2013 Football, Week 4: The Citadel vs. Old Dominion

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Sandlapper Spike

The Citadel at Old Dominion, to be played in Norfolk, Virginia, on the grounds of Foreman Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium, with kickoff at 6:00 pm ET on Saturday, September 21. The game can be heard on radio via the thirteen affiliates of The Citadel Sports Network. Danny Reed (the “Voice of the Bulldogs”) will call the action alongside analyst Josh Baker, with Lee Glaze roaming the sidelines. The contest will also be televised in the Hampton Roads (VA) metropolitan area by Cox Communications, with play-by-play from Doug Ripley and analysis by John Bunting.

WQNT-1450 AM [audio link], originating in Charleston, is the flagship station for The Citadel Sports Network; audio of the game is also available at Bulldog Insider.

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Links of interest:

The Citadel game notes

Old Dominion game notes

SoCon weekly release

SoCon media teleconference: The Citadel head coach Kevin Higgins

The Kevin Higgins Show

Video of ODU head coach Bobby Wilder’s Monday press conference (with a transcript)

ODU improves, now prepares for The Citadel

Kevin Higgins says that ODU is ahead of Appalachian State and Georgia Southern in its FBS transition

Catching up with…Brandon McCladdie

Strength and Conditioning video, featuring the football travel squad

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A few thoughts on the game against Western Carolina:

– Each team had eight possessions in the game (not counting The Citadel’s touchdown off of a fumbled punt as a possession). With so few drives, it becomes even more important to cash in on opportunities.

You can argue about the play call that led to the Bulldogs’ only turnover of the game. I understand the notion that the play was open for a TD before the untimely deflection.

I think the decision to pass was probably a mistake, though, not as much because of the result but for the fact that 14 of The Citadel’s previous 16 plays (all rushes) had resulted in a gain of at least  five yards. There was no reason at that point in the game to believe the Catamounts were going to hold the Bulldogs to less than eight yards over the next three plays (assuming The Citadel would have gone for it on 4th down if necessary).

Then there was the sequence at the end of the first half. The Citadel probably missed a chance at either a TD or an easier field goal attempt by not calling a timeout once inside the Catamounts’ 40-yard line. I can understand the reasoning (why give the other team momentum when you’re up 21-0), but the field position definitely was in the Bulldogs’ favor. The Citadel had all three timeouts available, but elected not to use any of them until only four seconds remained in the half.

– A bunch of the “true” freshmen came to play. Devan Robbins. Tyler Renew. Tevin Floyd. Also mixing it up are guys like Jorian Jordan, Nick Jeffreys, Ryan Bednar, Rudder Brown, and DeAndre Schoultz.

All of them can and will help the Bulldogs all season long. That’s an especially good thing at The Citadel, which has historically struggled with depth. So far, so good for this year’s crop of freshmen.

– Not committing any penalties in a league road game is very impressive.

– Carl Robinson had nine more tackles in the WCU game. He is now tied for the SoCon lead in tackles for the season, with 39. James Riley led the Bulldogs in tackles against the Catamounts, with eleven.

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Old Dominion was founded in 1930. It was originally an extension of the College of William & Mary, set up in Norfolk as a two-year school. The following year, Virginia Tech began offering classes at what came to be known as “The Division” (a nickname/setup that is vaguely reminiscent of “The Arsenal”).

The school would eventually become a four-year institution (first awarding bachelor’s degrees in 1956), was spun into an independent entity in 1962, and attained university status in 1969.

Incidentally, Old Dominion College was chosen as the new name of the independent school in 1962 over (among others) College of the Atlantic and Thomas Jefferson College.

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The school played football from 1930 to 1941, competing as the “Braves” (the Monarchs nickname came about in 1961). As a two-year college, the Norfolk Division compiled a record of 62-19-4 in twelve seasons. One of the nineteen losses came against Miami (FL); the Hurricanes apparently thought they were scheduled to play William & Mary, and wound up competing against the Braves instead (the final was 6-2).

The football program was dropped when a rule was passed that precluded freshmen from playing. However, Foreman Field (built in 1936) remained, and served as the host of the Oyster Bowl for many years. Foreman Field was the site where The Citadel’s Gene Brown rushed for 286 yards in a 1988 game against VMI (on only 13 carries); it also was the setting for a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert in 1974.

