West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[Layton]

Just something missing with Cooper lot of talent on that team

[Layton]

I miss getting excited about the Wheeling rivalry I didn’t even know the game was today. Hope they get things figured out because those games were a blast and a slug fest when I was in school. Don’t think their current coach is the guy

[Layton]

Seems like we always have that mid season struggle spurt

[Columbuseer]

You brought up the flop rule. I'm just not sure I get what they're going for there. It puts WAY too much pressure on officials to call things they don't want to call. In the A-B game there were multiple occasions when a guy went flying and there was no whistle. So if a guy goes flying across the floor either a) he was pushed and you need to call the foul, or b) he's flopping and you need to call the flop. There's no such thing as a no-call in that situation. This leaves no wiggle room for the officials. But on Saturday, the officials just decided to ignore flops and swallow the whistle if they didn't see a foul despite guys flying all over the place. The issue was really evident in that WLU - A-B game.

I agree it is a difficult call to make correctly on a consistent basis. I think they have to lean toward a no call if in doubt.
I like the intent to improve the integrity of the game. Flopping is dramatic acting with intent to deceive, and not a basketball skill.
Similarly, a player standing out of bounds and throwing the ball off the defender on an inbounds play is not an acceptable response to good defense and bad offense.

[Scrub]

You brought up the flop rule. I'm just not sure I get what they're going for there. It puts WAY too much pressure on officials to call things they don't want to call. In the A-B game there were multiple occasions when a guy went flying and there was no whistle. So if a guy goes flying across the floor either a) he was pushed and you need to call the foul, or b) he's flopping and you need to call the flop. There's no such thing as a no-call in that situation. This leaves no wiggle room for the officials. But on Saturday, the officials just decided to ignore flops and swallow the whistle if they didn't see a foul despite guys flying all over the place. The issue was really evident in that WLU - A-B game.

[Columbuseer]

A-B at WLU Observations 1/18/23 WLU 86 - A-B 72

A-B Game Plan

• Following the lead of WVSU, some MEC teams, such as Glenville and A-B, are building rosters based on athletic players with 1-on-1 skills, as well as deep three-point shooting range. This makes them dangerous in an up-and-down game.
• A-B was going to attack the rim in transition or kick out for an unguarded, open corner three.
• A-B was letting players take deep threes or go 1-on-1. Assists would not be a high priority.
• A-B wanted to use its athletes to play strong half-court defense to make WLU work hard for each shot.
• A-B wanted to win the rebounding battle.

A-B had some success:

• They won the rebounding battle.
• They were effective in getting scores in transition, especially from live ball WLU turnovers or missed shots from WLU.
• They shot very well from three, some of which were from 25 ft. They have multiple great 3 pt. shooters.
• In the first half, they only committed about 6 turnovers, which was very good.

Observations
There was much to like about the WLU game, if one ignores the combination of careless play, good A-B defensive plays, and missed shots in the first 10 minutes of the second half, which resulted in only 12 points. That period was responsible for the lower score, as WLU scored 49 points (led 49-36) in the first half and 22 points in the last 10 minutes of the game.

• WLU did a much better job of moving the ball on offense and finding the wide-open look. WLU had 24 assists on 77% of the 31 made FGs, which is impressive. The number of assists could have been greater, if WLU had shot better. A-B had 14 assists on 54% of 26 made FGs. Many of A-B assists were kickouts in transition for unguarded threes rather than half-court passing.
• WLU had assist to turnover ratio of 2.18 (24 assists on only 11 turnovers). A-B had 14 assists and 16 turnovers (0.88 ratio)
• WLU forced two 10 second calls. Their 8 steals were 50% of A-Bs 16 turnovers, which is excellent.
• I thought WLU greatly improved their half-court defense.

Given that officials are trying to address flops, I think that an action that needs to be addressed are out of bounds plays. A-B was in danger of getting a 5-second call on numerous occasions, and player standing out of bounds just slammed the ball off the defender guarding the inbounds pass to get another 5 seconds to put the ball in play. This action is getting more and more frequent. It can possibly injure a defenseless player and penalizes a good defensive team. I think intentionally throwing the ball off a defender when the player is taking the ball out of bounds should not be allowed and result in a loss of possession. However, it could still be allowed during a live ball situation where the player is still in bounds or in the air.

[Scrub]

Typically the game immediately following a bad loss is marked by WLU clicking on all cylinders. That just wasn't the case last night.

First off, credit to A-B. They played their butts off, and the Knott kid is special. A-B fans have to hope he sticks around, but it would be easy to see him fall for the call of the portal. But Coach Dye had his guys prepared last night, and A-B executed a nice game plan.

That said, a WLU squad that is "right" should never score as few as 86 against A-B. A-B doesn't have the depth (great top-end talent--Knott/Rice/King--but nothing behind that) to run with a WLU when they're "right." Something still wasn't "right" with the Toppers last night. I'm not sure if it was the change in rotation. Howlett only went 8 deep last night instead of 10-11 deep. Maybe that changed the dynamic. Maybe Malik McKinney being in streets had some impact (no idea what kind of injury he's dealing with).

But whatever it was that made them look a little off last night had better get corrected by Saturday. Make no mistake, this isn't one of the good Wheeling teams of old, but a rivalry game is a rivalry game, and going into that gym in Wheeling, I have to believe you'll find a motivated Wheeling team and a rocking atmosphere. Gotta right the ship quickly.

[Columbuseer]

FYi
Bryce Butler named to bevo Francis top 100 watch list

https://hilltoppersports.com/news/20...atch-list.aspx

Also named: will yoakum and rj sunahara from Nova se

[Scrub]

Really bad loss for the ladies tonight

They looked like they'd never seen a press before (even though they played a much more talented pressing team in Glenville last week). Not sure what was going on down there in Bluefield tonight.

[Layton]

Really bad loss for the ladies tonight

[Columbuseer]

They hired a guy from Cincy today. Although I’d be surprised if there wasn’t more staff turnover in the off-season. I’d put the odds of him hiring Howlett very low but I think it’d be smart. They’re on track to have 3/5 very bad seasons the past 5 years. He’s very close to retirement

IMHO they have completely different philosophies- postionless basketball versus center, power fd, small fwd, shooting guard, and point guard concept. If d1 were to make a run at Howlett, it would be as a head coach. Maybe low to mid major team.

[Layton]

They hired a guy from Cincy today. Although I’d be surprised if there wasn’t more staff turnover in the off-season. I’d put the odds of him hiring Howlett very low but I think it’d be smart. They’re on track to have 3/5 very bad seasons the past 5 years. He’s very close to retirement

[Ship69]

That doesn't necessarily mean zone. There are ways to control mismatches without zone.

If you have a severe mismatch, you're either going to be doubling up or playing some sort of trick defense if you're not playing zone.

[IUPalum]

He does, but he's currently 0-5 in the Big 12, which probably is the best roundball conference in the country this year. Sometimes you have to adjust what we're doing. Ship has played almost exclusively man-to-man for years, but I don't think a little zone would be out of place with East Stroud this season. They have a couple of players we just can't match up with very well.

That doesn't necessarily mean zone. There are ways to control mismatches without zone.

[Ship69]

I'm sure Huggy Bear knows what he is doing. He's been doing this for decades.

He does, but he's currently 0-5 in the Big 12, which probably is the best roundball conference in the country this year. Sometimes you have to adjust what we're doing. Ship has played almost exclusively man-to-man for years, but I don't think a little zone would be out of place with East Stroud this season. They have a couple of players we just can't match up with very well.