mbb 2022 Game #10: 12/5/22 - 7PM at UMass

[cwdickens]

Surprisingly, UAlbany did not scheduled Amherst College<D3> instead of UMass - Amherst ....  today's Times Union article

UALBANY MEN’S BASKETBALL

 

Homecoming for Killings

Game at UMass returns coach to where he was born, raised

 

By Abigail Rubel

Will Waldron / Times Union

UAlbany coach Dwayne Killings was planning to bring the team over to his parents’ house for dinner Sunday after a stop at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Sam Killings worked for the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for over 40 years and still supports the Minutemen.

But with the University at Albany men’s basketball team, coached by his son, coming to town, he made sure to make his loyalties clear, popping into the athletic director’s office to tell him, “Hey man, I got to put UMass down for this game.”

Dwayne Killings and the Great Danes visit UMass for a 7 p.m. tipoff Monday night. Perhaps no one is more excited than the elder Killings, who described the event as “wonderful.”

“It’s been really a thrill to see him rise through the ranks as a coach. This has been his dream, he’s worked very hard at it,” Sam Killings said.

Sam Killings instilled a love of basketball in his son early, bringing him to Minutemen games and practices as a child. When he got a bit older, Dwayne Killings was a ball boy under John Calipari and would participate in ball-handling drills during halftime.

“That’s kind of where I fell in love with basketball,” Dwayne Killings recalled.

Later, Killings was a walk-on under Bruiser Flint, now a coach at Kentucky under Calipari. He played just three minutes in five games in the 2000-01 season.

“He gets mad at me because I tell people he wasn’t necessarily a good player,” Flint joked in a 2021 interview with the Times Union.

But despite his ties to Amherst — Sam Killings reported he’s been running into old friends of Dwayne’s all week, many of whom will be in attendance — Dwayne Killings said he’s trying to treat it like a normal game.

“We got a job to do at seven o’clock tomorrow night,” he said.

The Great Danes (3-6), already down Marcus Jackson (collarbone) and Justin Neely (ACL) will also be without Will Amica (ankle swelling) and Ny’Mire Little, who is out for the season with a hip injury. He’ll have surgery in about a week and a half, Killings reported.

Little, a sophomore guard, started UAlbany’s last three games. He’s averaging 3.4 points and 15.6 minutes per game.

Sophomore forward Aaron Reddish, who missed the last two games with an illness, will return. Reddish is UAlbany’s third-best scorer with 9.9 points per game. Gerald Drumgoole Jr. leads the team with 13.2 points per game, followed by freshman Jonathan Beagle with 10.6 points. Beagle, a freshman, is also the team’s top rebounder with 69 on the season.

The Great Danes have just one victory against a Division I opponent this season and have lost two in a row, most recently an 88-62 defeat at American.

“We’ve got to try some different things,” Killings said. “We’ll decide tomorrow kind of what that will be. These past couple of days, it’s about the effort that’s required. It’s also about the approach. We put a lot of time into preparation and scouting and execution, and that’s going to be the standard that we want to have, and we’re going to have to hold people to it.”

That might mean a starting lineup, without, say, a main ball handler.

“It’s going to be about the guys that can really focus on the details while they’re out there and give the effort that’s required,” Killings said. “We have these little sequences that really, really kill us, and it’s constantly been execution.”

The Minutemen (6-1) have wins against Colorado and Harvard this season, with their lone loss coming against Towson, 67-55. The Tigers also beat the Danes 67-62 in the opener.

Noah Fernandes leads UMass in scoring with 11.4 points per game, followed by Matt Cross (10.2), T.J. Weeks Jr. (9.7) and RJ Luis

(8.9). Wildens Leveque is averaging 5.6 rebounds per game.

The Danes took a bus to Amherst Sunday, stopping at the Basketball Hall of Fame on the way. Afterwards, Killings was planning to bring the team to his parents’ for dinner. He’s done it as a player and a coach at Temple, and teams are 2-0 after dinner at the Killings’, he reports.

UAlbany at UMass

A When: 7 p.m. Monday

A Where: Mullins Center, Amherst, Mass.

A Stream: ESPN+; Radio: 104.5 The Team

[godanesgo99]

5 hours ago, Eli said:

It doesn't matter if our offense is fine...our defense is non-existent. This will be a bloodbath.

In reality, I agree. Trying to remain positive and hope for a breakout.

[Eli]

2 hours ago, godanesgo99 said:

In reality, I agree. Trying to remain positive and hope for a breakout.

Your efforts are commendable! 

[Dane Pound]

Given the family history at UMass, it's going to be quite a moment when Ketner steps on the floor tonight.

[tnehurley]

We are 15 1/2 pt. dogs tonight. Gazette pre-game headline was not optimistic: “UAlbany’s woeful defense faces red-hot UMass.” Will we be remotely competitive? We will see.