The Citadel played four times in the Oyster Bowl at Foreman Field, all matchups with VMI, winning three of those contests.

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By the time the 21st century rolled around, it occurred to a few people that it might be neat for ODU to have a football team again, particularly since it was now a four-year school with almost 20,000 undergraduate students, and located in an area noted for having a lot of talented football players. In other words, it was a natural.

Bobby Wilder, then an assistant at Maine, was hired to revive the program, and in 2009 the Monarchs returned to the gridiron. Wilder has orchestrated a very successful startup.

ODU is 39-12 during his tenure, including an 11-2 record last year. The success of the team on the field, as well as the support off of it (home games at 20,068-seat Foreman Field are regularly sold out), certainly helped the school gain admission to Conference USA, where it will begin play next year as a full-fledged member of that league.

The school’s decision process for moving to FBS took about 6 1/2 weeks, which is borderline insane. Actually, forget borderline — it’s just insane. A good read on that time period can be found here: Link

There are many things to digest from that article. I’ll just mention two of them:

– Halfway through that 6 1/2 week period, ODU called fifteen of its biggest donors to gauge their interest in FBS football. The result of those calls: $3 million raised in less than two weeks.

– During that time, Old Dominion representatives talked to CUSA honchos, of course, and also had discussions with league officials from the MAC, Atlantic 10, ACC, and Big East — but never spoke to anyone from the Sun Belt.

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From The Post and Courier:

ODU’s quick rise is due to three main factors: Quarterback Taylor Heinicke, a 6-1, 205-pound junior from Atlanta; a rabid fan base that has sold out all 30 of its home games to date at 20,068-seat Ballard Stadium, and bought more than 14,000 season tickets for this season; and the fertile recruiting area around its home base in Norfolk, Va.

“It’s amazing to see what they’ve done,” [Kevin] Higgins said. “You look at teams like Georgia State that have struggled making that adjustment. People don’t realize how fervent a football area Virginia Beach is. They put a team there, and now everyone is coming out to see them.

“They picked the right guy in Bobby Wilder, a guy from a solid program in Maine. And he hit right away on this guy Taylor Heinicke.”

Did he ever, coach. Did he ever.

Heinicke won the Walter Payton Award as the top player in FCS last season, passing for 5,076 yards and 44 touchdowns last season.

Heinicke threw 7 TD passes against Campbell, but that wasn’t even his best game. Nor was his 6-TD performance in the playoffs against Coastal Carolina.

No, Heinicke’s most absurd day came against New Hampshire, a come-from-behind 64-61 victory in which he threw for 730 (!) yards and five touchdowns. He also rushed for 61 yards in that game (he’s versatile enough to have rushed for 11 TDs last season).

He’s really, really good, and The Citadel’s D has its work cut out. Last week against Howard, Heinicke threw for 406 yards in a little over two quarters of action. That 406-yard effort didn’t even crack his personal best top 5.

Against East Carolina (a 52-38 loss), Heinicke was 38-51 for 338 yards, completing passes to seven different receivers. He struggled the following week versus Maryland, with only 166 passing yards and three interceptions.

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In terms of style and scheme, Higgins said ODU’s spread attack most resembles that of App State, among teams The Citadel has played in recent years.

“They are going to spread it out, and there will be a lot of bubble screens on the outside, trying to get matchups there,” he said. “And as good a thrower as the quarterback is, he is deceptively fast.”

Heinicke likes to spread the wealth, as the ECU game would attest, and he has a lot of options. Antonio Vaughan only caught one pass against Howard, but it was for 76 yards and a TD. Vaughan had three 100-yard receiving days last season.

Redshirt freshman Zach Pascal caught nine passes against Howard. Another wideout, Larry Pinkard, has 18 receptions in three games. Starting tailback Colby Goodwin can also catch the ball (11 receptions this year).

ODU has a lot of experience along the offensive line, with four returning starters who all weigh at least 300 lbs. Left guard David Born is 6’8″, 328 lbs. Right tackle D.J. Morrell is 6’6″, 330 lbs. Yes, they’re big.

