Observations from open scrimmage or secret scrimmage
 

Anybody have anything to share?

It was a closed scrimmage at a neutral site. Nobody could watch it that wasn't affiliated with either school.

https://twitter.com/CraigMeyerPG/sta...661562880?s=20
Craig Meyer
@CraigMeyerPG
Based on what I've been told, Pitt's secret scrimmage against Dayton was two 20-minute halves and a 10-minute zone period. Pitt won the two halves by a combined nine points. Trey McGowens had 26 points and Xavier Johnson had 19.
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Not great, considering Pitt is awful and picked last in the ACC. But those are aguably Pitt’s two best players putting up those points, and scrimmages are just ... well, scrimmages. Hopefully the team and AG learned some things.

Seems our defensive woes persist.

who scores is immaterial right now
 

The more court time our team can get, any way they can get it, is another step forward in learning to play together. Our biggest hurdle on offense and defense is acquiring team chemistry on the court. Blending the whole talent pool may take the entire ooc which is critical to get off to a good start in league.

If we do nothing more than figure out who can defend and finish a game, and who the go-to guys are in crunch time we will be money ahead. I would wager there are 9 guys right now who want the last shot to tie or win a game. That won't work. Hopefully we won't have guys chucking threes when we only need a deuce, with Josh open under the bucket this year.

Scrimmage scores are meaningless. Especially when you don’t know each coach’s approach to the scrimmage. It sounds like Pitt played arguably their 2 best players a great part of the game given their point totals. Who knows what UD’s approach was?
My son coaches a D3 women’s team. They scrimmaged a large Canadian university and were surprisingly ahead after 3 quarters. My son, much to my chagrin, decided to sprinkle in his freshman to see what they could do against good competition and they ended up losing by 11.

Hurley @ URI and UConn
 

It will be interesting to observe Hurley's first year at UConn. He is familiar to Flyer fans because of his URI/A10 stint. A few Priders have been less than complimentary re Hurley.

Hurley faces the same problems as Grant did....lost recruits, transfers and few good returning players...only one proven good player. The last two UConn teams were awful....those players are the nucleus of Hurley's team.

His stated goal is for UConn to be the "surprise team" of the year. I hope he's right. Watching them play last year was painful.

We'll soon see what difference the coaching change makes.

That’s not good.

Someone else posted on another thread about how these scrimmages don’t matter. He cited three instances where teams lost to D2 schools and still had very successful seasons. That may be true, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. I don’t care how you spin it, this is not a good omen for our season.

Pitt last year was 8-24 and 0-18 in the ACC. That’s trash. They added the two guys noted in the tweet, McGowens and Johnson, to their roster in the offseason so it may just be a new Pitt team altogether. Still.. we could argue the same about our additions.

McGowens and Johnson have the same build — 6’3 190 lb guards. If this result is any indication of our improvement on perimeter defense, we are in for a long one.

I remain optimistic about our chances to make noise this season. Hopefully General and the boys have some things to take away from their performance.
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Hurley
 

Who cares about Hurley. He's an idiot and most Flyer fans are happy he's gone and we don't have to watch him anymore. Good riddance!!

I hope he told the girls "we won, well played ladies, stick that one in your cap. I'm not going to waste the rest of the game worrying about the score, it's about practicing different combinations and seeing what some other players can do."

So it's official, Cohill and Davis will be the backup point guards.

I think it was always "official". They're really the only two realistic options.

Let's just hope that the Flyers play better defense. Last year was soooo hard to watch - the defensive softness. One mulligan is enough. We don't have to win every game - just need to see that intensity that sorely lacked last year.

It sure would be nice to win more than half of them though! And maybe more than one true road game?

If nothing else, it seems the "attitude problems" have moved on, so hopefully this young team can pour a foundation that can be built on.

Well, Cohill is the only scholarship player other than Crutcher that could even be considered a PG, so duh.

I believe Westerfield is going to get minutes. Listen to AG's interview for the "Flyer Nation" thing.

Nothing against Westerfield but with 5 scholarship guards (who are eligible) on the roster. I hope the only minutes he gets are in mop up duty. If not, we either have some issues with talent evaluation or attitude, (again).

Grant said that Jordan Davis would also play PG, so duh.

Westerfield is going to get minutes is like saying the Flyers will win some games this year. How many and in what situation?

How serious is Mikesell's injury?

Not that serious, judging by this: https://www.instagram.com/stories/ryanmikesell/

He’s in the weight room, no boot.
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whatever happened to that Dayton area academic walkon... he was a dual major I thought, seeking a dual major.. is he not on the team? thought he had a good stat line from 3 pt, and had some outrageous games in high school for a not so good team... I knew he was not going to get minutes, but I was hoping he would give our players a test to defend in practice..

Jabali Leonard is the guy you are thinking of from Meadowdale. He either didn't make the team as a walk on or they haven't listed the freshman walk ons on the web site yet.

I recently read that walk ons might still be added.

Leonard and Wilson played the last minute of the game. I am guessing they are walk ons now. Bucky didn't know who they were.

Jabali Leonard scored two points tonight. He was one of the top players in the City league last year. He played for Meadowdale, but attended Dayton early College Academy (DECA) which is located in the Fitz Building on campus.