[SuperJon]

Some of you guys ripping Jesse need to realize that you're making contradictions in your own posts. You say Jesse isn't playing well but are saying others need to create their own shots. Jesse is trying to create them shots and either a) they're missing the shot or b) they're not catching the pass or c) Jesse is trying to put the ball in a hole that isn't there.

We're young. What did you guys expect out of this game? We're playing one of the top teams in the country. They looked like grown men out there physically and we looked like 18-19 year old players. They played an extremely physical style of basketball that our guys haven't adjusted to. Clemson's press is one of, if not the best in the country. We could never get into an offensive set.

You rip the guys that aren't playing well, but let's take a look at them:

Minaya - hasn't played a game since March of 08. He's averaging 6 points a game and shooting 27%. That's not good. He'd tell you that's not good. Give him some time to get back to playing in something other than practice though. You guys are fine waiting on SirChauncey Holloway to get his legs under him in football but want Minaya to be our leading scorer from the get go. Pick one philosophy and stick with it.

Kyle - He's played well against competition we expected him to play well against. Today, against people who were obviously better than him, he played terrible. When he starts bad, he gets worse. It's what he does. We all know that. He's not going to play against people anywhere near that good in the Big South.

Evan - When he was signed, everyone called him a project and just hoped he would be able to contribute a little. Because word came out that he was having a good preseason in practice, everyone started thinking he was going to be his older brother. He's a freshman who is very raw. Give him time to develop.

Chris - Once again, a freshman. He was a guy that was just used to being better and more athletic than everyone. He led his team in scoring as a sophomore. It takes time to adjust to playing against people who are just as good or better than you.

Jeremy - Hasn't even been healthy in over a year. He's not even back to full strength yet. You expect a shooter to come back from a hurt foot when it's not even fully healthy and be lights out? That's not going to happen.

We all said we'd struggle this year, especially early. Nothing has happened that would make us think otherwise. We came back against Mason and made it respectable but lost. We beat an NAIA school. Today we lost to the 23rd team in the country who is better than last year and who I guarantee will be up in the mid to low teens by Christmas. What's changed? Because we got beat by teams we expected to beat us we're all of a sudden terrible with no talent on the roster? Get real. We knew we would struggle offensively and that we had to find scoring. Now that there's concrete evidence of that, we've all of a sudden got a huge problem that we didn't know about?

Our fans were great today. They were loud and they were into the game. We put up an awesome showing for ESPN from a crowd content and tv perspective today. Give our students and our fans credit for filling the Vines over capacity. Clemson's radio guys were saying how they liked The Vines Center, how they liked our fans, how they liked our school in general. They said they could tell we were young and looking for an identity.

Clemson is not in the Big South Conference. No one in the Big South Conference is nearly as good as Clemson. Let's take our national exposure and the experience of playing against a team that was the level that we want to get to, and let's go out and work to get there. It doesn't happen over night.

[BJWilliams]

Some of you guys ripping Jesse need to realize that you're making contradictions in your own posts. You say Jesse isn't playing well but are saying others need to create their own shots. Jesse is trying to create them shots and either a) they're missing the shot or b) they're not catching the pass or c) Jesse is trying to put the ball in a hole that isn't there.

We're young. What did you guys expect out of this game? We're playing one of the top teams in the country. They looked like grown men out there physically and we looked like 18-19 year old players. They played an extremely physical style of basketball that our guys haven't adjusted to. Clemson's press is one of, if not the best in the country. We could never get into an offensive set.

You rip the guys that aren't playing well, but let's take a look at them:

Minaya - hasn't played a game since March of 08. He's averaging 6 points a game and shooting 27%. That's not good. He'd tell you that's not good. Give him some time to get back to playing in something other than practice though. You guys are fine waiting on SirChauncey Holloway to get his legs under him in football but want Minaya to be our leading scorer from the get go. Pick one philosophy and stick with it.

