"Oh no, GW lost to UMBC and UCLA! We stink! Hobbs stinks! Rice stinks!"Not really. But some in GW fandom have posted messages like "Karl is overrated" and "Can Hobbs save the season?" It's a good thing that us GW fans have become accustomed to success in these past few years, but as many GW fans knew coming into year, this is a young team. Maureece Rice (and Rob Diggs to a lesser extent) are the proven components while Travis King and Damian Hollis looked good. And King is out for the season.
GW was picked 7th in the A-10 by the coaches, and while many GW fans (me included) thought that was a bit low, with King out it's a real possibility. My pal The Ukraine Train (his GWhoops poster name, not Alexander Kireev) compared the UCLA game to the 2004 game against Wake, which was then ranked #2 - GW got beat, but it could be argued that it was a good experience for TJ, Pops, Mike, Omar, Carl, et al. The stats of the two games are similar too, although Hobbs didn't bring in as many walkons against Wake.
So what does that tell us? Be patient. This team will have some frustrating lapses (see UMBC) and doesn't have much of an offense now, but that was exactly what I said years ago too. And look what happened to that team.
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Such haters would be wise to keep in mind the following
a.) It's November...As in 4 months from March. PLENTY of basketball left.
b.) Last year, if memory serves me, we were picked to finish 5th overall. We did a little better than that-I have the A-10 Championship shirt to prove it.
c.) If the GW program is going to be taken more seriously you have play bigger and badder games. Granted, winning those games is a better than losing them-but it helps either way.
d.) The prospect of any A-10 team getting an at large bid is ALWAYS almost zero. Short of exceptional teams like Xavier last year, and our GW team the year before, we are traditionally a 1 team conference.
e.) We could have been blown out by Georgetown. Now THAT would have been really embarassing.
Hail to the Buff & Blue