Yeah yeah, we know.  A day late.  We apologize for the delay and offer up cpip in exchange for your forgiveness.  Email us at greentintedglassesblog@gmail.com if you would like to take him off our hands.

Tuesday night the Charlotte 49ers defeated the Radford Highlanders 57-49 in a bloodbath that ended with three referees heading to the hospital to have their whistles extracted from their derrieres. To illustrate how bad it was, Radford managed one more field goal (18) than they did personal fouls (17).  What’s even more disturbing was all the uncalled fouls.  When then Niners opened up the game with a 12-2 run, Radford essentially put on ice any plans to play basketball and resorted to 40 (36 actually) minutes of fouls.  The truly unfortunate part was the officiating crew of Tim Cormer (who bears a frightening resemblance to Lebo Almighty), Tim Haddix and Jeff Nichols let it happen.  This may sound like complaining and rationalizing away a poor performance by the Niners but it’s really about protecting our players.  Guys were getting cut up and getting slammed to the floor regularly.  That’s when injuries occur and its the responsibility for the refs to call the game by the rules.  It wasn’t that the calls were one-sided… they weren’t, it’s just the refs were calling absolutely nothing.

Leading the way for the Niners was again Jr. PF/C Chris Braswell.  Braswell hit on 5-7 shots on his way to 14 points and 9 rebounds.  So. DeMario Mayfield also played reasonably well collecting a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds.  It was also a strong collective defensive effort as the Niners limited Radford to a scant 29% from the field and 5% from 3 PT land (1-19).  The most impressive aspect of performance was challenging any and all perimeter shots despite playing the bulk of the game in a 2-3 zone.  The defense rotated well and managed to close ground on open shooters en route to blocking 8 shots for the game.  The one downside, however, was the 17 offensive rebounds the Niners gave up -a frequent consequence of relying heavily on the 2-3 zone as it hampens boxing-out.

While giving credit to Radford first year head coach Mike Jones (former VCU assistant under Shaka Smart and was also on the coaching staff that recruited Mayfield to Georgia) for switching to a style of play that frustrated the Niners all night long, a sufficient amount of criticism needs to be directed to the team and staff.  Constructive, mind you.

Ball-handling against the press continues to cause too many turnovers.  It’s unreasonable to expect a flawless performance against the press; however the Niners backcourt and coaching staff needs to recognize when teams are overplaying passing lanes, telegraph passes less and utilize more movement away from the direction of the overplay, such as cutting and backdoor passes.  It’s akin to the football team that over-pursues every play.  Run a reverse and BOOM, HEADSHOT.

Another aspect of team play that continues to frustrate us is the use of DeMario Mayfield in the closing minute(s) of tight ballgames.  While we love his all-around game, his foul shooting is a tremendous liability so far, as he’s converting on just 47% of his freebies.  We don’t know if coach Alan Major is convinced he will hit his foul shots or if it’s something else, but it certainly is headscratching for us to see Mayfield in there when FTs have not been his strong point so far.

Shooting guard play continues to be an area of issue for the team, as Derrio Green and Deuce Briscoe both struggled with facets of the game Tuesday night.  Briscoe missed on all 5 of his field goal attempts and Green shot 2-5 for 6 points, with both committing a pair of turnovers.

At risk in all of this is a 3 game winning streak that is threatened by an upcoming game with hated Davidson College.  The smugness descends upon Halton Arena Saturday and the Wildcats will surely exploit turnovers in a manner that Radford was simply unable to offensively.  There is much for the Niners to work on in practice, starting with taking care of the ball.