SFA / Niagara

17,587 Views | 146 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by PurpleOut
nacluth
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SFA (2-0) vs. Niagara (0-2)

WHEN: NOV 13 (WED) 6:30 P.M.
WHERE: Johnson Coliseum (Nacogdoches, TX)
WATCH: ESPN+


The SFA Lumberjacks are coming off one of their most impressive home performances in two years after beating MEAC favorite NC Central by 30 points. They look to continue the good feelings at home with a third straight win versus Niagara University of the MAAC.

Niagara has started their season on a three game road trip with the final stop in Nacogdoches. Their first two games were to the two teams SFA plays next: Drexel and Rutgers. Niagara lost an 8 point decision to Drexel and then had a 47 point shellacking by Rutgers. Not much has gone right for the Purple Eagles this season, and the Jacks aren't going to try to make them feel better.

Niagara is a guard heavy team led by senior guard James Towns and junior forward Nicholas Kratholm. Their make up will be very similar to the Eagles that SFA just played on Saturday afternoon: small fast guard play. Again, it will be up to the SFA forwards to control the interior and keep Niagara limited to an outside game.

Keller has his team feeling like winners early in this season. Right now they have confidence in their offense and defense. Down early to NC Central, multiple tough defensive stops led to an explosion of points by Harris and Co. Comeaux, Solomon, Ware and others showed how active hands and positioning stymie other teams' sets. Kensmil again played a great inside presence without drawing fouls or committing turnovers. Expect this to be a defense first team.

However, not enough can be said about the offensive flow the Jacks were feeling on Saturday - especially from half court sets. The ability of any player on the court to score is something SFA hasn't seen in a while. Every player that got a touch for a few minutes put buckets in. It opened up Kevon to destroy the opposition. How can you stop everybody? You can't. The Jacks will try to keep up the inside of the net love Wednesday as they show the Purple Eagles the true Purple Haze.

Axe 'em!
Ryan
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BigJack85
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A good showing against Niagara would set up a date against a solid Drexel squad. One step at a time. Let's dominate against Niagra!
Axe 'Em Jacks - Class of 85'
SFA Jack Fanatic
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nacluth said:


Good intro, Ryan. You're getting pretty good at this stuff!
cboothe09
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Looking at their stats...

They are going to run about 10 guys on the court with minutes spread pretty evenly. Towns, Hammond, and Solomon lead the Eagles in minutes with about 24 a game.

Towns is leading the Eagles in scoring with 10.5 a game on 39.1% shooting. As a team the Eagles are shooting at about a .386 clip and have been abysmal defensively, giving up opponents .574 shooting from the field. Niagra is just as bad behind the arc, shooting .294 while giving up .459 defensively.

Niagra doesn't rebound well, and that is to be expected with a smaller team. On average they have been out-rebounded 36.5-24 this season.

Granted, we are looking at a season of two games, one of which being a blowout loss to Rutgers, I don't see this one being close.
CertifiedAxeman98
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Niagara fired their coach after last year's season when they were 13-19 and hired Patrick Beilein who then resigns for personal reasons a week before the season starts and never coaches a game for them. Now led by assistant Greg Paulus who is a first time head coach but has a good background as a Duke PG, spend time on staff at George Washington, Louisville and Ohio State. This was not his ideal way of getting a HC position.

I expect SFA to do what they did on Saturday assuming it was not a fluke and win easily, maybe not a 30pts win but a double digit win for sure. I expect Keller will use this game to continue to work on his rotation and figure out who plays well with each other.
CertifiedAxeman98
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BigJack85 said:

A good showing against Niagara would set up a date against a solid Drexel squad. One step at a time. Let's dominate against Niagra!
Agreed. 1 game at a time. While this significantly revised SFA team looks to have some real potential this year, I am still nervous. Against better competition the way they played from about the 10 min. mark to the end of the first half can't happen against good competition if you want to win. Keller made some good changes after the half that made the difference and allowed the team to easily pull away.
Rev007
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I hope McDaniel is out of the doghouse and will get some meaningful minutes against Niagara. I would like to know how he handles and distributes the ball at the college level. Likewise, is he a tenacious on-ball defender? Lastly, can he score? That's asking a lot from a freshmen, but wasn't he the Greater Houston Player of the Year?

Does anyone know how much longer Demiere Brown will be sidelined with the injury?

I'm not going to make a prediction on the Duke game, but I hope by the time we play Alabama that our rotation will be set and our defense will be fine-tuned.
SFA Jack Fanatic
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Rev007 said:

I hope McDaniel is out of the doghouse and will get some meaningful minutes against Niagara. I would like to know how he handles and distributes the ball at the college level. Likewise, is he a tenacious on-ball defender? Lastly, can he score? That's asking a lot from a freshmen, but wasn't he the Greater Houston Player of the Year?

Has McDaniel really been in the doghouse for something or is he just low on the totem pole for minutes as a freshman? And, yes, he was the POY in the Greater Houston area.
SFAJack_76
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Brown is out. For the season probably.
Good news is that Oddyst should be back this week. Light workout today. Heavy workout tomorrow. Expect him to be a major contributor this season.
SFA Jack Fanatic
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SFAJack_76 said:

Brown is out. For the season probably.


Bring me up to speed. What is Brown's injury?
No-look
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SFA Jack Fanatic said:

SFAJack_76 said:

Brown is out. For the season probably.


