Delaware State basketball preview!

#295 R.P.I. Delaware State  #82 R.P.I. Virginia Tech: 

Virginia Tech men’s basketball continues its homesteading preparation for what we all hope will be a good stash of Maui-Wowie and less parts Hawaii 5-o.

The Hokies are smoothing sailing, and prolly one game north of where most R.A.T.T. predicted them to be at this moment. Our defense is indeed tight; although our offense could stand to loosen up a bit— in particular from the jump. Though what you wanna know is… who is gonna win and by how much? Read on; to find, out!

Delaware State Head Coach: Eric Skeeters: age=, 6-25 overall. Has a rep’ for: being familiar to the hardest hardcore VT hoops fans; seems to want to be a backcourt and defensive coach. Time=tell here…
$77,000.oo

Baller Skeeters played basketball and lacrosse at Catonsville CC, where he led the region in assists in 1990. In which sport I am not entirely sure; although he almost surely has more anything/everything in Lacrosse than me.

E.Skeeters seems a confident guy from what I did see…

After obtaining his associate degree, Skeeters enrolled at Coppin State while also beginning his coaching career as an assistant coach and junior varsity head coach at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore. He stayed in that position from 1992 to 1996, landing on the coaching staff at Coppin State under Fang Mitchell. Skeeters was on the Eagles staff that upset second-seeded South Carolina as a 15-seed in the 1997 NCAA Tournament, and continued on with Coppin State until 1999 when he accepted an assistant coaching position at Youngstown State. After Youngstown State, Skeeters joined Seth Greenberg’s coaching staff at Virginia Tech for one season before making assistant coaching stops at Towson, South Florida and George Mason until landing on fellow former Virginia Tech assistant coach Ryan Odom’s staff at UMBC in 2016.

Skeeters is a whopping near careerist 2.1-decade long assistant coach. So, there is no denying he has cut his clipboard teeth and earned his big whistle chops. After that? I have no idea… as this program, the same as Star Wars, is: “far far away.”

In 2018, Skeeters was on the Retrievers coaching staff that became the first 16-seed to defeat a one-seed in the 2018 NCAA Tournament with a 74-54 win over Virginia.

On July 25, 2018 Skeeters was named the 16th head coach in Delaware State history, replacing Keith Walker

Skeeters.edu was awarded a bachelor’s in management science from Coppin State in 1997.

Daddy Skeeters and wife Marie have two sons, Evan and Miles.

D.s.u. at a glance:

  • 6th from LAST in Scoring D (88.2 ppg allowed)!!!
  • 341st in Rebounding Margin!
  • 337th in FG percentage allowed!
  • 330th in Turnovers per game!
  • ONLY 1 team marker was better than 211th best in the 32 stats I track!

Hornet Returning Starters=2

Delaware State Strengths:

  • Lead-G, John Crosby actually paces Del.State in scoring and the next person to call that -well, not named: Ebony Walker, his momma-bear- will be the first. John is a pleasant surprise for a typically unpleasant hoops program. The Dayton transfer final-year B’more, Maryland native packs a lotta ink, and he and Queequeg manage to net a lotta work. A very sudden looking 20 ppg, on 46% from the floor and 40% dialing long distance is Most Improved territory to be sure. 4&½ boards, with a couple of dimes nearly as many swipes, is prolly doing all Crosby can do. A.K.A. Mister Scott hoops or: “giving yah all she’s gots.”
  • Ameer Bennett, a 6′8″, 220 lb. sculpted third year Richmond, Va. P/F escapee! Think we could use his 12.3 ppg, team leading 7.3 rpg, on 56% from the floor and 43% from deep? Yah; me three on that. 53% from the charity-stripe may be downright Masonic or brickish, tho’ we’d take the rest of the help— would that we could. As this kid is was last seen at St. Christopher’s High School in 2015. So, he’s not wanting for maturity physically.

