New bellarmine thread

[BGrad1971]

I know this board is for BU mens basketball but I beg your indulgence to allow me to congratulate the BU men's soccer team in winning their conference championship yesterday. One of my sons who was a former BU player and I were there to witness the victory. Tim Chastonay has been coaching at Bellarmine for 21 years and he is deserving of some recognition for the great team he put together. They are now off to the NCAA regionals, the first game of which will probably be at home because of their seeding.

[BellarmineGrad]

I know this board is for BU mens basketball but I beg your indulgence to allow me to congratulate the BU men's soccer team in winning their conference championship yesterday. One of my sons who was a former BU player and I were there to witness the victory. Tim Chastonay has been coaching at Bellarmine for 21 years and he is deserving of some recognition for the great team he put together. They are now off to the NCAA regionals, the first game of which will probably be at home because of their seeding.

Indeed. A great run, and hopefully they can do deep in the NCAA tourney.

Isn't their unbeaten streak (including ties) up to 29 or so?

[BGrad1971]

Yes their unbeaten streak is up to 29 games, there are a few ties mixed in there so you can't say win streak.

[BellarmineGrad]

Not breaking any news here, but Dylan Penn is going to be a superstar for BU. Yet another stellar recruit for Scotty and company.

Got to tip the cap to Lindenwood for a good game; they really lit it up in the first half.

[KnightStalker]

Lindenwood was shooting ridiculously well in the first half. Hitting 70% of their 3's, which for the most part were contested and some heavily so, is just mind blowing. They came back to earth in the second half and BU stopped turning the ball over. BU just went inside in the second half to Weyer and Penn (yes Grad, I think bro was touting super stardom for him last year!) The two of them took over the offense in 2nd half, and well they should when it was working so well. Weyer has improved so much his offense with his back to the basket. Now granted Lindenwood is small and had no big guy to stop him but a couple of years ago, Weyer would not have taken advantage of the situation like he did last night.

The main concern of the first half was not necessarily defense (I am not sure there was much more they could do, Lindenwood was just so hot) but the turnovers! Thirteen turnovers in one half is just silly. They were pretty much all unforced too. Really worried about Cook and the walking calls again. I was hoping he had gotten that out of his system. They righted the ship in the second half with only 4 turnovers. They just can't have that kind of first half again.

[Big Smooth]

Our D&B rating just went up (Dylan and Ben)
Did not see first half but the defense to start the second half was intense.
Good wake-up call.
Offense looks more free-flowing with freedom to attack the basket by Dylan and Alex.
Don't think anybody in D2 (nor many in D1) can guard Dylan 1-1

[BGrad1971]

Two comments regarding the game last night. (1) are other teams going to start playing a zone to stop the D &B show driving to the basket? and (2) I don't think Dylan Penn just gained this amazing talent in the last 6 months, meaning what would last years team have achieved if Scotty had played him more? I know we had a couple of good senior guards that played great defense, but if we had had another offensive weapon at the guard position especially late in the year when nagging injuries were taking their toll on some of our inside players, could we have gone deeper in the NCAA tournament?

[Knightmoves]

21 for 21 from the line will win you a lot of games. 91% for the year as a team is amazing. I was especially impressed with Dylan's freethrow shooting, I was aftraid that might be a weakness. He is going to be getting to the line a lot.

LU definetyly has some talent. I expect the game will be a microcosm of their season. Great games thrown in with some clunkers.

[BGrad1971]

Spring Hill got walloped at Indy last night. Don't think this will be much of a game for BU. Spring Hill's 5th year senior Chase Shellman was a teammate of Willie Schurfranz at DeSales. I thought he was a pretty decent High School player but I don't think Scotty attempted to recruit him. I'm not impressed with Bellarmine's pre-conference schedule this year. I think Christian Brothers is having a "down year" too. I don't think our schedule is preparing us for facing the other top GLVC teams. Lewis made a trip up north to play Ferris State and Findlay and beat them both. Looks like Findlay might be a little down this year.

