EMERGENCY TRIBE SPORTS POST (UPDATED)

Marls texted me on Sunday in the wake of W&M's dispiriting 41-14 home loss to Holy Cross on Saturday with a take that requires further inquiry.

"This could be the worst team in Tribe history."

To which I replied "Onassis!"

In my defense, we were in the midst of a comedy rhombus with London-based Whit riffing on the fact that the Commanders' third-string quarterback is a fella with Greek heritage. Speaking of dispiriting losses.

Marls got me thinking, and one doesn't have to go too deep to determine that - at the very least - this Tribe team is in the conversation for worst team in the lifespan of Gheorghie's as Tribe fans. That dates back to the autumn of 1988, when Whit, Jersey Dave, and I first walked the sylvan grounds of The College of William and Mary.

That year, the ninth of Jimmye Laycock's 38 seasons in Williamsburg, the Tribe was an independent playing at the I-AA level. W&M left the Southern Conference in 1977 when the NCAA divided its top division into I-A and I-AA.

The 1988 edition of the Tribe had an up and down campaign. Two years removed from Laycock's first NCAA Tournament appearance, W&M lost a close opener at UVA before running off three wins in a row, including a 10-3 win on the road against 17th-ranked JMU. They lost a heartbreaker at no. 9 Delaware, beat New Hampshire and tied no. 17 Villanova before heading to Sanford Stadium in Athens to take on Georgia.

That game against the Bulldogs is one of the vivid memories of my freshman year. We listened to it on the radio in my dorm room. I assume Whit and Dave were there, but I can't be certain of that part. W&M was tied with mighty Georgia, 7-7, at the end of the first quarter and we could dream. Fate had other ideas, and UGA outscored us 35-10 in the second frame on the way to a 59-24 victory. Still, there were positive takeaways from the game. Only Mississippi State scored more points against Georgia that season. And the Tribe generate 462 yards in total offense to a team that allowed an average of 355 against an SEC schedule that year.

Lots of offense and not a ton of concern with defense, the hallmark of the Laycock era, made for an entertaining rooting experience during my time in Williamsburg. W&M finished the 1988 campaign with home wins against Wofford and Colgate before falling to Richmond in the oldest rivalry in the South. That year, the school decided to decline a bid to the I-AA playoffs and accept the opportunity to play against a team of Japanese All-Stars in the first-ever Epson Ivy Bowl in Yokohama, Japan, where W&M won, 73-3.

W&M had two more excellent seasons in 1989 and 1990, reaching the NCAA Tournament both years and advancing to the quarterfinals in my junior year before falling to Central Florida. The 1991 team lost all five of its games against ranked opponents (including a 59-35 Natrone Means-led doozy of a game against I-A no. 20 UNC) and missed out on the postseason. That season did have a silver lining, though. I spent the season working in the press box for home games, responsible for tracking each drive and compiling the drive chart for the working media. One of those ink-stained wretches was Dave Fairbank of the Daily-Press. After the final home game of the season, a 35-13 hammering at the hands of a much-faster Samford squad, my Sports Information Office colleagues and I adjourned to Paul's Deli with the aforementioned Fairbank and a few other scribes, where I got my first taste of drinking beers with professionals. No idea if OBX Dave remembers that afternoon, but I certainly enjoyed the parts of it I recall.

Jesus. Where was I? Right, the really terrible 2026 William and Mary football squad. Sorry, got wandering down memory lane for a minute. 

Bottom line: this is the worst W&M team of my Tribe-rooting lifetime. The 2012 and 2017 teams went 2-9, but both of them were competitive. The 2012 team lost six games by a touchdown or less, led Maryland until the final minutes in College Park, and lost in double-overtime on the road against no. 4 JMU. The 2017 squad was bad, but they were in the game in the fourth quarter on all but two occasions (against top-ranked JMU and no. 21 New Hampshire).

The insane ending to W&M's season-opener notwithstanding, the campaign has been one miserable outing after another. To wit:

