Green Tinted Glasses » College Basketball

Gameday vs George Washington – Predictions – Bayonet those Bastard Colonials!

J Felt — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:15:41 +0000

An image from today's game.

As you may have been able to figure out, GreenTintedGlasses.net has started to let loose a little bit. Things were so stodgy around here for awhile there, but with this new brave world of At-Larges and Top Four in Conference, we figured it’s time to change things up a bit.

But one thing hasn’t changed, we still HATE George Washington. You should too. Until we beat them by 30 points one day, I will continue to despise the school named after one of our Founding Fathers.

“You guys really need to get over that game in ’06. Leemire DID throw an elbow, you know.”

You know what? Screw you. I’m still pissed about that.

In other words, we HATE George Washington, and the first game this year just made it worse, despite our victory. George Washington led for most of the game by playing tough, physical ball and taking us out of our game plan. And when I say, “tough, physical ball” I mean “beat the shit out of DiJuan if he had the ball.” We still won though, which shows the character of this team. We really have a way of pulling out the close ones, Duquesne excluded. We have always found a way to get that key steal, basket, or defensive stand if the game was close near the end. Look at the Saint Joseph’s game, we hit about 100 key baskets.

You ask “will we win this game?” and to be honest, I don’t know. This has FAIL written all over it, just follow the equation…

Heated Rivalry + Away Game + Tough Physical Defense + MASN = Niners FAIL

But here’s the deal, we’re still going to win. We finally broke the MASN curse with Fordham, and Derrio is due for a big game, and that’ll be today. Our predictions are below, leave yours in the comments.

J Felt – Charlotte 81, GW 74. Derrio goes off, that’s all you need to know.

letsgoNINERS11 – A pretty heated rivalry is starting to form, and a good ole fashioned Niner beatdown in Foggy Bottom becomes the next chapter. Charlotte 75 – GW 67

D-Fo – Last game, Martelli said the Hawks came into Halton and played an “angry” team. Wrong. That’s not anger. That’s Swagger, homes. Charlotte 80, GW 70.

HP – Wolf Blitzer sits in his seat and is amazed at the 49ers’ rediscovered prowess, Good Guys 75, Foggy Bottoms 63.

JRitchie – Charlotte’s finally realized that NCAA hopes are slipping away, the Niners use that desperation in Foggy Bottom for a big win Charlotte 85-GW 68

Saint Joseph’s assume position, ask for another

J Felt — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:54:32 +0000

The Hawks put up the white flag with 10 minutes left in the 1st

It’s nice to see someone else in conference pull a Kevin Bacon. Last night the Niners obliterated the Hawks to the tune of 95-58. That’s 37 points, in case you’re an English major. Protip: if Ian Andersen is in the game, it be would be wise to guard him, he’s out there to shoot the ball, that’s it.

Lutz stated in the postgame that the team was starting to get down on itself and wasn’t having any fun, so the assistant coaches put together a highlight reel of the season to get them in a good mood again. Whether or not said video included videos of the best GoldDuster moments, it worked. The team came out tonight and dominated every aspect of the game, including rebounding (43 to 35) and defense (8 steals). Hell, we even dominated in the rare statistic of “white guy makes awkward layup”, a stat we almost always lose. You could see the proverbial weight being lifted off our shoulders when the game got off to a good start, and we never took our foot off the throttle. Saint Joe’s? They stopped fighting with 30 minutes left in the game.

Other than Ian Andersen, the biggest surprise of the night was An’Juan Wilderness. Doing his best Eddie Basden impersonation, Wilderness ended with 10 points, 4 rebounds and 3 steals, including two high flying dunks. It’s nice to see him coming back to form, and if he can continue to hit a jumper once or twice a game and stay healthy, he could be a big key component heading down the stretch.

Of course, we should note the play of DiJuan Harris. He stopped being Mitchell Baldwin and went back to being the warrior we’ve come to respect so much, driving the lane and making plays happen. If anyone can change the face of this team in a hurry, it’s him. We go as DiJuan goes, and hopefully he wants to continue to win.