[BellarmineGrad]

Yeah, that was an utter beatdown -- I had to double-check online and verify that Spring Hill is a D-II institution.

I suppose it's nice to at least have a game to keep the squad in something of a groove, and it's terrific to see a lot of reserves get a lot of playing time, but I don't know how much the team as a whole got out of the contest. Great crowd for a Wednesday afternoon, though!

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

[BGrad1971]

It was great to see Chris Palombizio get an opportunity to play some extended minutes and score some points. Maybe this will give him some more confidence and help feel more relaxed and get in the flow of things a little better. Granted scoring against the reserves of Spring Hill is not a huge accomplishment but I liked what I saw from him. BTW I got to take a tour of the BU new locker room after the game - it looks great!

[Big Smooth]

I am guessing we had trouble scheduling this year since Wesleyan, Lindenwood and Chris Bros are all return games from last year. No other top D2 was going to come here on a one year deal.
I guess we better get used to lousy or non-existent home non-conference for a while. Given what happened to Duke and UK I don't know that any top tier is going to want to schedule Scotty for a visit next year either. Hear that UL is not interested in playing.
We will learn a lot about this team next Tuesday.

[BellarmineGrad]

Well, the "cardiac Knights" pick up a nice road win.

As a hunch, I think we may see more sweat-it-out games, but this squad has enough talent to pull out a lot (if not most) of them.

Going to be an interesting season.

[KnightStalker]

Should not have needed to be the Cardiac anything last night. After storming back to take the lead and stretching it to 12, Scotty decides to take the air out of ball with over 4 minutes to go. Maybe it is some kind of brilliant deceptive strategy to let Indy back in the game so the team can show they can win the close ones? I think not. Was at the game and the post game show dropped out on our phone so I did not hear Scotty so don't know if he took responsibility for the slowdown. It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine but I don't understand why BU does the hold the ball thing at the end of the half or for 4 minutes of the end of a close game. The half court offense is very deliberate and naturally takes a lot of time. Why not just run it normally instead of taking 20 seconds off the shot clock standing around, then doing a basic one on one move under extreme pressure? The first two times they did it under the 4 minute mark last night they threw up air balls from highly contested 3 pt territory. Sure they ran a minute off the clock in those 2 possessions but Indy still had plenty of time to come back when BU gives up on scoring. The only time the hold the ball thing worked was the last possession and that was all Dylan's doing. Ok I'm done with my rant.

Otherwise the game was similar to the Lindenwood game. Lousy start, good ending to the first half, picked it up in the second. Only difference was that they let Indy back in at the end of game. I think defense is what brought BU back and Chitty was the catalyst for the defensive effort. Scotty was right to pressure King the whole court. Chitty did the best at doing so. King still got his 22 points but I think it wore him down. As far as I could tell he really didn't score much if any due to shaking the initial defensive pressure. King has to be one of the best guards if not thee best guard in the conference. Reminds a lot of Stein but a little taller and actually better ball handler. Chitty effort on defense slowed King down a bit and made it harder on King to make passes to teammates for good shots. Fleming was outstanding as well, not only for his scoring, but his defensive effort. How he plays 36 minutes without a turnover was pretty incredible too. Penn and Cook were good but both turned the ball over a little too much. Claycomb continues to impress with the amount of improvement over last year. So much so I kinda cringe towards the end when he went in and Weyer came in for him. Weyer was pretty much a non factor whereas Claycomb was rebounding and even hitting the 3's. Overall there was some bright spots but places to improve. It is a very good win on the road against one of the toughest team in the conference and in D2.

[Big Smooth]

Game was eerily reminiscent of USI game last year in NCAA. We are up 10 with 3 minutes to go and we don't get to the line once. Settle for 3 missed threes when Cook or Penn could have been taking it to the rim drawing fouls. Also, our old bugaboo, offensive rebounding...we give up 2 in last three minutes.
Scotty said nothing on post game about running off clock.
BTW, our new radio guy is a big downgrade from Nick Curran and Doug Ormay. Why the change from Ormay?