better prepared for the playoffs because we played two strong teams to open the season and how our SOS will be better but at the end of the season, losing games has consequences that out weight SOS. I would venture to bet that every year there are a bunch of teams with stellar SOS that are sitting at home come playoff time because they lost too many games.