Fordham has a dream season,goes 12-6 in A10,reaches the A10 semifinals and is ranked  by kenpom as 136. Fellas its time to think about getting out of A10. Ohio State goes 16-18 and is ranked no.50.Their
out of conference schedule was a little stronger than Fordhams but not by much.

-For his DU career, MHughes fouled out of or was ejected from 18% of the 79 games he played. 
-In 2019-20, when he very impressively led the league in blocked shots & the team in steals, Hughes had 4 fouls 6 times, fouled out of 24% of the games in which he played, was ejected from another, & was removed from the starting lineup for 2 games for disciplinary reasons. (He was benched in a similar way the next year as well.)
-I already covered his never having won so much as a player of the week award.
-He obviously didn't transfer to a better program, didn't get drafted, hasn't played in the G-league, & has not played in any of the top-level international leagues. (He has been quite successful in the lower tier leagues of both Austria & Hungary.)
-During his tenure the team didn't get a chance to do something special in its best year & accomplished nothing of note in his other 2 seasons.
TO RECAP:
-No personal awards
-No team success to speak of
-HUGE problems staying on the floor
-Disciplinary problems
-No post-Duquesne success worthy of reevaluating his overall value as a player 

After being confronted with these this evidence, how could he possibly be considered an upper echelon or elite A-10 player by anyone other than desperate-for-good-news Dukes fans? Have the college & professional scouts foreign & domestic,  simply missed the boat on this stud?

You guys have finally convinced me that it is not that the Duquesne coaches, players, & administrators haven't been good enough, it is that there is a massive, 6 year-long conspiracy to thwart this program's rise that involves league officials, the media, referees, scouts, & the basketball world at-large. Thank you for opening my eyes.

Last edited by phil95 (3/12/2023 12:44 pm)

stew wrote:

Tomorrow the Big Ten schools will send 7 or 8 teams to the tournament and all the pressure is on for UD
or VCU to send one team from A10  into tournament..Duquesne lacks big money,lacks the athletic facilities
and fanbase to compete..Thats what it looks like to me.Fordham had a great season and was ranked in the 130s for most of season..

Yes, VCU just won the A-10 over a half-court Dayton team. Like Pitt all those years with Dixon, Half-court works until you are behind late in the game. Dayton got behind with 3 plus minutes left, then showed exactly why their style sucks when they suddenly have to be a fast pace team. They absolutely came apart. Missed the last 11 shots? They sucked at trapping, they could not take the time to do set plays, thus their shot selection was forced, then as the closing minute, just worse. I'm glad VCU won. They are the prototype of what a successful mid-major can do with our recruiting level, and the coaching style to run a fast pace style team. Dayton out-recruited VCU, had better interior players, face-up man to man, and still lost. 

Napa, good teams don’t let you run. They get back in transition quickly and most importantly, they score. Transition opportunities happen off of turnovers and missed baskets. We ran every chance we got after forcing turnovers, but sadly we could not consistently get enough stops to make the most of these opportunities off of missed baskets. Tempo was clearly a point of emphasis this year as we ran every chance we got. So some games it may have seemed like we slowed the tempo, but we didn’t. Good teams just made baskets and took care of the ball, limiting our transition opportunities.

Uhoh here comes another conspiracy theory. Haha, I mean c’mon Phil. If I didn’t know any better I would think you are just trying to say the opposite of me after every post. Anyone watching (without an agenda) could see us actively pushing the tempo. Kenpom has us at 115th the country at avg possession length at 17.1. Our avg possession length in conference drops to 16.6, good for the SECOND FASTEST pace in the conference behind only Umass. Yes, faster than SLU and even VCU.

I’m excited to see how these analytics get twisted.

Last edited by CityDuke (3/12/2023 6:00 pm)