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Monday, February 9, 2009
Wright takes Charlotte defeat hard
Chris Wright isn’t happy about his dreary play against Charlotte in a 79-66 loss Sunday, and he’s even more upset about his lack of intensity.
The sophomore forward had a season-low five points and one rebound. He also committed five turnovers.
A four-possession stretch during the 49ers’ game-breaking 19-4 surge typified Wright’s day. He had an offensive foul, a turnover against a full-court press, had a shot blocked and was called for another charge.
“I kind of take some of the blame (for the loss),” he said Monday. “This team lives and dies off hard work, energy and effort, and our team didn’t have it yesterday. I thought about it long and hard last night, and that was out of character for us to play that way.
“Coach (Brian Gregory) tell us he’d rather take mistakes if we’re going 100 miles per hour than not trying. It was devastating. It’s a loss, and I understand everybody loses, but to lose the way we did … I’m going to do everything I can to make sure every game is hard-fought because that’s the type of team we are.
“I guarantee Wednesday (against Xavier) we’ll be a totally different team.”
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UD, Xavier looking to bounce back after defeats
UD Basketball: The week ahead
Games: vs. Xavier (20-3, 8-1 Atlantic 10) at 7 p.m. Wednesday (ESPN Classic); vs. Richmond (11-12, 3-5) at 7 p.m. Saturday (no TV).
Scouting Xavier: The Musketeers were shocked Saturday at Duquesne, which shot 81 percent in the first half while building a 45-30 lead on the way to an 72-68 upset.
“They shot 81 percent in the first half and scored 45 points,” Xavier coach Sean Miller told reporters afterward. “They were shooting at an impossible rate for us even to catch up.”
A-10 player of the week Aaron Jackson had a game-high 21 points for the Dukes.
“I felt we needed to get up early against these guys,” he said. “This is a team that has always been aggressive off the bat.
“We saw the losses they had (to Duke and Butler). They got jumped on, and it was hard for them to come back. They don’t have the veteran guard they had the past couple of years. So, we got ahead of them and took care of business.”
Xavier’s Derrick Brown (12 points) went just 8-for-15 on foul shots. He was fouled on a 3-point attempt with his team down by six with 1:12 to play but made only one of three free throws..
The Musketeers, who had its 11-game win streak snapped, made just 14-of-26 freebies.
“I’ve got to get the job done, it’s as simple as that,” Brown told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I take responsibility for what happened tonight.”
The Musketeers have had trouble with their point-guard play. They’re next-to-last in the A-10 in assist-turnover ratio. They have 303 assists and 361 turnovers. Dayton is sixth in the league with a near equal split of both.
Scouting Richmond: Spiders guard David Gonzalvez scored his 1,000th career point last week. He’s just the 10th player at the school to reach the milestone as a junior. The Spiders, who lost in triple-overtime to Saint Louis on Sunday, confound teams with their Princeton-style offense (keeping their “bigs” on the perimeter) and are third in the league and 26th in the nation in field-goal shooting (.475).
Scouting Dayton: Joe Lunardi knows his stuff. The ESPN “bracketologist” correctly predicted all 34 schools that locked down at-large spots in the NCAA tournament last year, and he said last week Dayton was a virtual shoo-in for The Dance as long as it doesn’t suffer any bad losses.
In dropping a 79-66 decision at Charlotte on Sunday, the Flyers may have managed to do exactly that.
The 49ers were one of three one-win Atlantic 10 teams and were ranked 193rd in the RPI, but they battered the Flyers, 79-66.
Charlotte buried nine of its first 15 shots — its “bigs” were connecting consistently from the wings — but the Flyers overcame some horrid free-throw shooting in the first half (7-for-15) with some precision sniping from 3-point land (4-for-7) to take a 37-33 lead at the break.
They led by six with 15 minutes to go, but they had five turnovers and a shot-clock violation over their next 12 possessions and went down meekly after that.
“They came to play and played better than us,” UD guard Marcus Johnson said. “We don’t look at the NCAA’s or who’s at the bottom. We just played the game we had today. We don’t focus on records. But this was a tough one for us.”
Johnson was coming back from a bout with the flu — he had seven points while playing just 16 minutes — but coach Brian Gregory pointed to the Flyers’ dismal foul-shooting (9-for-20), feeble rebounding (Charlotte had 14 offensive boards) and sloppiness with the ball (17 turnovers) as bigger factors.
“We have to get through some of that stuff (like illlnesses),” he said.
The Flyers’ clash with Xavier has lost plenty of sheen with both teams losing prior to their showdown.
“We’ve got two days to get ready for that game,” Gregory said. “We have to play better than we did today, that’s for sure.”
