Finkel at his best

That thought went through my head watching the game tonight. The wheels fell off of the whole thing tonight and it wasn’t fun or exciting to watch most of the game.

Amid all of the doom and gloom, I really feel bad for the student athletes who are out there giving it their all for the entire game. With four students suspended, Monmouth is down to an eight man team. That’s tough for any team to overcome, I don’t care who they are. However, over the last few home games I’ve noticed that there’s something missing from the Monmouth team – there’s a spark missing, there’s an excitement missing, there’s an aggressive determination to win at all costs missing – hell, there’s a student cheering section missing!

Something’s not right in West Long Branch.

Something needs to be done. I don’t know what because I admit that I don’t know enough about running a Division 1 basketball program to know how to bring in what’s missing. But I do know enough to know that these games are getting sadder and sadder.

You can get all of the stats for the game on the official Hawks website. There are 32 pictures of the game below. Enjoy!

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!

Jesse Steele on defense

Your best review of the game including post-game quotes from the Hawks head coach Dave Calloway and some of the players will come from Tony Graham at The Hawks Nest. Here is a quote from Jordan Davis that appeared on The Hawks Nest after the game tonight. I think Davis’ quote pretty much sums up the game tonight:

“We just never give up,” Davis said. “We keep fighting and we keep fighting. Today was a perfect example. We came back and finished it up.”

I have a bunch of comments that I’d like to make about this game on a variety of topics, but I’m exhausted and I have to be awake early in the morning to get to work. The two comments that I’ll make right now before I turn in, though, is that Phil Wait had a monster game tonight and I use the term “monster” because I think tonight was the first time that I saw him really dominate on defense. Here’s a guy who is some seven feet tall and the idiots on Bryant’s squad were dumb enough to run directly into him. If I’m not mistaken, that happened twice and both time the poor fool that ran into him fell on their ass with no foul called. The second time it happened I said to my buddy, “That’s what happens when you run directly into a brick wall.”

Here’s hoping that Wait has more performances like he had tonight against the rest of the Northeast Conference competition.

The second comment that I’ll make is that I love when the Hawks get focused and aggressive in their play. Going into the second half, I think it was obvious to any fan watching that something changed in the team’s play. As a guy who played sports at a highly competitive level, I’m always looking for that type of aggressive and diligent performance from the athletes. Sometimes it’s hard to find that with the Hawks (especially during the first half of their home games). However, the Hawks that played in the second half of tonight’s game were focused and aggressive and it showed. They outscored Bryant 36 to 9 in the last 18 minutes of the game.

That’s something to be proud of and the Hawks should be proud of their performance in the second half tonight.

Below are some 36 pictures from tonight’s game. Sorry, no captions right now since I’m rushing to get to bed. I’ll try to come back tomorrow with some additional thoughts on the game embedded within this post. Check back tomorrow after 5pm to see if I have any additional thoughts and some of the captions for these pictures. In the mean time, enjoy!

Mercifully, the game ended

The Hawks were 1 for 19 three point attempts. Ahem… That’s ONE for NINETEEN attempts! Look, everyone in the arena tonight “got it” – the team was down by a significant margin and the best way to gain ground is to get 3 points at a time instead of 2. But when you’re 1 for 5 from three point territory or 1 for 10 or 1 for 15 or 1 for 19, I would think you stop and say, “Ummm, let’s change this strategy. This three point shot stuff ain’t working!”

Then again, the Hawks couldn’t sink a basket for their lives tonight. From the great Tony Graham over at the Asbury Park Press blog The Hawks Nest: “Monmouth shot 25.5 percent (13-for-51) in the game and 1-for-19 from downtown.”

Really? Only 25.5 percent?! Good grief!

Anyway, I’m glad that non-conference play is over and that Monmouth is has some time to lick their wounds before getting into Northeast Conference competition against Bryant in early January. In the mean time, here are some forty pictures from tonight’s game. Look for captions later tomorrow. Enjoy!

What’s an alumnus to do?! Who’s an alumnus to root for?!

The Monmouth Mob Actually Showed Up

Well, as you might imagine I opted to root for Monmouth since it feels a little bit more natural to me. Also, I think I have more of a connection with Monmouth (good or bad). Although no matter what the outcome of the game, I knew that I was leaving the game with my alma mater winning!