• A week after benefitting from four Villanova turnovers and 15 Wildcat penalties in their wild win, W&M nearly blew a 22-0 fourth quarter lead at home against Delaware State, stopping the Hornets on downs in the final 90 seconds to preserve a 22-15 win. The Tribe was outgained by a 366-187 margin, recorded 10 first downs to DSU's 26, and almost lost despite a +5 turnover advantage.
• Two wins in two and feeling good headed to Lehigh. Until the Mountain Hawks scored 30 points in the game's first 21 minutes and cruised to a 44-20 win. Only got outgained 486-342 in this one, so...progress?
• Not so fast, my friend. Woeful Fordham came to town the following week, their 0-3 record in tow, and proceeded to put 52 points on W&M. They've scored 37 in their other five games combined. The Rams rushed for 428 yards that day. They've gained 417 total in their remaining contests to date. Their win against the Tribe remains their only victory on the season.
• The less we say about the following week's 62-7 loss at Duke, the better. We will note that Marls was in Durham with his Duke-alum wife and chose not to wear green and gold. No dummy, Marls.
• Holy Cross coming to town at 1-4 with a defense that had allowed at least 30 points in each of its first five games seemed ripe for a get-well opportunity for W&M. Ah, well, nevertheless. The Crusaders led, 31-7, early in the third quarter and won, 41-14. The Tribe gained 31 yards on 29 carries and 253 total yards against a team that had allowed an average of 412 coming into the matchup.
• W&M is being outscored by an average of 20.17 points per game (and they've fucking won twice!). Opponents are outgaining the Tribe 479.2 to 294.3 yards per game (269.0 to 91.3 on the ground). Jesus (William) Mary and Joseph.

It's not so much that the Tribe are losing. That happens. It's more that they've been absolutely uncompetitive for four consecutive weeks, the last two against dreadful teams at home. It's frankly embarrassing, and we've never been able to say that about W&M football in my 38 years of rooting for the Green and Gold.

Maybe it gets better, as the Tribe face a poor N.C. Central team and winless Georgetown in the next two. There's no evidence that it will though, and in fact, it sure seems that this staff is ill-equipped to deal with the realities of modern college football, which means we could be in for a long stretch of dismal football.

Onassis!

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November 7 Update

One month later, and we can conclusively say that it did NOT get better. Since we last checked in on the Tribe, here's what's happened:

Despite being outgained, 439 to 221, while allowing 6.6 yards per carry and 282 rushing yards and losing the turnover battle, 2-0, W&M somehow managed a 17-14 win on the road at N.C. Central. Some smoke and mirrors shit.

The magic did not repeat itself the following weekend, when Mike London's boys couldn't hold a fourth quarter lead on Homecoming Weekend against a middle Georgetown squad. The Hoyas took possession at midfield with 1:27 remaining and scored 49 seconds later without using a timeout. The point after gave the visitors a 28-27 victory. The winning touchdown came on a 4th and goal from the 10. 

W&M got the ball back with two timeouts remaining (having taken one on defense before Georgetown's touchdown) and promptly threw an interception on the first play of their drive. 

As has become customary, the Tribe allowed Georgetown more total yards than their season average (416 versus 328.9) and gained fewer yards than the Hoyas opponents average (352 versus 389). It's goddamn uncanny at this point

The Green and Gold traveled to Hamilton, NY seeking a rebound at Colgate, where the Raiders were coming off three consecutive losses. W&M gave up 519 yards and gained 142, allowed 30 first downs while picking up 7, and got boatraced, 37-0. You won't believe this, but Colgate came into the game averaging 341.8 yards of total offense and allowing 302.5

This weekend, Lafayette brought its 3-5 record to Williamsburg, and W&M pounced on the Leopards immediately. The Tribe led, 14-0, after Andrew King scampered 39 yards for a touchdown with 11:44 remaining in the second quarter. The home team had gained 186 yards on 16 plays at that point, ripping off 11.6 yards per snap.

W&M ran 39 plays over the game's final 41:44. The Tribe managed 94 yards over that span. Meanwhile, Lafayette kicked a field goal late in the second quarter, scored on a 50-yard run in the third, then drove 80 yards in seven plays before finding the end zone on a 12-yard pass with 4:41 remaining. W&M had two cracks at a comeback, but gained a single yard on seven plays while punting and turning the ball over on downs. The Leopards closed out their 19-14 victory with a trio of kneeldowns. 

What of the yards gained and allowed, you ask? I'll give you one guess, friends! Lafayette outgained the Tribe, 401-275. On the season, the Leopards average 323.8 and allow 412.1. Same as it ever was for the 2026 William and Mary outfit.

When we wrote the initial portion of this post, we concluded that this year's team is the worst since 1988, when my fandom began. Now, we're prepared to amend that, regardless of what happens the next two weeks, this is the worst team in the school's history, dating all the way back to 1693.

Over those final two weeks, W&M plays at home against 1-9 Bucknell and on the road against old rivals Richmond. Lord have mercy if they can't win the first one, 'cause there will be no mercy whatsoever against Spidey, who'll likely be smarting from a three-game losing streak.

