This Week in Wrenball

In the last edition of TWiW, we tabbed the week of January 18 'Prove It Week' for the Wrens. What they then proved is somewhat in dispute.

It seems obvious now that tangling with a highly motivated and very hot VCU team is a bad idea. I don't know that any team in the Tribe's position would've beaten the Rams. We're gonna go ahead and chalk that one up as a no-win situation and move forward. Of some note, VCU went out after their cathartic 22-point drubbing of William & Mary and got handled by Northeastern over the weekend.

Against ODU in front of 7,216 in Williamsburg (the largest crowd in some 17 years at the former William and Mary Hall) on Saturday, W&M proved that ODU's defense is as good as advertised, shooting 33% against the Monarchs. The Tribe also proved once again that they can hang with the very best in the conference, leading at halftime and then overcoming a 7-point second half deficit to lead by 1 with 48 seconds left.

A tough but probably predictable 0-2 week sets up the theme for this edition of TWiW: Perspective. W&M is now 14-5, 6-3 in the CAA, tied for 4th in the conference with Drexel, two games out of the three-way tie for first. The always overly-optimistic hope of an NCAA Tournament at-large bid is all but extinguished. After the unprecedented highs of the season's first few months, the easy emotion for Tribe faithful is disappointment.

To which we say, are you fucking crazy? We'll not rehash the full menu of highlights Tony Shaver's squad has delivered thus far, but this is a team that began the year picked to finish 10th in the CAA after a lackluster 10-20 2008-09 campaign. A program that celebrated its first .500 season in 10 years in 2007-08. A squad that's still, after this week, two nail-biting losses from being 8-1 in a tough, deep league.

I pose this question to any of the WrenBackers that frequent G:TB: if, before the season, you were told that W&M would be 14-5, 6-3, what would you have said? Yeah, me too. It's way half-full, ladies and gentlemen.

All that said, Perspective Week has the potential to become Exasperation Week if the early-season Tribe doesn't show up. W&M travels to JMU on Wednesday to face a reeling but quite talented Dukes team. Then, Bruiser Flint's surging Drexel team seeks to leapfrog the Wrens in the league when they come to Kaplan on Saturday. Unlike last week, 1-1 won't be a good result.

Show us what you got, mighty Wrens. (And, psst, Danny: I know you can defend your ass off, but we're gonna need more than zero points in 31 minutes when we go to Norfolk next week.)