[Dane96]

9 hours ago, godanesgo99 said:

I'm gonna go against the grain and call an upset win tonight. While I've been one of the lone mostly positive posters (while being very critical at the same time) and it's not all the surprising for that type of prediction from me based on that, I can see UMass sleeping on how bad the team has been and some of these shots starting to fall. The team is too talented to miss this many easy shots. Hopefully it happens as a team playing as a team and not because someone played hero ball. Winning as a team would bode well for conference play. Winning because one player got hot and took over will signal more of the same. A loss tells us nothing as we aren't supposed to win anyway.

 

Gotta love your confidence, as unfounded as it seems.   I hope you are correct.  

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Dane96

[Dane96]

Wow...Little out for year...hip surgery.  Likely a labral tear.  

Team is going down like flies in a trap.  Tough year. 

[cwdickens]

Is Reddish available to play this evening? .... Last seen two games ago...

Well, answered my own question...

Edited December 5, 2022 by cwdickens
update

[jimbo]

Groan….I’ve seen enough. 

[Dane96]

This game had every single thing that is wrong with this program on display.  First, I want to acknowledge this is a difficult schedule.  Second, I want to say that Neely's absence hurts but I honest to god don't believe he, alone, would have changed the fortunes of the team.

This team:

-poorly constructed

-filled with athletes but low Basketball IQ

-seemingly has no limitation for shooting- we just take outside shot after outside shot and we are not good at it.

-has players who think they can take on a whole team (looking at you Davis-- kid has not stopped (from exhibition to OOC) taking on 3-4 guys at a time.  That works in D3 (maybe) but not in D1

-has no real ball movement

-has no real offensive sets (at least that I am seeing)

-is undersized

-has no defensive accumen

These fall on the staff.  Why?  Because in the era of the portal, you should be able to build a competitive team if you can recruit.  It doesn't take 5 years anymore.  Look at it this way, if Neely isn't injured...DK must have been betting on big leaps from Little and Reddish (I think he even as quoted as believing that would occur) and figured that Davis and Kellogg were going to contribute heavily, in addition to Beagle.

It is not translating...

[tnehurley]

PATHETIC.

[godanesgo99]

Another terrible defensive half. UMass shoots almost 70% from the floor in the half. I guess they only shot 20% for three, but I thought they made more than 1-5.

Definitely hard to watch this team play. I feel like I'm watching 8th grade CYO against the varsity team.

[nysteve661]

10 minutes ago, jimbo said:

Groan….I’ve seen enough. 

Same here.  I give them a chance every game to reel me in, but nope, hopeless once again.  Opponents have a shootaround every game courtesy of our defense.  UMASS were 10 for their last 10 from floor.  

[cwdickens]

Well at least we are shooting foul shots better than UMass Amherst.....

[godanesgo99]

47 minutes ago, Dane96 said:

This game had every single thing that is wrong with this program on display.  First, I want to acknowledge this is a difficult schedule.  Second, I want to say that Neely's absence hurts but I honest to god don't believe he, alone, would have changed the fortunes of the team.

This team:

-poorly constructed

-filled with athletes but low Basketball IQ

-seemingly has no limitation for shooting- we just take outside shot after outside shot and we are not good at it.

-has players who think they can take on a whole team (looking at you Davis-- kid has not stopped (from exhibition to OOC) taking on 3-4 guys at a time.  That works in D3 (maybe) but not in D1

-has no real ball movement

-has no real offensive sets (at least that I am seeing)

-is undersized

-has no defensive accumen

These fall on the staff.  Why?  Because in the era of the portal, you should be able to build a competitive team if you can recruit.  It doesn't take 5 years anymore.  Look at it this way, if Neely isn't injured...DK must have been betting on big leaps from Little and Reddish (I think he even as quoted as believing that would occur) and figured that Davis and Kellogg were going to contribute heavily, in addition to Beagle.

It is not translating...

I may have argued with some of these points in the past, but I just can't.

I really think I've figured it out though. It really looks like they are trying to run a version of the 5 out Motion offense. This means no real set plays and is designed for creativity. It relies less on ball screens and pick and rolls and is more about spacing and set directions of motion. The problem is that they aren't moving the ball and are using the setup as an excuse to play hero one on one ball. I have seen them run it well on a few possessions against American and FAU, but for the most part it just turns into someone forcing a three or driving into multiple bodies.

If this isn't what they are attempting to do, then they are even worse than I thought lol. You will notice on most plays there is no one in the paint and all offensive players are outside of the three point line (or one guy in the "dunker" spot) This requires strict spacing or turns into turnovers and forced shots... Exactly what's happening. 

Combine that with extremely poor defensive positioning and help rotation and you have a recipe for disaster. Only chance to win is if someone on the team gets hot from outside.

FYI: just an untrained observation. I probably need to go back and watch how they set up to confirm what I think I'm seeing.

Edited December 6, 2022 by godanesgo99