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The Monarchs scored 49 points in the first half against Howard, and 76 for the game. Among the things that might make a Bulldog fan shudder:

– ODU scored on its first 11 possessions. Nine of those scores were touchdowns.

– Nine of those eleven scoring drives were of less than two minutes’ duration.

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Defensively, ODU has struggled. Part of that probably has to do with trying to replace six starters from last year’s team. How will that impact The Citadel as it runs the triple option?

Well, Old Dominion had major problems with Georgia Southern’s triple option attack in the FCS playoffs, allowing 1200 yards of total offense in two games against the Eagles. This year, the Monarchs have a new defensive coordinator, Rich Nagy. Also of note is that backup quarterback David Washington ran the triple option during ODU’s spring practice.

Strong safety Fellonte Misher is Old Dominion’s leading tackler, with eighteen through three games. Linebacker John Darr, a 232-lb. redshirt senior, is the second-leading tackler on the squad and had nine stops against Howard.

Starting middle linebacker Richie Staton is a true freshman, one of ten such freshmen on ODU’s two-deep.

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Putting aside the triple option issue and focusing purely on this year’s ODU defense, it’s not the numbers from the ECU or Maryland games that would really concern a Monarchs fan. Let’s face it, plenty of teams wouldn’t be able to cover Maryland wide receiver Stefan Diggs.

The Howard game, though…hmm. Lost in the shuffle of ODU’s 76-19 obliteration of the Bison:

– Howard ran 85 plays on offense, including a staggering 51 in the first half, for 331 total yards. That’s in one half.

– The Bison had four drives of 60+ yards in the first half, and another that went for 49.

What did Howard in? Turnovers, five of them (Old Dominion had none). The Bison also were stopped on fourth-and-goal from the eight in the first half after a 74-yard drive. Thanks to two first-half turnovers and that stoppage on downs, ODU only allowed 10 points in the half. Five different Monarchs accounted for those five turnovers, by the way.

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Old Dominion’s special teams include a fine placekicker, Jarod Brown, who has not missed a FG or PAT so far this season. Jake Walsh is ODU’s punter; in keeping with recent college football trends, he’s a native of Australia.

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To recap, ODU scored on its first 11 possessions, while last week The Citadel only had 8 possessions the entire game. It is in the Bulldogs’ interest to keep that possession total down for both teams. Holding on to the football, both in terms of offensive time of possession and turnover avoidance, is critical against the Monarchs.

There were 211 snaps in the Howard-Old Dominion game, according to Bobby Wilder. The Citadel needs to make sure that number is substantially lower.

Field position is something else to watch. ODU had a 76-yard kickoff return against the Bison, just one reason its average starting field position against Howard was the Monarchs’ 40-yard line. The Citadel’s special teams units must be at their best in Norfolk, or they will be punished.

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Odds and ends:

– Saturday night’s game at Foreman Field has been designated a “blackout” for the home fans (the Howard game was a “whiteout”). It’s important to be color-coordinated for sporting events these days.

I’ve never quite bought into having a blackout for a night game, to be honest. I remember South Carolina having a blackout against Florida when Rex Grossman was the Gators’ quarterback. Asked about it after the game, Grossman said that it felt like no one was in the stands.

– The Citadel is getting a $250,000 guarantee for this game. Originally, the Bulldogs were supposed to play East Carolina this season, but ODU and ECU wanted to play each other, and a deal was worked out.

– ODU is a 17.5-to-18 point favorite over The Citadel, per various Las Vegas sources.

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It could be argued that this is the least important game on The Citadel’s entire 2013 schedule (aside from that check for $250,000). That doesn’t mean it is meaningless.

A win would obviously go a long way to erasing the memory of a difficult start to the season, though it wouldn’t affect the SoCon race. It would be a nice chip if the Bulldogs made a late-season playoff push, to be sure.

What I want from this game (besides no injuries) is for the team to regain more of its confidence. The offense needs to continue to get back to where it was at the close of last season while incorporating some of the talented newcomers who have arrived on the scene.

The defense will get a stern test from ODU. It needs to be able to take some positives from the game, regardless of the final score. Playing ODU will at the very least be a good way to prepare for Appalachian State.