My prediction? Pain.

Wrenball: Where Are They Now?

Over the holiday, The Teej responded to a Bluesky meme thread with the first* Nathan Knight namedrop in the recorded history of that platform. Which made me smile, and then sent me down a Tribe hoops in the pros rabbit hole and led to this update on our boys' professional exploits.

* As if you're going to check to see if that's accurate. Just go with it, man.

This seems to be a foul

After three seasons in the NBA, the Knightwolf himself is averaging 14.8 points, 10.1 boards, and 1.2 assists for the Zhejiang Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association. The Lions are 10-2, good for third place in the CBA's North Division. 

Terry Tarpey's been a fixture in the French First Division since graduating from W&M. Now in his ninth season in France, Tarpey's become a role player for AS Monaco, averaging 2.8 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 0.8 steals in 17.5 minutes. He's also represented France in senior international competitions 33 times.

By the looks of things, Omar Prewitt's international hoops career has come to an end after eight seasons in Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, and Turkiye. He was second-team all-league in Poland in 2019 after averaging 18.3 points (3rd in the PLK), 6.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.2 steals in 30 PLK games, and won a Czech league title with Nymburk.

Our guy Marcus Thornton is still at it, and still getting buckets. He's in his 10th professional season across Australia, the G-League, France, Italy, Turkiye, Greece, and now Portugal, where he's playing for SL Benfica. Marcus averages 11.4 points and 2.8 assists for the Portuguese power.

Despite averaging 13.3 points and 6.6 assists per game last season for VfL Bochum in Germany's top division, David Cohn appears to be without a team at the moment. Perhaps he'll follow the path of the next few Wrens.

Hofstra nemesis Daniel Dixon retired in 2022 to become an assistant coach with the Oklahoma City Blue. The Tribe to the Pros coaching pipeline is starting to get some legs, if you're into mixed metaphors.

Of benchside note, Jim Moran is the associate head coach of the Sacramento Kings, Sean Sheldon just moved to the front of the bench for the Utah Jazz, and Quinn McDowell is an assistant at Longwood.

These are the golden years, friends. The Tribe abides.

This Week in Wrenball: The Good Kind

It's been (yet another) bleak year for the Tribe. After a surprisingly respectable 2-1 start to the 2023-24 Colonial Athletic Association campaign, Dane Fischer's (which translates to 'the ice, she is thin' in some Nordic language) squad has dropped eight of nine to plunge to 13th in the 14-team league. 

And that's all I've got to say about that, because there actually is good roundball news coming from down Williamsburg way as we continue to celebrate women's college basketball week (a little known outshoot from National Girls and Women in Sport Day).

Bella Nascimento

Led by the inside/outside combo of 5'11 grad student forward Nylah Young and 5'8" junior guard Bella Nascimento, coach Erin Dickerson Davis' Wrens are off the best start in conference play in school history. W&M's 65-55 win at Hampton on Super Bowl Sunday boosted their record to 8-3 in the league, and made Davis the fastest coach in Tribe history to win 20 conference games, as she improved to 20-9 in this her second season in the 'burg.

Young leads the team with 14.4 points and 5.0 rebounds, while Nascimento chips in 13.0 points and a team-leading 2.4 assists. Reigning conference Rookie of the Week, true frosh Cassidy Geddes scores 9.9 points per game while leading the squad in steals with 1.7. 

The Tribe will be favored in their next four games and five of their final seven. They're currently tied for third in the conference, a game behind Stony Brook and North Carolina A&T. The odds suggest they'll finish in the top four and get a bye into the quarterfinals on March 15. I'm going to try to convince Marls and the Teej that we should go see the ladies instead of the men. More fun, likely, and a higher likelihood of a good outcome.

Lots of room on the bandwagon, Gheorghies. Come on along.

This Week in Wrenball: The Preview

We here at the digital tree fort are creatures of habit with a sporting bent that sometimes straddles the line between optimistic and quixotic. As the calendar flips to November, we cast an eye toward the annual exercise in ‘what if:’ William and Mary basketball. 

The Tribe kicks off Nov. 6 against Regent University, the late evangelist Pat Robertson’s tidy enclave in Virginia Beach. Unless the competition includes moot court versus Regent’s mostly well regarded law school, the Tribe should have little trouble. After that, however, the schedule mostly gets stickier. 

There are the usual non-conference matchups versus state and regional opponents and a couple of sweet road trips (hellooooo, Malibu!) before diving into the CAA schedule after the first of the year. That’s “Coastal” Athletic Association now, by the way, with the recent additions of schools such as Campbell and North Carolina A&T, located in the seaside towns of Buies Creek and Greensboro, N.C., respectively. 