All in all last night was a fantastic effort all around, time for some short observations. Look for the first ever edition of “Post Game Mine-Side Chats with NLP and J Felt” shortly. We’re still working on a name…

Chris Braswell seems to have come out of his funk and is playing well, just wait until ALL those layups go in next year
K.J. Sherrill is going to be awesome for us
Derrio Green still drew heavy defensive pressure despite only scoring 5 points
Gokhan Sirin, or “Goky” to some, is really good, every shot looks PERFECT
Trevin Parks needs more PT opportunities, he reminds me of DiJuan
Shamari Spears is a work horse, and the team hitting shots made his job 10X easier
Phil Jones hit his trademark jumper again, defensives are going to have to respect him more
Dewhurst, SHOOT THE BALL, we know you can

Gameday vs Saint Joseph’s – Predictions – Shootdown the Hawks!

J Felt — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:55:33 +0000

He DOES look like a dinosaur!

I leave to go to Vancouver for the Olympics, stay with JRitchie, and as I’m enjoying our visit, Charlotte goes and loses to Duquesne at home. (does anyone else remember how to spell that by saying ‘doo-kes-ney’?) Then we White-Out Xavier but get massacred regardless. Can we officially call an end to White-Out-ing Xavier? We’re 1-2 in those games and Dayton already did it Xavier. I think we should do something insanely radical, like a Neon Green-Out, or Plaid-Out (aka Al Borlan night), or Hot Girls Sit Front Row-Out. Those are winning ideas.

Needless to say, I came back to the East Coast disappointed. Maybe I should blame myself. I’m sure the players were thinking, “That guy who yells really stupid stuff isn’t here, why should we bother?” and decided to phone it in and save their best efforts for when I was in attendance. Also missed was the debut of the “Ginger Nation” sign, as one of our loyal readers, Pip, is doing his part to further the redhead race (is that really a good idea?) by wooing the crowd favorite GingerDuster. We at GTG wish him luck, and although success is unlikely, anything is possible. We were in 1st place at one time, remember?

Being at the Olympics got me thinking, what events would best suit our players?

Ian Andersen would be in curling, for obvious reasons. Shamari Spears and An’Juan would make a good two-man bobsled team. Dewhurst would do the aerials. DiJuan would tear up the moguls. Derrio seems like a speed skater. K.J. would be a great defenceman for hockey. And Phil Jones and Chris Braswell would make a formidable two-man luge squad.

We can’t leave Bobby out, of course. There’s no other place for him but Figure Skating. Have you ever seen his trademark Spin-into-Crouch and Scream? His form is impeccable.

Well, now that I’ve officially wasted your time, we need to discuss our Niners. We’ve lost three in a row. That’s rough. We’ve arguably been in a tailspin since the UMass game and we’re having a difficult time recovering. Whereas earlier in conference play luck was on our side, we seem to have run out and can’t seem to get our mojo going again. Tonight’s game is the perfect opportunity for our team to get back on their feet and remember how to win. No more imitating Mitchell Baldwin, DiJuan, play like you know how to.

Predictions are below. You know what to do.

D-Fo – The Niners really need to find their rhythm again after the past couple of weeks. In optimism, with true green-tinted glasses, I’m gonna say that it finally happens. Charlotte 75, Chicken-Hawks 68.

HP – Martelli leaves Halton scratching his bald head on what it once was like to be significant… Niners 78, Hawks 64.

letsgoNINERS11 – Phil Martelli looks like a dinosaur. WTF happened to Saint Joe’s? Charlotte 82 – Joe’s 67

J Felt – Charlotte 85, Saint Ho-seph’s 69. Braswell, Green and Spears all wake up and nom nom on some Hawk meat.