I’m not expecting a victory, though I’m not counting out the Bulldogs either.

I never do that.

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Will the conference realignment train make a stop at the SoCon station?

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Sandlapper Spike

It was inevitable that the never-ending saga of conference realignment would eventually impact the Southern Conference. To recap, some recent (and related) developments in the world of college athletics have included the following:

— As part of a CAA implosion, Virginia Commonwealth is joining the football-free Atlantic 10 (which will have 14 teams for basketball after adding VCU and Butler to replace Temple and Charlotte). Old Dominion, which has had a football program for about three hours, is making a big move to Conference USA. Georgia State, with even less football history than ODU, is joining the Sun Belt.

George Mason is staying in the CAA for the moment, although that may be because there isn’t room in the A-10 for GMU…not yet, anyway.

— Georgia State isn’t alone as a new member of the Sun Belt, as that league is also adding Texas State, but Florida International and North Texas are moving out (to C-USA). Denver is another Sun Belt school on the move, as it is heading to the WAC in a month, assuming the WAC will still exist in a month.

— Denver doesn’t have football. South Alabama once didn’t have a football program either, but now it does, and it will stay in the Sun Belt for all sports. The Jaguars begin league play in football this season.

— Arkansas-Little Rock would be the only non-football school in the Sun Belt, as things stand now. That is expected to change this week with the addition of UT-Arlington, which will give the Sun Belt 12 overall members, with 10 of them playing football.

— Another football newbie, UT-San Antonio, has already managed to join multiple FBS conferences (jilting the WAC for C-USA). UTSA thus has already joined more leagues (two) than it has played football seasons (one), a historic accomplishment.

— Appalachian State wants to move up to FBS land. To do so, Appy has to be invited to join an FBS conference, which has been problematic. The folks in Boone would love to hook up with C-USA, but the feeling may not be mutual. Not only did C-USA invite ODU instead of Appy, it is also bringing in Charlotte (UNCC to you old-timers out there). Let’s review some basic gridiron facts about Appalachian State, Old Dominion, and Charlotte:

– 0 (number of football victories by Charlotte in its history)
– 68 (number of football victories by ODU in its history)
– 67 (number of football victories by Appalachian State since the beginning of the 2006 season)

Ouch. That sound you hear is Appalachian State fans collectively grinding their teeth. (Incidentally, the Mountaineers have 555 wins over the program’s entire history.)

The lesson, as always: markets matter.

— Middle Tennessee State did everything it could to wangle an invitation to C-USA, but like Appalachian State, MTSU didn’t get the call. Again, markets matter. Murfreesboro and Boone lost out to Norfolk and Charlotte.

— Georgia Southern is going to try to raise a bunch of money so that it can move to the land of milk and honey, too. It’s supposed to be an eight-year fundraising campaign, which in today’s climate may be too long a period of time. Eight weeks would be better.

Georgia Southern’s late-to-the-party approach is probably due to the fact it has taken a while for the powers-that-be in Statesboro to warm up to the idea of being an FBS school, much to the annoyance of a vocal section of its fan base. It has been almost three years since GSU released a self-study (entitled “Football Classification Analysis”) that revealed just how difficult a move up to FBS could be for Georgia Southern. I wrote an extensive (warning: VERY extensive) post about the report when it first came out: Link

— Also on the “we want FBS” list: Liberty, a school that has had big-time gridiron aspirations for decades (as a Sports Illustrated story from 1989 illustrates). Liberty is ready to go; just give it 48 hours.

— Delaware is one of several schools being mentioned in what would become an expanded (and expansive) MAC. This article states that moving to the FBS “has been discussed favorably among members of the UD board of trustees and other high-ranking officials.” Whether that discussion has been about football only (and placing its other sports in another league) is open to question.

Meanwhile, no current all-sports MAC schools are being linked to another league, which comes as a surprise to at least one writer.

— James Madison, another CAA football-playing school trying to figure out its future, has also been linked to the MAC — but wait, there’s more. JMU reportedly has also drawn interest from the WAC. That would be the WAC which is a year away from being a two-school (New Mexico State and Idaho) football league, as things stand now.