William and Mary was picked to finish eighth in the league with a roster that’s overhauled from last season’s eighth-place finish. Odd result aside, the Tribe again appears well short of the top tier of Charleston and UNC Wilmington, and looking up at the second tier of Drexel, Hofstra, Delaware and Towson. 

W&M returns two starters in 6-8 Noah Collier, a solid inside presence whose season was cut short by injury last February, and 6-6 wing and 3-point marksman Gabe Dorsey, as well as seven other contributors, all of whom averaged less than five points per game. The Wrens return 46 percent of their scoring, 64 percent of their rebounding and 29 percent of their assists from a year ago. They added three transfers: 6-4 guard Sean Houpt, a 1,000-point scorer at D2 Florida Tech; Caleb Dorsey, a 6-8, 235-pound forward who bolted Penn State after former VCU coach Mike Rhoades arrived; and Trey Moss, a 6-3 sophomore from South Florida. 

W&M certainly could have used 6-8 forward and two-year starter Ben Wight and his 800 career points and 400 rebounds, as well as point guard Tyler Rice, who made the CAA’s All-Rookie Team two years ago but found himself buried on the bench and increasingly disenchanted last season in lieu of grad transfer Anders Nelson. Both elected to leave, Wight for the University of Toledo (he completed his undergrad degree at W&M and he’s an Ohio native) and Rice for East Tennessee State. 

Which brings us to the guy at the helm. Dane Fischer enters his fifth season with a 46-68 overall record (.404 winning percentage) and 28-36 in conference play (.437) – both marks enhanced by his first season when he inherited Tribe all-timer and future pro Nathan Knight. W&M is 18-47 overall (.276) and 11-25 (.305) in the CAA the past two seasons. Far be it from me to stump for a coach’s termination, but the suits and checkbooks who evaluate such things will have ample material to judge if the Tribe produces a third consecutive season of gruel. 

It wasn’t always this way (here’s where Rob’s left eye begins to twitch and his blood pressure spikes) [ET TU, DAVE?!?]. Fischer’s predecessor Tony Shaver made W&M hoops competitive and relevant. The Wrens finished in the top four of the CAA each of his last six seasons. His teams won 20 games four times, made four CAA Tournament title games, three semifinals and went to the NIT twice. But following a quarterfinal loss in the 2019 tournament, She Who Shall Not Be Named turfed him in a public display of ego over accomplishment. 

Which brings us to where we, and the program, are now. There’s no telling how Shaver would have navigated the transfer portal and NIL situations. Inarguable, though, is the fact that he had developed a system that attracted suitable talent and was heavy on development and continuity, essential components for a program without some of the advantages (cough cough, admissions, cough, cough, eligibility curricula) many competitors enjoy. 

Some may think it’s time to shelve the past and move on. Focus on the future and paths to improvement. Moving on completely from the irrational firing of Shaver, however, is a big ask. Have Armenians forgiven and moved past the Turkish Ottoman Empire genocide of the early 20th century? Have Ukrainians forgotten Stalin and the Holomodor of the 1930s? Have St. Louis Cardinals fans forgiven and moved on from Don Denkinger in the 1985 World Series? They have not. The ability to function in polite society and simultaneously hold a low-flame grudge for years if not decades is what separates us from the primates. 

Regardless of whether the Wrens are on your wradar, college basketball season is upon us, itself a reason for good cheer. An abundance of players and teams and games and stories. Decide for yourself if modest expectations are preferable to unrestrained optimism, if anything short of contending for titles is failure or if honest competition is satisfactory. We know which is better for the digestive system. On the other hand, sports-induced gastric discomfort is often temporary. Plan accordingly.

Ladies' Night: This Week in Wrenball

OBX Dave has obviously elbowed me out of the Tribe men's hoops gig, so I had to find a new angle. And I only had to go a few doors down in the bowels of Kaplan Arena to discover a story that's been years in the making.

If it's possible, W&M's women's hoops program is worse than the mens'. Since the CAA was founded in 1983, the Lady Wrens have never finished better than third in league play. They've made one CAA tournament final, and a mere five semis. The team is 13-37 all-time in the CAA tourney, and has four winning seasons in conference play. No coach in program history that's been on the bench for more than 40 games has a career winning record. It ain't been pretty.

