Bucknell

Young team returns in 2018-2019 with tons of promise. Can they get back to the NCAA Tournament?
StablerBum
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Re: Bucknell

Post by StablerBum » Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:58 pm

Does anyone else feel like if Lehigh swapped coaches with Bucknell, Lehigh would be in first place?

Lehigh has the most talented team in the league but is no threat to win the regular season. I give Reed credit for assembling and recruiting the most talented roster in the league, but he's won a single regular season PL championship in 11 (soon to be 12) years. And it's now been 7 years since a future 20 PPG NBA scorer dragged him to the NCAA tournament.

Don't see losing Marquis Wilson as any real impact on the season. He's a nice player but he wouldn't fill the void in toughness, leadership, and defense this team is missing.
Last edited by StablerBum on Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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RichH
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Re: Bucknell

Post by RichH » Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:03 pm

True enough. My point is w/o the 3 , we lose. We have no other options since we dont play D with any consistency.
Mhawk37
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Mhawk37 » Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:24 pm

Stablerbum- I feel like you hacked my brain. I couldn’t agree more, we do less with more every year. It’s embarassing how in every tough game we get thoroughly outcoached. We never beat anyone we shouldn’t and we lose a lot of games that we should have won. I think at some point we need to stop pointing fingers at the players and start looking at the guys actually getting paid. Doc loves to preach “consistency”. It’s been 8 years, and there’s been only two consistent things- Underachievement and Doc being the head coach. Bucknell has built a program, and Doc has built Lafayette 2.0.
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Sundayamqb » Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:52 pm

Mhawk37 wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:24 pm Stablerbum- I feel like you hacked my brain. I couldn’t agree more, we do less with more every year. It’s embarassing how in every tough game we get thoroughly outcoached. We never beat anyone we shouldn’t and we lose a lot of games that we should have won. I think at some point we need to stop pointing fingers at the players and start looking at the guys actually getting paid. Doc loves to preach “consistency”. It’s been 8 years, and there’s been only two consistent things- Underachievement and Doc being the head coach. Bucknell has built a program, and Doc has built Lafayette 2.0.
I tend to agree with you guys. But past few years it's been tough playing with teams hampered by injury.

No excuse this year. Inconsistency with these guys is amazing. There are like six guys on this team who could score 30 ppg if they play well. Balanced talent, but ... But next year ...
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RichH
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Re: Bucknell

Post by RichH » Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:04 pm

Doc gives the same speech after multiple games about defense. Yet nothing changes. Doc has a system which apparently has been set in concrete. Change seems unlilely. So bottom line if we hit 40% or more odds are we will win.. No other options for us.
Mhawk37
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Mhawk37 » Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:27 pm

His speeches at this point all just seem like practiced media sound bites. I found the Colgate game especially brutal to watch with him miked up. The sound bites of him telling KL to "Let his senior leadership shine through" and the whole timeout speech of "Resiliency vs Consistency" were 100% practiced in front of a mirror. I'm surprised any of the players buy into him at all. I know if I was playing, my eyes would've rolled out of my head. Hey Coach- thanks for the vocabulary lesson, but how about we draw up a play?

He seems very robotic and doesn't hesitate to place blame on pretty much everyone but himself. Identifying the problem is only half of the job of a coach, but it is his job to actually getting the players to do what needs to be done. A coach that preaches the same topics every year (Defense, ball movement, turnovers, rebounding) and sees little to no improvement, needs to start evaluating how he's coaching, teaching and communicating. I often wonder if he'd have the reputation as such a tactician if he didn't have the "Dr" in front of his name. I think the media guys just love the doctorate angle and assume he's some sort of basketball mastermind...
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RichH
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Re: Bucknell

Post by RichH » Mon Feb 11, 2019 11:36 pm

Give Doc his due. He has built a very good program. He is a great recruiter. He still is not a good game coach. Lastly, he seems trapped in his system unable to do much outside of it.
Mhawk37
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Mhawk37 » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:01 am

I view that as a problem. Not as a reason to give him his due. We have a clear talent advantage in the recruiting rankings (a full half star above the next closest team in the Patriot League according to verbal commits). Yet, we continue to underachieve. Lehigh is a great school, on a beautiful campus, that's also close to two great american cities... you SHOULD be able to recruit here. I don't think it's too much to ask for a coach that can win with more talent than the rest of the league.

I worry about the future of this program. We have been unable to win anything of meaning since CJ. It is essential that we go to the NCAA tournament within the next 2 years. High school kids want to play in an NCAA tournament, if that begins to look like it isn't feasible at Lehigh, why not go to Bucknell, Holy Cross or American? If Doc can't win a PL with more talent, what's going to happen when the talent equalizes or even falls below the league standard. It's a terrifying thought. In 2 years it will have been a FULL DECADE since we made the tournament. We need to win while we have the talent advantage.

The next 2 years are crucial, win or we need to start thinking about the direction of the program. Do we want to be a rival of Bucknell (a yearly contender with 6 NCAA tournaments in the last 13 years) or do we want to live off the Duke win (where we had the best player on the court and perhaps in the tournament on our team) and turn into the next Lafayette (3 NCAA tournament in the last 20 years BUT they have FOH and he's won a lot of league games)?
Travis23
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Travis23 » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:15 am

Just got back about a half hour ago from the game. Went down with my dad and uncle. Excuse you me for skipping all over the place with this post. I am very frustrated and concerned by what I saw tonight. We played with bucknell for about 20-25 mins. The second half was terrible. Nothing went right. Shooters couldn’t get open. When they did shots didn’t fall. Defense was horrible. Again no gameplan to attempt to try and take kimbal out of the game. We even saw a point one or two guys where it seemed are guys lost cool and one time caused a flag foul. James is basically the only one who got off the bus tonight. Sad to say. I get some of the points on Brett in here. It’s funny we talked about the same thing among other stuff on the way home. I do believe bucknell has a better program. To turn over from Paulsen who was great there. Into Davis who takes over and has really good core. I actually believed at first Davis was just a decent coach getting a good team. I even said last year. Let’s see how Davis does when he loses the big guns. Well here he and his team sit atop the league again. After losing Brown. Nana and Thomas. Wow. Just wow. Kimbal is great. He might be best guard in league imo. Yeah Nate is good. But they lost three outstanding players and haven’t missed a beat. Are we more talented ? I don’t know. On paper we are. But we don’t play like we are. This was supposed to be our year. And very well still could be but with no shot at the one seed now. I’m very disappointed. The holy cross loss years ago haunts me. Timmy and that team not getting a ring hurts. Bucknell was loaded last year and now seemed like with all the talent we have and being pre season number one. We would be playing better then we are
Travis23
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Re: Bucknell

Post by Travis23 » Tue Feb 12, 2019 12:19 am

I do hear Brett preaching the same stuff over and over in interviews and often don’t see really anything changing. I’m not quite sure what bucknell has on us or what the deal is. I don’t see bucknell losing more then one more game if that. So hopefully in a few weeks I will be going back down to Lewisburg for another shot. Still a lot of ball to be played. But if this team drives back with their head down. And let’s ir bother them all week. We will go to Boston Saturday’s and get beat up there. That game has me worried. Big big must win game. We lose that one. We are possibly looking at danger of falling out of the two seed.
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