JRitchie – Charlotte narrowly avoids continuing its losing ways by topping the hawks with a minute to go sealing the victory. Charlotte 73 – St. Joe’s 69

Game #9: Gardner-Webb vs. Charlotte, 12/12/2009

J Felt — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:47:52 +0000

We must be dreaming, right Niner fans? Football is coming in 2013 (if the world doesn’t end first), we have stadium renderings to drool over, and a Men’s Basketball squad that is off to its best start since the 1994-1995 campaign that took us to the Big Dance. There is certainly no reason to expect the party to stop tonight when the Niners host the Runnin’ Bulldogs of Gardner-Webb.

So far this season, Charlotte is 2-0 against canines which doesn’t bode well for G-W. Gardner-Webb (3-3, 0-1) last played in Halton Arena during the 2007-2008 season and took an 83-51 beating at the hands of a 20 point performance by Leemire Goldwire and double-doubles chipped in by Charles Dewhurst and Charlie Coley (who also gave us a memorable breakaway slam from nearly the free throw line.) That Niners team was probably not as complete as our team this year, and the Runnin’ Bulldogs are definitely worse than they were in the last meeting between the two clubs.

The Bulldogs have yet to win a game against a Division I opponent, sporting 3 wins over Division III Covenant College, and Division II schools Montreat and Methodist. Against Division I schools, the Bulldogs have played to their ability (aka “scrubs”), taking their lumps against UNC-CH on a night when senior guard Grayson Flittner scored a season-high 32 points on 10/19 shooting including 9 treys in a 93-72 loss. The Runnin’ Bulldogs then lost back to back home games against a surprising 9-1 Western Carolina team (75-59) and most recently, a heartbreaker to a below average UNC Asheville team (58-56) starting Gardner-Webb off at 0-1 in Big South play.

Gardner-Webb will look to Flittner and fellow senior Auyrn MacMillian, a 6’8” Aussie averaging nearly a double-double, contributing 9.3 ppg and 9.2 rpg per night, to lead them into the valley of death. Head Coach Rick Scruggs is not afraid to go deep into the bench so that all his scrubs can feel the embarrassment of playing against real Division I basketball players; more than 10 players are averaging minutes in the double digits per game. However, nobody other than Flittner averages more than 9.3 ppg. The Bulldogs aren’t a particularly poor shooting team from the field at 44.9% but they shoot an abysmal 56.8% from the charity stripe and an unimpressive 32.9% from Bowden-Land.

The Niners are coming off a 42 point blowout of the WSSU Rams in which Niner Fans witnessed the much-anticipated debut of junior forward An’Juan Wilderness who has been recovering from a strained calf. Wilderness was a bit rusty, as to be expected. He didn’t take a single shot, but in true Wilderness style, chipped in 6 rebounds. The Swagger Award winner for the game was Chris Braswell, who notched his 4^th double-double of his young career, with 16 points (on a perfect 7-7 shooting) and 15 rebounds. Shamari Spears’ 17points and Gokhan Sirin’s 11 points showed excellent scoring balance yet again, something we haven’t seen much in recent years as Forty-Niner Fans.

This matchup, much like the last one, should be a beatdown. G-W is not going to get their first Division I victory on Saturday, no matter how hard they try. Charlotte is a far superior team on both ends of the floor and the addition of Wilderness only adds to the superiority with more physicality and fresh legs. This game really shouldn’t ever be close, as long as we don’t lose focus over the next two games and start thinking about Old Dominion too soon. This game will be another great tune-up for Wilderness, and we’ll probably see a lot of experimentation with lineup changes to see how he fits in. Our bench guys should get some good PT and valuable experience as well. This will probably hurt our defense some, but Charlotte rolls to 8-1: 84-63

-Job Fickett (letsgoNINERS11)

Keys for Gardner-Webb:

Attempt to contain our frontcourt
Get into transition quickly to take advantage of Charlotte’s suspect perimeter defense
Keep Charlotte off the free-throw line

Keys for Charlotte:

Continue the balanced scoring attack
Transition defense must improve
Don’t lose focus and start looking forward to ODU and GT, we must take care of business against the teams we should