Kyle - He's played well against competition we expected him to play well against. Today, against people who were obviously better than him, he played terrible. When he starts bad, he gets worse. It's what he does. We all know that. He's not going to play against people anywhere near that good in the Big South.

Evan - When he was signed, everyone called him a project and just hoped he would be able to contribute a little. Because word came out that he was having a good preseason in practice, everyone started thinking he was going to be his older brother. He's a freshman who is very raw. Give him time to develop.

Chris - Once again, a freshman. He was a guy that was just used to being better and more athletic than everyone. He led his team in scoring as a sophomore. It takes time to adjust to playing against people who are just as good or better than you.

Jeremy - Hasn't even been healthy in over a year. He's not even back to full strength yet. You expect a shooter to come back from a hurt foot when it's not even fully healthy and be lights out? That's not going to happen.

We all said we'd struggle this year, especially early. Nothing has happened that would make us think otherwise. We came back against Mason and made it respectable but lost. We beat an NAIA school. Today we lost to the 23rd team in the country who is better than last year and who I guarantee will be up in the mid to low teens by Christmas. What's changed? Because we got beat by teams we expected to beat us we're all of a sudden terrible with no talent on the roster? Get real. We knew we would struggle offensively and that we had to find scoring. Now that there's concrete evidence of that, we've all of a sudden got a huge problem that we didn't know about?

Our fans were great today. They were loud and they were into the game. We put up an awesome showing for ESPN from a crowd content and tv perspective today. Give our students and our fans credit for filling the Vines over capacity. Clemson's radio guys were saying how they liked The Vines Center, how they liked our fans, how they liked our school in general. They said they could tell we were young and looking for an identity.

Clemson is not in the Big South Conference. No one in the Big South Conference is nearly as good as Clemson. Let's take our national exposure and the experience of playing against a team that was the level that we want to get to, and let's go out and work to get there. It doesn't happen over night.

When I talked to him after the Southern VA game, Chris said almost the exact same thing.

[TylerBakersGonnaBGreat]

I want to see Carter and Baker on the floor together.

[Flamesfanva]

I thought for sure there would be some photos from the game on libertyflames.com. I saw the master photographer Les there. Hasn't been any photos of the games yet. Always a nice feature of libertyflames.com.

[SuperJon]

Dude, last year's team would've lost by 30 to this team we played today.

[jcmanson]

[SuperJon]

Dude, last year's team would've lost by 30 to this team we played today.

Didn't we almost beat them?

We almost beat their team last year. They didn't expect us to come in there and do anything close to what we did and didn't know how to guard us. This year they knew what to expect. I saw first hand how physically big the players from Clemson were. There just wasn't a comparison between the two.

We're young. We're inexperienced. We're gonna struggle. We may even struggle bad. But we're gonna get better.

[jcmanson]

[olldflame]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know my frustration comes from the fact that we WERE about 10 steps closer to where we want to be a year ago than we are today. We all knew it. However, seeing that misery in action has a way of making it much more real. The fact is, Ritchie gave us hope, the way Rocco has given us hope. He screwed us. Until Layer finds a way to show us some hope, I think a lot of us are going to have very negative feelings about this program.

And a lot of us are going to believe that better days are ahead and look at the positives. Same coach, same team, different attitude toward them. Layer's job isn't to "give us hope"; it's to coach this team and recruit for the future. There wasn't much positive to hold on to from today's game, but I believe there was in both the GMU and SVU games. Today, we ran into a buzz saw, and our young kids just didn't know how to handle it.