But tonight’s game was an interesting one at the MAC Center in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Not only were there a bunch of red shirts in the crowd, but there was a crowd in the first place! Tony Graham over at the Asbury Park Press says that there were 2,852 fans in attendance and I wouldn’t doubt it at all. That building was jumping! Personally, I’m looking forward to this Wednesday night’s game against Villanova which I heard is completely sold out. That’s a 4,200 seat arena that is sold out – should be fun to watch.

Back to tonight’s game.

I was very impressed with the level of competitiveness that Monmouth played with early on tonight, but that would seem to for the Hawks’ style. When the Hawks play against bad teams, they play down to their level. When they play against good teams, they play up to their level. Being so inconsistent isn’t a good thing for any sports team and I wish that Monmouth would just play their game each time they take the court instead of acting like this weird chameleon type of team. Mr. Graham at the APP’s Hawks Nest had a quote from RJ Rutledge regarding Monmouth not playing their style of game in the latter part of the game:

“We hung in with them for most of the game,” Rutledge said. “It’s just that at the end we let the turnovers get to us and we didn’t keep on playing our game.”

The other major issue that bothered me tonight was that the final score didn’t reflect the level of competition that Monmouth played with for most of the game. When you see that Rutgers scored some 79 points to Monmouth’s 56 points, you think, “Wow. Monmouth got blown out.” The truth is that they didn’t get blown out at all and that certain players like RJ Rutledge, Ed Waite, and Nick Del Tufo had phenomenal games tonight. Sure, Del Tufo needs to keep his level of aggression up on defense, but he was one of the stars for Monmouth tonight. I will admit that the final score, though, definitely captured the feeling of the game in the last 5 or 6 minutes.

And that’s the final issue that bothered me about tonight’s game. As a fan sitting in the stands and having played competitive sports against all different types of skill levels of opponents, I’m pretty good at telling when a team packs it in and calls it a day. Somewhere with 4 or 5 minutes left in the second half, it really appeared like Monmouth packed it in and called it a day and that’s a damn shame. I don’t deny that Monmouth was outmatched in terms of skill, but I do believe that if Monmouth was playing at their best and playing their style of game – well, they may have had a chance of beating this Rutgers team tonight.

Here’s hoping that Monmouth can keep their level of aggressive, competitive play up for the Villanova game this Wednesday. If they can believe that a victory can happen, then you never know – something great might happen on Wednesday night.

Hawks Fans Distract SBU Player

Overall, I thought that the Hawks played well this morning. There were moments when it felt like the team was ready to break out and go on a scoring run, but the momentum never materialized for a long enough period of time to make anything major happen. I’m sure that the fact the game started at 6am EST had something to do with the team’s inability to keep the momentum fueled for a long period of time, but then again they were playing against a decent Stony Brook defense.

I was impressed by the team’s new center, Phil Wait. In case you didn’t hear about it over the summer, Coach Dave Calloway recruited Wait from jolly old England. I was trying to think of something clever to yell out during the game to mimic what they might say over in England when someone does something good. I figured instead of yelling, “Good job!” maybe I could yell something like, “Jolly good show!” but it sounded too weak. Anyway, what do they say in England when you do a good job?

James Hett also played very well as did Will Campbell – two of the returning starters from last year. Those guys are great basketball players and it would have been nice to see Campbell play a little bit more in the last few minutes of the game. With respect to the last few seconds of the game where Monmouth opted to go for three point shots when they probably would have been better offer just going for a two point shot, Coach Calloway had the following to say to The Hawks Nest after the game:

We had one (a time out). We did what we normally do. I just think if you have an opportunity to go, six seconds is enough time to get down (court), kind of in a scramble mode. I think you have a better chance of getting a good look than if you let the defense get set. So we went with it. I don’t know if we got great look but we got a look. I don’t know if we would have gotten a much better look with six seconds left. Maybe, maybe not.

RJ Rutledge – the player who took the last shot of the game – had this to say about the final shot of the game:

It was a double weave and a hand off. That’s the side I like to shoot from. I came off the screen , the shot felt good, It felt like my best shot all day. Everything felt good, my mechanics, I got a look straight on. It just didn’t go my way.

Anyway, I took some pictures with both my camera and my BlackBerry during the game. They’re all listed out below for you to take a look at when you have a moment. As always, click on the picture for a larger view (and click again on the new page for an even larger view). Some of these pictures may look pretty small in size, but I actually have much larger versions saved on my computer – just in case anyone wants to see a much larger version of any picture. Enjoy!