[Kricket]

Is Caleb the guy who ties everything together? I feel like he knows when to take control of the game and when to move the ball.

A lot of individual play out there tonight. And not a lot of good individual play at that.

McGhee seems to be the most improved this year. A few finishes at the rim that were nice.

I guess an ugly win beats any loss though.

[Jonathan Carone]

We had probably 6-8 shots from inside the circle that didn’t go down. You can’t miss that often from that close.

I still absolutely love this team. Tonight was just tough to watch.

[jinxy]

Yes. The offense flows through homesley. Ive been saying it for the last 3 games but tonight made it obvious. Were also not terribly deep. Scottie, man its just jekyll and hyde with him anymore and its more bad than good it seems. Not sure whats wrong with him.

[ballcoach15]

Not pretty, but a win is a win

[LUOrange]

Off topic I know, but the pop ups on this board make it almost unbearable. Horrible.

Yeah, I understand the need to pay the bills with ads-which I mostly don't mind. But that pop up that comes up horizontally along the bottom of the screen is infuriating.

[olldflame]

We got a total of 2 points from our 2 pre-season all-conference players and still won. I'll take it. After hearing coach in the post game, it sounded like Caleb was not feeling well, and he just decided to sit him. Not an NBA-style "load management" where you give totally healthy veteran players strategic rest.

[A Sea of Red]

Watch Ritchie McKay's full post game press conference:

https://www.aseaofred.com/ritchie-mckay ... ideo-navy/

[Jonathan Carone]

I don’t know what’s going on with Scottie. Since about midway through conference play last year he started to become either hit or miss. I don’t know if it’s the defenses focusing on him or something else. But when he’s off offensively he’s really off.

Defensively he’s been there all year. I don’t question him there. And he’s kept his emotions in check so far this year better than last year. So he’s still providing tons of value for the team, just don’t know what’s going on offensively.

[A Sea of Red]

Liberty improves to 5-0 with hard fought win over Navy

https://www.aseaofred.com/liberty-impro ... over-navy/

[Tnobes]

Off topic I know, but the pop ups on this board make it almost unbearable. Horrible.

I don't get any popups

[Dalegarz1]

Since being dominated by Blackshear in VT game last year, Scottie James seems to have lost confidence and aggressiveness on the offensive end.

[ballah09]

Scottie hasn’t been the same since the infamous flop against Lipscomb. He’s gotta stop overthinking and play his game.

A lot of standing around and missed bunnies. Poor game with out Caleb and we still won.

[OneHope]

I’m a huge Scottie fan. I think he has shown that he has the skill to hang with just about anyone but something really seems to be messing with his mental game. It’s like he can’t move on when he doesn’t get the shot he wants...You could see last night he was punching at the air with frustration when he missed a couple of open shots and yes he seems to have lost the aggressiveness down under that we saw most of last year. I really hope coach can set him on the right path we really need him!

[Cider Jim]

According to Coach McKay in today's today's paper, Homesley missed the game because of a "tweak." I'm no trainer, but that sounds like a minor injury.

“We decided not to play Caleb to rest him. He got a little tweak [Monday] in practice and didn’t feel like he was full strength,” McKay said, adding he didn’t know until 15 to 20 minutes before the game Homesley wasn’t playing. “ … We fully expect him back soon.”

[olldflame]

A bit more detail from Ritchie's postgame press conference. Caleb apparently "tweaked" something, which lead to the "load management". Doesn't sound serious, but we obviously missed him. He's the guy we WANT to create, and the others who tried to in his absence didn't do too well.

As far as Scottie's recent doldrums, I don't want to point to one event (the flop) but he certainly was MVP awesome in the ASUN tourney and has been not so awesome since (with the exception of the UMES game). I'm not worried yet.

[Jonathan Carone]

I don't want to work and I find the conversation interesting, so I took a look at Scottie's numbers.

This year, he's averaging 8.8 points and 9.4 rebounds in 22.8 minutes while shooting 47.3%. He's also averaging 2.8 free throw attempts per game.

If you take out the UMES game, he's averaging 5.5 points and 7.75 rebounds in 21.25 minutes while shooting 32%. In those games he's averaging 1.5 free throws per game.

Last year, for the season, he averaged 12.6 points and 8.6 rebounds in 24.5 minutes while shooting 66.5%. He also averaged 3.78 free throws per game.

So while his minutes are down by 2-3 minutes per game, he's averaging almost 4 points less, 1 rebound more, shooting 19.2% worse, and shooting 2 free throws less per game.

If we compare him to the conference tournament last year - when he was at his best and looked like he was making the leap - he averaged 15 points and 6.7 rebounds in 27.6 minutes while shooting 60.6%. He also averaged 7 free throws per game in those three games.

-----

I thought the "infamous flop" comment was interesting, so if you look at the stats since that Lipscomb game:

6.29 points and 6.7 rebounds in 16.29 minutes while shooting 47.4% and averaging 2 free throw attempts per game.

[Jonathan Carone]

Now, with all the numbers there, here's what I pull from it:

I'm not at all concerned about the points being down. We've diversified our offense and have a lot of guys who can score and those points have to come from somewhere.

He's increased his rebounds which I think is great.

I have two concerns:

Shooting percentage - he's either taking bad shots or not making good ones. He's shooting nearly 20% worse than last year.

Free throws - he's taking 2 free throws less per game.

If he were to get back to his free throw averages from last year - and if he would've shot his normal percentage from last year - here's what his numbers would be:

13 points
9.4 rebounds
22.8 minutes

That's highly impressive.

Eventually the shots will fall. If he can keep his emotions in check, keep working to get the shots, and keep rebounding, it's going to work itself out. He's too good for the shooting percentage to stay where it's at.

[thepostman]

For the most part he is getting good shots when he takes them. He hasn't forced a ton so you've got to think shots will start to fall for him. You hit it right on the head Jon, if he keeps his emotion in check he should be able to recover.

I find it hard to believe that this all started because of the infamous flop but I guess with young people you can never tell what may end up bothering them for a long time.

[LUOrange]

I think James got psyched out against MS State and then Tech, as he was playing against bigger and better talent than he was used to. The only thing that will help him is to keep playing. Yesterday, everyone was off. Scottie is clearly our best rebounder and after him, we lack size in the regular rotation. So we need to get him comfortable again, but it seems to me that McKay is way too quick to pull Scottie from the game and insert Bell. In the first half, McKay actually played Bell and Scottie together some in the first half, which I really liked and think we should do more. Hopefully, Scottie gets his mojo back this weekend in the Bahamas, but I also think unless he's in foul trouble, like at ECU, McKay needs to let him play.

[A Sea of Red]

He got married in the summer. That's the biggest difference. Marriage takes a toll.

[thepostman]

Well there we go, now we know the real story!

[olldflame]

He got married in the summer. That's the biggest difference. Marriage takes a toll.

What would Crash Davis suggest?

[TH Spangler]

We are deep in good talent. To put a positive spin on this one, we sat our our top scorer and both our big men went stone cold from the floor and we still managed a W.

[A Sea of Red]

Postgame takeaways (Club)

https://www.aseaofred.com/postgame-takeaways-navy/

[Kricket]

My own opinion is Scottie used to embrace contact and was a heckuva finisher when drawing contact. He seems to be finessing too much. It's not something he can't overcome as soon as he realizes he needs to get more physical.