[DhN]

People expect WAAAYYYY to much from this team..
first off kyle ohman is our appointed leader of the squad persay.. an inconsistent hot head as a leader of a team will not work.
Our team is a young scrappy athletic squad yet it is nowhere near a complete team. Carter did alright but he needs to be alot more aggressive in the paint and hit those weights. His defense is good and the blocks were great but we still got heavily outrebounded.
Does Tyler Baker still think hes on crutches? Wheres the defense at? Ive never been impressed with him granted he has legs of a 73 yr old and has been injuredive stil not seen any bright spots.
E Gordon is undisiciplined and underdeveloped but hes a freshman so he has time. Telegraphed passes and careless turnovers
Jesse was turnover central. Every time he had a nice pass or nice drive it was shaded by a turnover. I have never seen him play like this so ill blame the stifiling press and athleticism of clemson in taking him out of his game. Hopefully he shakes it off and becomes the general we need on the court
Konan was a bright spot as well. Seemed to me like he was the only one over 6'0 that was hustling every play. Missed freethrows are no-no's and his offense was decent but he's undersized compared to the front court of the tigers and they just smothered anything in the paint.
Perez amongst others needs to SHOOT THE BALL. Ive never seen such a scared group. Part of the reason shots werent falling is because we lost confidence with a few missed shots and just would not shoot or shoot horribly. SO many open shots were not taken which results in an extra pass which then resulted in yet another turnover.
Jonny Step showed glimpses of hope but yet again carelessness reigned its ugly face. I dont know what they are doing in practice but i honestly believe we have no offense. I dont remember seeing any successful plays or any plays actually.
Anyone else i missed can probably be summarized by bits and pieces that ive already stated.
Todays game was against a ranked opponent and its hilarious that anyone expected this to be close. Be happy with the exposure we get...even tho we constantly get thrashed on ESPN.
Liberty is undersized and played like it. Clemsons press was STIFLING..and they seemed to NEVER run out of energy. Every possession looked to easy and they were not afraid to shoot..which is our problem. With all that negativity said...clemson is ranked for a reason. they are way stronger and quicker than our team. hopefully liberty will play with confidence against the strong teams we have coming up

[LUconn]

I don't think anybody here is expecting too much of this team. They played like a steaming pile of crap. Is that where we're setting our expectations? If so, I might just stop watching LU basketball altogether. Lucky for me my expectations are much higher, but they're also reasonable. Is it too much to expect this team to be better than Presby? Because Presby played better against the very same team. I guess I'm just sick of getting so excited for these important games and it being a 20 point game within the first 5 minutes. It's the same thing year after year, even when we're good with last year being the anomaly (we weren't even that great but we won some huge games).

Now even with all of that doom and gloom and me pouting about it, this team will get better. Just by experience alone. And I'm sure practice won't hurt either. I don't know if everybody will pan out, but some of you are totally overreacting. I mean the team everybody was in love with last year played a mirror game to this except it was to unca, as opposed to top 25 Clemson. Now that was pathetic.

[Liberty4Life]

#1) JCManson, don't jump off a bridge.

#2) We were humiliated on our home court.

#3) Most importantly, I remember last year after we got destroyed by UNC Asheville in an ESPN game. I went on this board and railed against the team and Ritchie McKay* and screamed about how terrible our franchise is. And then, we went out our next game and beat UVA, and wound up having one of our best seasons ever. So, in my next post, I apologized for being so willing to drink the Hater-ade.

*or rather, uh, I would have, uh, if I was a member of this board at that time... which is preposterous, because everyone knows that I stumbled on this board a few months ago having never seen it before, and the fact that I joined the board around the same time a prominent FlameFans member announced that he was leaving... well, that's just a coincidence.

[Liberty4Life]

#1) JCManson, don't jump off a bridge.

#2) We were humiliated on our home court.

#3) Most importantly, I remember last year after we got destroyed by UNC Asheville in an ESPN game. I went on this board and railed against the team and Ritchie McKay* and screamed about how terrible our franchise is. And then, we went out our next game and beat UVA, and wound up having one of our best seasons ever. So, in my next post, I apologized for being so willing to drink the Hater-ade.

*or rather, uh, I would have, uh, if I was a member of this board at that time... which is preposterous, because everyone knows that I stumbled on this board a few months ago having never seen it before, and the fact that I joined the board around the same time a prominent FlameFans member announced that he was leaving... well, that's just a coincidence.

I forgot one thing:

#4) Randy Dunton took a team that was worst in the nation and captured the Big South championship two years later. I'm not insinuating anything, just stating the facts.