    Cuz had LIFT yo’!
  •  6′3″, 190 lb. John Stansbury is an off-guard and “yes” he is roundball related. As he is a cousin of former NBA player (Seattle Supersonics) and Temple University star Terrance Stansbury. Terrance if the freak 360° dunk fame who had risers in his feet’s no matter the size of the proverbial stage. So you’d have to think the body-athletic could be most willing indeed here. This Stansbury drops you 12.3 ppg on 56% shooting and then he runs down 4.5 rpg with the team lead in Free-Throwing (81%) to boot. Again, September magazines notwithstanding, this is more upward mobility than anyone I read had in their 2019-2020 forecast.

Delaware State Weaknesses:

  • (alleged) alpha returnee: one #4, and three-man from downtown, and likewise Chesterfield, Va. refugee baller… Mister Johquin “pinky” Wiley was said to be by all of my preseason mags, the one Hornet who might buzz the post-season team hive up in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Maybe? Or should I say: ‘doubtful’ when your scoring is nearly cut-in-half (down to 4.4 ppg) on 22% total and 20% deep and yah; poor Wiley being having pink-eye or worse as his visual targeting software goes. Neat kid, great nickname, rocks a total James Hardin look and has a beard that has swagg like Joe Stalin’s hair. That’s swagg that just won’t, stop! As more was/is expected from the former AAAAA  2016-17, Virginia South Region Player-of-the-Year. (still yet: Johquin did lead L.C. Bird to the Virginia 5A state championship as a senior … where he drained the game-winning shot with four seconds left to send the team to the championship game; and ‘yes’, that will always count).
  • Do you see a trend?

  • C.Yannick -all 6′15″ of him- has played as many minutes this campaign as you and eye have combined!
  • i.e. this may be our one Frontcourt ✔ edge of the year!
  • FREE O-jia-ko!!!

Hornet Bench: (depth=3)

Back-up One, (6′1″ 170 lb.) Myles Carter and his 4.8 ppg on 60% beyond the arc can clearly snipe from outside.

Ronald Lucas is your utility Frontcourt (6′6″ 190 lb.) string-bean sub’ down in the paint. Ron’ finds his way to 3.3 ppg per 2.3 rpg on 0% 3-point shooting.

And that’s about that. As this is a thin bench, it is a smaller or lowercase bench vertically and there is just not much to see here.

Beating lil' Delaware State @home is all about, what(s)???

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Illationconclusion(s) and OPT digits:

Number of Hornets who could buzz Tech's tower=1.5.

the takeaway:
The takeaway here is… well, don’t get taken away with anything here.

IF/when we beat the damn breaks off of o for 2019 (o-4) Delaware State— we will R.A.T.T. glean what beyond these insects are due to be o-5 for 2019 in another 40 minutes? (which gives them two wins in about 1.3 years; if you are keeping score at home).

 ***

Our handy-dandy friend the so-called Forum Guide of Graham Houston fame is calling for a December check-back at the moment.

The annualized year-to-date vitals say that… V.Tech is up +24% in shooting percentage margin (virtually 20% was found on D as the Del.State is pretty dang ‘user-friendly’ indeed); V.Tech is up +22% in 3-point percentage margin (close to mixed/even O vs. D); and the Gobblers are gobbling up the glass thanks to being up a remarkable +15 caroms in rebounding margin!

The most recent 5-game metrics say… see above!

The Hokies are up 4% at the charity stripe for the year.

The call

Our slow starts prolly make no neverminds; here… although I am wondering how well this does vs. the tirade of Hawaiian Punches, we face next on the legit? As ‘yes’, we can dig a hole when bum fighting and still excavate our way out; thanks to some real live Young(star) defense indeed.

However, when we find ourselves in vs. real-live teams? Not so much.
Ergo, now would be a good time to see if we do have anything more than a 1-2 offensive punch.

oOo

That being rightfully said… Delaware State has been blown off the court by between 22 and 44 ppg 75% of the time for a reason(s).

And the reason(s) is that they ain’t very damn good.

They won 2 whole, entire, complete games last year!

They have yet to break the winning seal this year and who knows when they will?


Del.State was spartan enough (foreshadowing intended) to make the C.B.I. just three seasons ago, although they have been in a downward spiral ever since.

And last time I checked… spiraling is only good for oblong spheroids;
whereas spiraling is no bueno in roundball or hoops.

(97% confidence interval)
Virginia Tech
=78, Delaware State=5o

LETS GO!

Hokies!

 bourbonstreet**