Liberty Preview

Tuesday, November 25 2008 by Ben

Tonight at 7PM the men's basketball will face Liberty University in a match up of TeeJay (when did the spelling change?) Bannister's two former collegiate teams.  Live audio available (from Liberty) here.

The Flames are currently 0-1 in the Big South (1-1 overall) after getting pasted by UNC-Asheville, 84-56.  The Flames have been downright frigid on offense, notching a 78 PPP mark that Ken Pomeroy ranks as 326th in all the land.  However, they haven't turned the ball over too much.  So, there's that.

Liberty returns one starter, Anthony Smith, from a squad that went 16-16 last year.  He's a good starter to return, too; Smith was picked as the Big South preseason player of the year.  The 6-5 guard scored 16 points per game and shot 41 percent from three last season.   He didn't go to the line all that much (FT rate of 22%), which makes a 65 percent shooting from two all that more impressive.

Fanning Flames fans is the heat coming from one hot Curry: Freshman Seth Curry.  He's the brother of Stephen and son of Dell and in an unsurprising and related stat line, Seth dropped 18 points on 17 shots versus UNC-Asheville. He also snagged six boards.  Hurrah.

Virginia ought to beat the Flames tonight, but here's a short to do list for a couple of the players*:

Mamadi Diane / Calvin Baker / Jeff Jones

  • Shoot less, score more
  • Bother Smith/Curry as much as possible
  • Go to the line!

Mike Scott

Tunji Soroye

  • Do what you did in the Radford game: don't shoot a lot, but fill in the stat sheet

Sylven Landesburg

  • Cut out a few of the turnovers
  • Half-court dunk

Sammy Zeglinski

  • Be a little more craftier in your play (you know what I mean?  you don't?  Come on!)
  • Stay out of foul trouble

My hope is that those were about as helpful as any "Chevrolet's Keys to the Game" that you'll see on TV.


 

* Player, I recommend you print this out prior to the game as it may be difficult to play basketball with a laptop.  Plus, who knows what the wireless is like on the court?

1 comment(s) and 0 trackback(s)

Tim wrote on Tuesday, November 25 2008

LOL @ Half-court dunk.

I have this fear that SL is going to only average 4 points a game for some three-game stretch and that will remove any remaining optimism from the fan base. Because, you know, only freshmen at Virginia have bad games.

On a more serious note, can someone explain to me why our injured and/or lost-in-NCAA-rules-oblivion players wear black pants with navy blue shirts? Doesn't that clash? How does Leitao, in all his stylish italian suit wonder, allow that?

Ok, now on a really serious note, we should beat these guys right? And it shouldn't be a heart attack game again, right?