Bring me up to speed. What is Brown's injury?
. Why do we have so many injuries? Is that normal?
sfa17
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Idk specifically about McDaniel but the PG position is no cake walk especially for a freshmen. He will probably have to wait for his turn. He is behind David, John and O. Hopefully he doesn't get discouraged. He has 2 solid PG's ahead of him with college bb experience. What happened in High school is in the past. This is the Big league
No-look
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sfa17 said:

Idk specifically about McDaniel but the PG position is no cake walk especially for a freshmen. He will probably have to wait for his turn. He is behind David, John and O. Hopefully he doesn't get discouraged. He has 2 solid PG's ahead of him with college bb experience. What happened in High school is in the past. This is the Big league
True. He will be fine. Just takes time. He was very impressive at the state tourney. Can shoot it and plays good D. Hopefully he can get more minutes as the season progresses.
jboy93
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Central Arkansas plays Duke tonight...guess we will get to see how the SLC stacks up against decent competition! (sarcasm intended)
Rev007
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Forgive me for conjuring up the past, but I would be ecstatic if we could get back to playing pressure defense and wreaking havoc against our opponents. During the NCCU game, I definitely observed some of this defense being played. Many turnovers were created which led to easy transition baskets. However, John was the only point guard getting up in the face and harassing the ball handler. He exerted so much energy and can't possibly keep it up for the whole game. We need others to play similarly if they have the desire and ability. David played okay defense, but it wasn't a harassing type. Roti doesn't appear to be a high energy defensive player, but he is sneaky and awaiting to steal the errant pass. Oddyst is one of my favorite players from last year; however, I don't recall Oddyst playing high energy defense, but we didn't really play with much intensity last year, partly because of personnel as well as lack of required personnel. This year, we are deep with athleticism, and we need more than just John playing turnover creating defense. That's what I'm hoping to see from McDaniel. Freshmen can certainly be called upon to play intimidating defense.

Looking forward to another head coaching praising us for our defensive intensity!

The Rev
LUMBERJACK2005
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CertifiedAxeman98 said:

Niagara fired their coach after last year's season when they were 13-19 and hired Patrick Beilein who then resigns for personal reasons a week before the season starts and never coaches a game for them. Now led by assistant Greg Paulus who is a first time head coach but has a good background as a Duke PG, spend time on staff at George Washington, Louisville and Ohio State. This was not his ideal way of getting a HC position.

I expect SFA to do what they did on Saturday assuming it was not a fluke and win easily, maybe not a 30pts win but a double digit win for sure. I expect Keller will use this game to continue to work on his rotation and figure out who plays well with each other.
Hope he's better as a coach than he was as a quarterback, for their sake.
LUMBERJACK2005
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SFAJack_76 said:

Brown is out. For the season probably.
Good news is that Oddyst should be back this week. Light workout today. Heavy workout tomorrow. Expect him to be a major contributor this season.
Brown is out for the season???? That's really disappointing.
MasterAxe
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CertifiedAxeman98 said:

Niagara fired their coach after last year's season when they were 13-19 and hired Patrick Beilein who then resigns for personal reasons a week before the season starts and never coaches a game for them. Now led by assistant Greg Paulus who is a first time head coach but has a good background as a Duke PG, spend time on staff at George Washington, Louisville and Ohio State.
I think Paulus has a good future ahead of him, probably not this year. Played for the best, coached with some of the best.

I forgot that after he was done with Duke basketball, he transferred to Syracuse and was their starting QB. Threw for 2,200+ yards.

Was the Gatorade High School National Player of the Year (All-Sports), that Football National Player of the Year in 2004 and was a McDonald's All-American in Basketball.

He certainly has the background to be successful.

That being said, I hope we beat their brains in.
TallTexan
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I was wondering if that was the guy who switched to football.
Pilotgirl
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Ugly comments on one of their message boards. Not about us but about the coaching situation and players having a losing mentality
nacluth
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Game day!!!

I'm stoked, Walkup's stoked. Who else?

Ryan
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RichieVan
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Jacks favored by 8 with a 79.4% chance of winning.
jboy93
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CA didnt fair too well against Duke!
SFAJack_76
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jboy93 said:

CA didnt fair too well against Duke!
105-54. Hope they got paid well.
No-look
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SFAJack_76 said:

jboy93 said:

CA didnt fair too well against Duke!
105-54. Hope they got paid well.
. I sure hope we fair better than that. We need to keep it respectable. That was brutal Keller needs to work on press break before game.
TallTexan
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SFAJack_76 said:

jboy93 said:

CA didnt fair too well against Duke!
105-54. Hope they got paid well.
What's the going payday for games like that?
SFA Jack Fanatic
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No-look said:


Keller needs to work on press break before game.

And Duke hit uncontested layup after layup. Poor offense and equally poor defense by UCA. They looked like a bad high school team. UCA would have lost to 90% of the D-1 teams in the country last night. They were just plain awful.
jboy93
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Are they bad or just overwhelmed by the atmosphere?
cboothe09
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I will be supremely disappointed if we beat this team by just eight. This SHOULD be a win by 20+. Niagra is not a good basketball team right now...
PurpleOut
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Staff
Does anyone want my tickets for tonight? I'm honestly surprised after posting all over social media that nobody wants two free tickets. Nobody took the tickets for the first game either. Didn't have any games last year go unused.
TallTexan
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Is there a Nac Facebook group? Might get more people there who don't already have tickets.

I'm surprised though, figured with your social reach you'd certainly get some takers.
cboothe09
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I was going to take you up on them, but my wife has class tonight and she didn't want me taking both kids on a school night (2-2.5 hr drive for me from Houston).
nacluth
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I was going to get your tickets Matt by Ljacks hooked me up. I'll check with my brother.
RichieVan
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Since this morning, the line moved from Jacks -8 to Jacks -11 1/2.
nacluth
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Comeaux hurt bad (looks like a knee) in first minute.
 
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