I hope that you enjoy flipping through some of these pictures – I know that I enjoyed attending the Hawks’ games last season and I’m hoping for a better season next year. It’s a shame that a talented guy like Austin Tillotson decided to leave the team and the university, but if the kid didn’t feel comfortable in the program and wanted to go to a good academic school, then he has to make the right decision for him. And for Tillotson, that decision was to go to Colgate. If those are his reasons for leaving, I don’t think you can really blame him for making the move. Colgate is a nationally-ranked academic school while Monmouth has a modest ranking at a regional level. Colgate has about half of the enrollment that Monmouth has, so it seems to fit what the kid was looking for in his college experience.

Good for him – I wish him luck. And now, enjoy the pictures!

Mike Myers Keitt on defense

I’m not into the blame game so I don’t know if it was a coaching issue or the fact that the Haws are down four players in their rotation or whatever. What I do know, though, is that the team simply got outplayed tonight. Look – sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and tonight, the Hawks appeared to be outplayed by a decent Sacred Heart team. I have to stress, though, that the Pioneers were a “decent” team – not the type of team where you have to call someone up and tell them, “Oh my God! These guys are AMAZING!!!” But a decent team nonetheless.

So far this season, what I’ve found interesting while watching the Hawks is that they tend to play to their competition’s level. When they played against Villanova they had moments of real greatness where, as a fan in the audience, I was extremely impressed. When they played against Quinnipiac the Hawks looked like they should have been ranked the number one team in the conference. And just 48 hours after that great performance against the Bobcats, the Hawks played down a little bit (sure, exhaustion had to play into it, too) and they wound up getting routed at home in front of more than 850 fans.

By the way, 850+ fans in bad weather – nice showing!

The Monmouth Hawks website has some quotes from after the game and I think Head Coach Dave Calloway hit the nail right on the head with this one about the poor defense tonight:

We were just not good enough on the defensive end. I thought we scored enough points, but we gave up too many. We gave up 51 points in the second half and you aren’t going to win many games if you give up that many points.

Here’s hoping that things turnaround for the Hawks – and soon. I’ve got 32 pictures from the game below for you to peruse through at your leisure. I kept the same close up/larger style that I had in the Quinnipiac pictures since I thought that they looked pretty good. I hope that you enjoy them!

Who knows?

Jesse Steele and the Hawks on defense

In any event, I do have some thoughts on last night’s game. First, I can’t tell you enough how impressed I was with the Monmouth players after all of the crap that they’ve had to deal with in the last week.

I think that Quinnipiac might have been a little bit better conditioned than some of the Monmouth squad, but the Bobcats also had the ability to sub in more players more frequently. Although, I’m not sure if it was such a bad thing that Monmouth didn’t have a large pool of players to draw from on the bench. At some point last night it seemed like there was some cohesion and energy among the five active Monmouth players and part of me wants to believe that was because they were able to play together for longer periods of time. However, there was one point when Mike Myers Keitt – Monmouth’s leading scorer last night – motioned to his bench that he needed to be taken out for a moment.

But what do I know? I’m just a guy sitting in the crowd.

Tony Graham at the Hawks Nest has a good review of the game with some quotes from all of the gang. For example, since Monmouth missed five foull shots in a row, most folks who watched last night’s game came away saying, “What was the deal with those foul shots at the end?! Come on, Monmouth!” Well, Head Coach Dave Calloway addresses the foul shot issue on the Hawks Nest:

“If you make three more foul shots along the way it’s a different game,” Calloway said. “There’s lots of things we did well in the game but there’s lots of things to work on.”

And the coach is right – you sink those five foul shots in a row and Monmouth wins 75 – 73. But playing that type of second guessing game probably isn’t the most productive use of one’s time. Kevin O’Rourke over at the New Jersey Newsroom’s Pressbox put up some additional quotes from Coach Calloway including:

“We’ve had a lot of games that have gone that way this year, down to the last possession and you come up one short, one possession short,” Calloway said. “We’ll look back at the tape tonight and re-hash some of those possessions, especially the last couple of minutes. If we could have done one thing better, we win the game.”

That seems like a better use of time and efforts, don’t you think? And maybe someone can figure out how in the world Monmouth had 17 turnovers last night. Aside from those foul shots, if the team doesn’t turn the ball over so much, then you have a completely different game. Or, as one the assistant coaches kept yelling last night – if the opposition doesn’t score on the turnover, you essentially negate the impact of turning the ball over. Monmouth wasn’t able to prevent Quinnipiac from scoring on some of those turnovers and do you know what that gives you? A heartbreaking loss at home.

Anyway, below are some 44 pictures from the game last night. And hey – I normally adjust the pictures to be 800 pixels on their largest side (i.e. the pictures are never larger than 800 pixels on any one side). This time around, I tried taking pictures in a slightly different style with more zooming and less wide shots. Also, I adjusted the settings on the pictures so that the largest side is now 1024 pixels. In other words, if you’re looking for a little more detail than usual, these pictures should give you what you want. Let me know if you like the changes and I’ll keep this style of pictures for future home games. Enjoy!

What I liked about last night’s game (aside from the surprising number of fans in attendance) was the aggressiveness that the Hawks played with – especially in the second half. Many of the fans have been waiting all season to see the Hawks really take it to their opponents in the second half and the team did not disappoint last night. About halfway through the second half the Hawks caught fire and, led by Whitney Coleman, seemed almost unstoppable. The momentum caused the Quinnipiac coach to call a time out, but the Hawks raged back after the interruption. In terms of competitiveness, last night the Hawks played as good as I’ve seen them this season.

I generally don’t like to talk negatively of the opposing team in these brief reviews, but it really seemed to me that one of the main players on Quinnipiac had no idea where he was or what was going on. Anyone who was at the game probably noticed the same thing, but #12 seemed (to me at least) like he was hungover or just not mentally focused on playing a decent game. And it really showed in his stats – 4 points and 5 personal fouls. The guy had more fouls that points and he’s one of their major players! Weird.

Some quotes from Monmouth Head Coach Dave Calloway from the Asbury Park Press:

“I thought we did a great job on them (Feldeine and Rutty) and even their other guys,” said Monmouth coach Dave Calloway.

“They’re (Quinnipiac) solid. Obviously that’s their two best players and we held them both under their average.”

“If you hold the other team’s two best players and don’t allow anyone to really go off – and they have other players who could have gone off – it was an all around good defensive game.”

No comment from Coach Calloway regarding when a Quinnipiac player inadvertently landed on him during the second half as he was trying to save the ball from going out of bounds. Seeing one of the players land directly on the Coach got a reaction out of the crowd – it was something that you don’t see everyday at the MAC Center!

Special shout outs to one of my roommates for coming along to the game and two of our fellow Sigma Pi alumni who were at the game. It was fun to catch up with them over a few beers in The Varsity Club. And I’ve been working on making the pictures that I take look better before posting them on the blog, so please let me know if you think these are better and clearer than previous pictures. Check out the twenty or so pictures from the game below.