The Unofficial Furman Football Page

After today’s embarrassing performance against Western, we need to hit the reset button and regroup. I hope that we can do that , but it is not a given.
It is hard to believe that UNCG just beat Western by 25, and we got beat by 12. I hope we can get better, but the time is now.

I was tired of reading the dialogue between The Cats and Fu Hoopla , so I decided to start a new thread after the Western game.

Bob must have really let the team have it after the game. He never came out of the locker room to talk with Dan and Tom. I hope they can all figure it out!

Good thread title. Looks like this team has a couple of huge problems and there are no simple solutions. First of all, we play poor defense. Every team seems to shoot well against Furman. That is either bad luck or bad defense. I think the latter. Defense is 75% attitude. We need an emergency adjustment. Secondly, the offensive scheme is all wrong for this team. We play an inside out ball movement that often ends with a 3 point shot by design. We are not a good 3 point shooting team. We need to stop that as a first option. We have little offensive rebounding, very few second chance shots. Our 5 is not a presence on the boards nor a defensive stopper. It does not appear that we have anyone to fill that roll other than Slawson and he spends a lot of time away from the basket. That has to change. The freshman starter is willing but not able at this point in his career. The point guard and the swing men are all very inconsistent. I don’t know why they are but we need to play the hot hand as soon as it is becomes apparent and sit the others. Lastly, we are not as good as we all thought. That is a fact. We lost a lot more than we thought from last year’s team. The chemistry on this squad as constituted is not good. Changes must be made and they don’t appear to be tweaks. We are certainly not one of the best mid majors in the country at this point and that is all too obvious. If the staff can make some substantial changes, we can still be very competitive in the SoCon. I hope they are willing and able to do that for all our sakes. Losing to teams like WCU is not fun.

The fact is we have 2 players to count on every game and of course they are Slawson and Bothwell. There is no one and I mean no one that has stepped up. In d1 games this year we have only had one occasion where a player not named JS or MB has scored in double figures 2 games n a row. Only ONCE. That is who we are. We are a 2 player team.
BTW our slow dissent from the kenpom top 100 was culminated today with a 20 point drop to #113 which is still way too high.

The writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. I am not certain that anything new was revealed today but since Western lost to UNCG by 25 and VMI isn’t good I think folks are facing reality now. Time to be creative and change course. Plan A is not working with this team. Hope CBR can figure it out.

purplehorse123 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:15 pm

The writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. I am not certain that anything new was revealed today but since Western lost to UNCG by 25 and VMI isn’t good I think folks are facing reality now. Time to be creative and change course. Plan A is not working with this team. Hope CBR can figure it out.

Correct Purplehorse been trying to deny what my eyes have been telling me all year. After today’s debacle I can no longer deny it. I think best case scenario is 10-8 fourth or fifth place. Win most of the home games and try to steal one or 2 on the road. Maybe win one game in the tourney to get to 20 wins which really doesn’t mean much these days.

I sure hope CBR can figure it out.
My observations:

Offense - we are very inconsistent . The most recent example among many. Marcus Foster scored 23 points against VMI and scored 0 today.

Defense - or lack of it. We allow so many uncontested easy shots. Every team seems to shoot well against us. The common denominator is Furman, specifically our poor defense.

Again I hope we figure it out!

Go Dins !

We don’t know who we are.

We used to pride ourselves on playing intense and intelligent defense and taking care of the ball. Now we do neither.

Now we think we just need to show up. We have some players that swagger onto the court, then turn the ball over the first couple of times they touch it, then spend the rest of the game complaining about every call.

Paul C wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:28 am

We don’t know we are.

We used to pride ourselves on playing intense and intelligent defense and taking care of the ball. Now we do neither.

Now we think we just need to show up. We have some players that swagger onto the court, then turn the ball over the first couple of times they touch it, then spend the rest of the game complaining about every call.

So true. This was the type game at the 9 minute mark where we would normally take control and pull out the win. Instead we got outscored 24-10 the rest of the way.

fu77fan wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:00 am

I sure hope CBR can figure it out.
My observations:

Offense - we are very inconsistent . The most recent example among many. Marcus Foster scored 23 points against VMI and scored 0 today.

Defense - or lack of it. We allow so many uncontested easy shots. Every team seems to shoot well against us. The common denominator is Furman, specifically our poor defense.

Again I hope we figure it out!

Go Dins !

Agree it is mind boggling how anyone and everyone can drive to the basket with little or no resistance. I think our guards are very weak on defending drives to the basket and very weak driving to the basket on offense with the exception of MB.

Just for fun and to shake things up a little here would be my starting lineup Wednesday:
Bothwell
Slawson
Hien
Williams
Whitt
What would yours be?

In the 2nd half we were up by 9 which means Western outscored us by 21 the rest of the way. Many of our games this year we have played one half of basketball. That is not going to be a winning formula when we play the best teams in the conference. We also have started slow in most of our games.

I don’t know why we have not seen Lawrence recently. Maybe Alex should play more. I am just grasping for straws.

Ultimately it comes down to the tournament as is always the case anyway. We can help ourselves by having a higher seed but can always be a low seed and get hot at the right time. What has changed is the REALISTIC expectations of some.

I’d actually like to see Slawson get more aggressive on offense like against Winthrop.
Also I trust CBR and don’t think it’s just talk when he says this team is going to be really good but clearly something is off especially on defense.

Not worried. Only thing that matters is the tournament. Even the best teams loose. We will bounce back!!!