Presumably the WAC is trying to put together western and eastern divisions to keep the conference alive, or maybe try to swing a Sun Belt-WAC merger of some sort. Good luck with that.

The MAC is adding Massachusetts for football but losing Temple, so it will be at 13 teams and may want to add another one — or three. Appalachian State is a possibility for this league too. Oddly, Appy may not be a factor in the Sun Belt sweepstakes, at least not yet, which will disappoint this columnist.

Honestly, I’m not sure why the MAC would feel the need to expand, but then I thought the SEC was fine at 12 schools. In today’s climate, if your conference has “only” 12 members, then it clearly needs to add even more schools and get to at least 14 if not 16 members, because otherwise the world will end (per the Mayans and/or Mike Slive).

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The SoCon is holding its spring meetings at the end of May/beginning of June. According to Chattanooga AD Rick Hart, conference expansion will be the main (if not exclusive) topic of discussion. League commissioner John Iamarino stated that he had a short list of schools to target if that became necessary. Will it become necessary?

That depends on what Appalachian State and Georgia Southern do, of course, and it will also depend on what other conferences do. The league to watch is probably the CAA, but the confusing trail of realignment for SoCon schools will also pass through the MAC, Sun Belt, Big South, Atlantic Sun, and possibly the OVC. (No, I’m not buying the WAC — at least, not yet.)

The CAA’s problem is basically twofold (see this excellent overview). It has to decide whether it should continue being a player in the world of FCS, and it has to decide what its geographic focus will be. How it makes those decisions will go a long way in determining how much the SoCon could be affected.

Brian Mull of the Wilmingon (NC) Star-News wrote a solid piece from UNC-Wilmington’s perspective. UNCW is a non-football school at the southern end of the CAA. UNCW needs travel partners, and schools like the College of Charleston and Davidson would be ideal on that front. Mull also discusses other schools in the league as well, like UNC-Greensboro and (to prop up the football side of the CAA) Furman, Elon, and Appalachian State. UNC-Asheville of the Big South gets a mention.

He isn’t the first person to connect Davidson and the CofC to the CAA. As soon as ODU announced it was jumping ship, my twitter feed started humming with tweets from the likes of Jeff Goodman and Andy Katz, among others, all with the same “CAA must go after Davidson/CofC” message.

Just how interested would those two schools really be, though? I have my doubts.

The argument that the two would benefit from a move to a multi-bid hoops league falls flat, in my opinion, because the departures of VCU and ODU lessen the “value” of CAA hoops to the point where the conference is no longer a solid bet to get multiple bids on a semi-regular basis. Heck, even this past season CAA regular-season champ Drexel didn’t get an at-large bid to the NCAAs.

Combine the loss of VCU and ODU with the realization that league hoops stalwart George Mason and FBS contenders JMU and Delaware are all far from certain to stay in the CAA, and the move would be mostly lateral from an on-court perspective.

Another reason for Davidson and the CofC to move on could be the CAA’s new TV contract with NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus), which on the surface appears to easily surpass the SoCon’s PBS arrangement. However, with the recent defections of ODU and VCU (not to mention Georgia State), that NBCSN/CAA contract will likely be renegotiated. It is hard to determine just how much exposure schools like Davidson and the College of Charleston would get with that deal.

Is it worth the increased travel costs, loss of traditional rivalries, and/or the general effect on the schools’ total sports portfolio? As far as other sports are concerned, for example, I’m thinking about CofC baseball, which would definitely be hurt by a move to the CAA.

That isn’t to say there wouldn’t be positives for a school like the College of Charleston. For one thing, this isn’t your mother’s CofC. It now has about 10,000 undergraduate students, or roughly 1,000 students for every available parking space downtown. It’s a midsize state school looking to attract good students, including those valuable out-of-state students with their out-of-state tuition payments. Moving to a league with a more northern geographic scope might be seen as beneficial, as part of an overall strategy of recruiting students from the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states.

I think Davidson would be a much tougher sell. It’s a small school that isn’t going to get bigger. It’s been in the Southern Conference since 1936, with the exception of a brief three-year fling with the Big South more than two decades ago. That Davidson/Big South dalliance could be described as one of those affairs that scares people from ever straying again. I’m not sure Davidson is ready to trade in bus trips to Furman for airplane flights to Northeastern.