[jcmanson]

#1) JCManson, don't jump off a bridge.

Don't worry, I'm saving room on said bridge for others who would like to join later in the season.

[thepostman]

the team did play horrible today..I couldn't even watch it..Clemson is a good team, but there is no excuse to lose by 40...I was expecting a 20 point loss and would've been fine...40 points is simply embarrassing...with that said I hope this year does not turn into RD supporters vs the rest, which I have a fear it is going to be....

[Sivart]

That was fun... It really doesn't matter if we won or lost because they are not in the BS. We have half a month till we are playing any conference games. This is a lot different then football because we need to win every single game there to make playoffs (Lord willing). Here we just need to be the best we can against the Big South! I mean yeah it wasn't fun loosing by 40 on ESPN, but does it really matter because that game wont effect if we go to Playoffs or not... Still have along way to go to beat the Big South, but not impossible!

[ALAFlamesFan]

I think you could convince some folks to come play here with that pic! (just don't tell them which game it was or the score )

GREAT CROWD!

Now if we just had an nice big scoreboard hanging down over the court...

[Stevev]

I feel really bad for the team and all those fans concerning the beating that we took. It was reminscent of last year's UNCA game were we stunk it up big time. THe only difference is Clemson is much better than UNCA and last year game was played in a dumpy looking gym. Hopefully we will get over this and give ODU a good game. When an opportunity like this comes up you have got to go for it even though there is a risk it could backfire on you but I am all for upgrading the schedule and when an ACC teams is willing to come to our house it is a good thing and you can't say enough about the fan turnout. I think that we will be okay since we are so young. Give it some time and we will get things together.

[jinxy]

Maybe the most strange thing that I saw was that we were scared to death to launch 3's in the first half. It was just weird to see the team that jacked all those 3's last year be so timid to shoot them. I realize that this is a totally different team but geez most of the guy's on the roster can shoot the 3 somewhat effectively. I really like Konan and Gordon's defense a lot. I would love to see a starting lineup of Carter Konan Ohman Gordon Sanders bringing baker, perez, JA and Minaya off the bench. Maybe we need Layer to tell a couple of the guys to shoot every time they got the ball so we can function as an offense haha. We look like were still waiting for Seth and Ant to get their 35-40 shots a game.

[Sivart]

Well today didn't go so well, but at least we did better then UNC Asheville...

UNC-Asheville 49
Tennessee 124

Talk about blow out!

http://espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=293212633

[Chris Lang]

That just caught my eye too. A 75-point loss? Holy crap.

[kingaling42]

That pretty much sums it up Chris.. we got smashed, destroyed, rape, and pillaged.. worst of all the guys quit which was the embarrassing part..

29 TO's (so LU fans don't feel so bad)
1-16 from 3 pt land (we did edge out Winthrop who went 0-13 tonight)
UT shot 59.7% from the field, 55.2% from 3 with 16 made 3s...

I've got nothin...

[El Scorcho]

I can't follow the logic of being down on coach Layer three games into the season, nor can I understand bringing up RD at this point as anything more than a reference to a point in time. I couldn't even understand it last season, but I certainly can't understand it now. I get that some people didn't like RM and ultimately they were probably justified in that, but are we already going down this road with this coach too?

If that's the case I want someone to tell me now what it's going to take for you to be satisfied with LU hoops. I don't mean pie in the sky turnaround dreams either. I mean to give me something realistic and reasonable. Right now I don't see anything remotely reasonable being said about this situation.

We have a new coach with a young team and we played a Top 25 ACC school today. Yeah, we lost by 40. I honestly can't believe anyone expected anything more. I assume we're going to be one of the worst teams in the country this year. Why would we not be? I'm not mad about it. I think it's just the state of things right now.

Just my opinion, but I think the discussion around basketball is probably some of the most tired on all of FlameFans. I'm ready for something new.

[LUconn]

Swim team?

[jcmanson]

Trying to recall who took a shot or said anything about Coach Layer? I don't think anyone did.