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When trying to analyze future league membership, the potential loss by the SoCon of Appalachian State and/or Georgia Southern should be viewed differently than if Davidson/CofC/UNCG were to leave. If Appy and GSU depart the conference, a football replacement (or two) would be needed, which would not be the case if one or more of the non-football schools left the league.

The last two schools to be admitted to the SoCon were each smaller schools (Elon and Samford, both private universities), and I suspect that trend will continue.

I don’t see Coastal Carolina having much, if any, chance of joining the Southern Conference. CCU in the SoCon is a non-starter for Furman, The Citadel, and Wofford (and probably Davidson and Samford as well). Adding Coastal Carolina to the conference is of no benefit to those schools.

I thought Coastal Carolina might have a decent shot at getting a CAA invite, but there seems to be some resistance to CCU from that league as well. The leading football-school candidate for the CAA appears to be Stony Brook.

At this point, Coastal Carolina might have a better chance of moving out of the Big South and into another league by going the FBS route. That would be a costly move, but maybe CCU could ask its new football coach for a loan. After all, he has the money.

Here are some football-playing schools that might be good SoCon fits:

– VMI: yes, a back to the future move. Would VMI accept? Probably. Leaving the SoCon was not the best decision ever made by its administration. It would help if VMI had a travel partner of sorts, though…

– William&Mary: another back to the future candidate, and a Virginia school to pair with VMI. If the CAA completely collapses, William&Mary will become a school needing a new (and appropriate) home. Truth be told, at least part of its fan base would prefer the Patriot League, and I can understand that. If the Patriot League doesn’t expand, though, and the CAA can’t get its act together, I could see the Tribe back in the SoCon.

– Richmond: not happening. Richmond basketball is in the A-10 and UR isn’t giving that up anytime soon. Richmond as a football-only member of the SoCon? Possible, I suppose, but I doubt it (and wouldn’t support it, either).

– Mercer: hired former Furman coach Bobby Lamb to start a football program; however, it’s going to be non-scholarship. If it were scholarship, Mercer would be a very strong candidate.

– Presbyterian: PC would be a decent candidate if there weren’t already three football-playing schools in the league from South Carolina. Thus, it’s not likely to be invited, although Presbyterian would certainly be more palatable to Furman/The Citadel/Wofford than would Coastal Carolina.

– Jacksonville: I wrote about JU when I previewed The Citadel’s season opener last year. JU has potential, but it’s another non-scholarship football program.

– Gardner-Webb: It would rank behind most of the other schools I mentioned as far as likely SoCon contenders are concerned.

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Incidentally, I am on board with smaller schools being the focus of the Southern Conference when/if it looks for new membership. I’m biased, so I want what is best for The Citadel. What is best for The Citadel, in my opinion, is to compete in a Division I all-sports conference with “like” schools.

Of course, there really aren’t any schools like The Citadel (save maybe VMI), but ideally the other schools would be similar in terms of enrollment size, academic standards, budgets for varsity athletics, etc. If you have a couple of days and want to read more about my ideas on “peer institutions” and what The Citadel should be doing going forward, I wrote a manifesto a month or so ago that Leo Tolstoy would have considered a tad lengthy.

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What do I think will happen? I think Davidson and the College of Charleston will stay in the SoCon. I suspect Appalachian State will move to FBS within twelve months. Georgia Southern may stay at the FCS level for a while longer, unless the two schools are a “package deal” for an FBS league (likely the Sun Belt). VMI will wind up back in the SoCon.

I could be wrong about all of that, of course. There are no guarantees.

It’s all speculative at this point, though. Anybody can say anything, especially on the internet. On Saturday night a couple of tweets showed up on my timeline indicating that Clemson was going to move to the Big XII — “from all indications the board of trustees will approve”. I had never heard of the original tweeter, but the information (or misinformation) spread like wildfire. More than 36 hours after the initial tweets, no other source had confirmed the story. This is fairly typical.

At least that rumor was about Clemson. I’m starting to get tired of the Florida State-Big XII angle. Hey, if anyone wants to start a fun rumor, try this one:

FSU and Clemson are staying in the ACC, because they know that Notre Dame is joining the ACC as part of a joint entry with a mystery school. While eating lunch at a Bojangle’s in suburban Greensboro, an ACC official accidentally dropped an artist’s rendering of the new 16-team league. A quick-thinking cashier took a picture of it. I’ve acquired a photo of this mock-up. Consider this a TSA exclusive. It’s a “done deal”.

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Happy conference realignment, everybody!

Filed under: Basketball, Football, The Citadel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Bulldog hoops: time to go on a winning streak

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Sandlapper Spike

I haven’t written about The Citadel’s hoops team in a while (then again, I haven’t had a blog post about anything in some time; I need to start cranking stuff out again). Honestly, though, there hasn’t been a good reason to write about Bulldog basketball, at least a good positive reason.

At least The Citadel won on Monday night, beating Samford 61-50 for the Bulldogs’ first road victory of the season.  A sign of things to come?  To be honest, I doubt it.

The Citadel is 6-13 overall, 2-5 in the Southern Conference, with home games against Appalachian State on Thursday and Western Carolina on Saturday.  Prior to the Samford win, the Bulldogs had lost five straight SoCon contests.

What is the difference between this year’s edition of the basketball Bulldogs and, say, last year’s squad?  I won’t compare them to the 2008-09 team that won 20 games, which included Demetrius Nelson and John Brown.  However, I think it is fair to compare the 2009-10 and 2010-11 outfits.

Last season’s team featured a rotation mainstay who is no longer in school, Harrison Dupont.  Dupont had a nice debut campaign (alas, there would be no followup season, at least in Charleston), averaging 14 points per 40 minutes of play and finishing with an eFG of 48.2%, highest of all the regulars and highest on the team overall, with one exception.

That one exception was Mike Groselle, who saw limited action due to injury/illness, but showed signs of being a very effective player when he saw action.  It really shouldn’t be a surprise that Groselle has had a fine sophomore season.  So far this year Groselle is averaging 19 points per 40 minutes of play with an eFG of 58.9%, leading the team (again).  That is good for 11th among Southern Conference players.

He is also averaging almost six rebounds per contest (Dupont was good for four boards per game).  Groselle’s FG% of 58.9 is good for sixth in the SoCon.

Groselle’s development has basically replaced the lost production of Dupont, if not surpassed it.  They aren’t really similar players, so it’s not a true like vs. like comparison (particularly from a defensive perspective), but I think it does make it easier to look at the rest of the team numbers and see where the differences lie.

One difference is the reduced contributions from Cosmo Morabbi, who played in all 33 games last season and averaged over 18 minutes per game.  Morabbi has been injured and has missed several games, but even when he was playing, his minutes had been cut in half.

Morabbi has struggled with his jumper this season.  Actually, struggle doesn’t really describe it; he hasn’t made a three-pointer yet this year (0-8) after shooting 37.9% (25-66) from beyond the arc in 2009-10.  In his previous two seasons for the Bulldogs, Morabbi was a dependable member of the rotation who wasn’t afraid to take big shots; not having his typical production has been a problem.

Then there is post play.  Last season Joe Wolfinger was the transfer hopeful who never quite fit into The Citadel’s offense.   However, Wolfinger’s offensive production compares favorably to that of “Big Mike Squared”, the duo of Williams and Dejworek.

Morakinyo Williams has missed time with injury (he has played fewer minutes than Morabbi), and Mike Dejworek hasn’t been a major factor, either.  The two have combined to score 47 points in 219 minutes of play, which per game is about half of the scoring output by Wolfinger last season.  Neither has been a force on the boards.

A few other odds and ends:

— Last season, 36.5% of The Citadel’s total points came via the three-point shot.  So far this year, that number is 23.2%.

— The Citadel’s eFG of 44.5% is in the bottom 50 nationally; last season, the Bulldogs had an eFG of 48.4% (middle of the pack nationally).

— The Bulldogs are not forcing turnovers this season.  Opponents have a turnover rate of 16%.  That puts The Citadel in the bottom 25 nationally. Last season’s opponent turnover rate was 19%. That’s a significant difference.

—  Defensively, The Citadel ranks in the bottom 50 nationally in defensive FG% and defensive 2FG%.  The Bulldogs have a defensive 3FG of 34.4%, which isn’t that bad, but not nearly as good as last season’s 32.4%, which was 80th-best in the country.

— In SoCon play, the Bulldogs currently rank last or next-to-last in defensive 2FG%, defensive turnover rate, and points allowed per possession.  The sample size is a little small, admittedly.

— As noted by Jeff Hartsell, Zach Urbanus and Cameron Wells have been logging some serious minutes lately, thanks to a slender bench (Morabbi being unavailable really hurts there).

After a loss to Coastal Carolina earlier in the season, Chuck Driesell mentioned on his postgame radio show that he was worried about fatigue affecting the Bulldogs’ play.

In the SoCon teleconference this week, however, Driesell sang a slightly different tune.  He noted that the loss of Morabbi had impacted his ability to substitute players who had experience, and he also mentioned that a way to address concerns about too much game action for individual players would be to monitor (and presumably lessen) their work during practice.

However, Driesell stated during the teleconference that he saw “no signs of fatigue” and that Wells and Urbanus are “young guys [who] should be able to handle” increased minutes.

We’ll see.

— Six weeks ago, I wrote that the Bulldogs seem to lack an offensive identity.  Here is, to my mind at least, one example of that:

Last season, Zach Urbanus and Austin Dahn each averaged about one three-point attempt every five and a half minutes of playing time (5.7 for Urbanus, 5.6 for Dahn). This season, with an increased number of possessions per game (about five more), Dahn is averaging a three-point attempt every 5.1 minutes he is on the court.  And Urbanus?

He’s only averaging one three-point try every 7.5 minutes of play.

With the increase in tempo, Urbanus is averaging more total shots per contest this season than last year on a per-minute basis, as is Dahn.  Dahn, however, is taking more three-pointers than Urbanus (25 more, even while playing almost 100 minutes fewer than Zach).  Neither is shooting as well from beyond the arc as they did last season (Urbanus is at 36.7% after shooting 41.1% from three last year; Dahn is down from 34.7% to 28.6%).

That may be reflective of how other teams are playing them defensively, or it may be due to a lack of offensive cohesion, or perhaps it’s a combination of both. Regardless, it seems to me that the leading three-point shooter in The Citadel’s history needs to be leading the team in three-point attempts.

—

This has been a tough year so far for Chuck Driesell.  He’s learned that being the coach of The Citadel’s basketball team is not easy.  He knew that going in, obviously, but there is still a lot of on-the-job training at the military college.  He has to know that a lot of fans are disappointed in the way the season has gone.  There were high expectations for this team, and to date they haven’t been met.

It probably doesn’t help matters that his predecessor, Ed Conroy, is having a nice start to his tenure at Tulane, and recently was featured in a local article describing his salesmanship of the program.  Conroy has benefited from a relatively soft early schedule, but it’s also true that he’s already won two conference games in C-USA, only one fewer than the Green Wave won all of last season.

Tangent: in that article, the writer describes how Conroy somehow talked 80 Marquette students (in New Orleans as part of a volunteer group) into attending a weeknight game between Tulane and UTEP.  How many cadets will attend the Saturday game at McAlister Field House against Western Carolina?

—

There is still time, of course.  Maybe the win over Samford will be the start of something special.  The two upcoming home games are both winnable.

If Wells and Urbanus are going to play 38-40 minutes every night, it might be best for The Citadel to revert to its slow, slower, slowest style of play from the last two seasons.  Lowering the amount of possessions might serve to reduce the chances of either getting in foul trouble, and also could keep them from running out of gas, either in individual games or over the course of the season.

It also would have the potential of settling down the offense.  I don’t think it would hurt Groselle and Urbanus, in particular, if the tempo were decreased.  Wells (who had a “Cameron Wells game” against Samford, taking over the last 10 minutes of that contest) is capable of thriving in any offensive system.

Slowing the game down also increases the value of offensive rebounds and other possession-changing plays, which is to the advantage of players like Bryan Streeter and Daniel Eykyn.

—

I’m ready to see a long Bulldog winning streak.  How about eleven straight?  It’s happened before…

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