Sunday afternoon, the W&M women went on the road and handily beat North Carolina A&T, 79-64. The win allowed the Wrens to leapfrog the Aggies to take over second place in the conference standings. After starting the conference slate 0-2, W&M has gone 9-2, winning four in a row and eight of their last nine.

Long-time head coach Ed Swanson was let go after going 10-20, 5-13 last season. Athletic Director Brian Mann took a gamble on Erin Dickerson Davis, giving the Wake Forest assistant and Northwestern grad her first head coaching gig. Worked so well on the men's side, how could it go wrong?

I snark, I snark.

And to date, after a bit of a slow start, it's going really well. The Lady Wrens got smoked at Towson, 75-43, on January 13 and faced a game against Drexel, the league's top team. The won that by 16 and haven't looked back. 

Riley Casey

Senior guards Riley Casey and Sidney Wagner (from Phoenixville, PA, home of Mike Piazza and the far more celebrated Evan Lloyd) pace the squad with 17.8 and 15.8 points per game, respectively - the pair both shoot better than 87% from the line. Senior forward Bre Bellamy grabs 6.0 boards to lead the team, along with 7.2 points. Aussie Junior Rebekah Frisby-Smith chips in with 7.2 points and 5.5 rebounds. 5'8" freshman guard Alexa Mikeska leads the team with 76 assists. 

The Tribe has a challenging run in to the CAA Tournament, facing rematches with Drexel (in Philly) and  Towson before closing with winnable games against Elon, Hofstra, and Monmouth. I'd say we should start booking our tickets to Towson to see the Wrens play in the conference tournament, but Whitney and I will be in Edinburgh. So the rest of you should go and cheer on the best hoops team at William & Mary.

Wrenball: The Hemorrhage

In which an actual professional journalist goes slumming on our beat and finds common cause.

At least they aren’t LSU. That’s about the most charitable assessment of William and Mary’s men’s basketball. After one of the most dismal seasons in program history, the Tribe has seen six players enter the transfer portal, severely testing the notion that “at least it can’t get any worse.”

Four of the top six scorers are gone, including 2021 CAA Rookie of the Year Connor Kochera, and those four played at least 24 minutes per game. A fifth logged 15 minutes a game. Two freshmen and two sophomores are among the departing, so a chunk of what appeared to be the future is out the door. Granted, it’s not as jarring as LSU losing 11 players to the portal and two more to the NBA Draft since Will Wade was fired, but for a program in the basement of a mid-level conference on a competitive uptick that just added several quality teams, the climb becomes much steeper.

Coach Dane Fischer and AD Brian Mann tried to fit the sow with a ball gown in a piece in the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, my old rag. Mann said, “I still think that Coach Fischer is the right guy for the program and he’s got my full support. What I’m learning about this and hearing about this is that this is not a program in trouble. It’s not about a bad culture. It’s not about a poor student-athlete experience. (The transferring players) are making their own individual decisions. I think Dane has created and built a really strong culture and he cares deeply about our student-athletes. That means a lot to me.”

Fischer said, “The transfer portal is the new reality of college basketball,” and that he views the portal as a means to rebuild the roster. He said that he’s jazzed about the returning players and three incoming recruits. Because what else is he gonna say?

Fischer is correct about the transfer portal as the new reality. Players are emboldened by the new rule that permits immediate eligibility after a first transfer, without sitting out a year. More than 1,000 players have entered the portal so far this spring, which means there’s plenty of options for teams to fill gaps and rebuild. But how many are interested in a program that just finished 5-27, even with ample minutes available? More important, how many qualify and would be a good fit in one of Division I’s more strenuous academic environments? How deftly can Fischer and his staff navigate the new normal?

The jury’s still out on whether Fischer can coach. By all accounts, he’s a quality, likeable chap. He inherited an NBA-level talent in Nathan Knight and the remnants of Tony Shaver’s final team in his first season – a team that, as constructed at the time, would have been a conference favorite and still won 21 games. There was predictable regression in Fischer’s second, pandemic-plagued year, and then this season’s face-plant, in which the Tribe won only four games against Division I opponents.

Which leads us to address the griffin in the room. There’s a through line from former AD Samantha Huge’s ego-driven ouster of Shaver in 2019 to W&M’s present predicament. There’s no way of knowing how Shaver would handle the transfer portal and the changing landscape of college hoops, or even if he would still be head coach three years later. Barring illness or catastrophe, it’s a safe bet that he’d still occupy the Big Chair, if only to continue what he built. He developed a system that made Tribe hoops competitive and relevant after years in the wilderness. He brought continuity to the program, critical for sustained success at a place such as William and Mary, which rarely lands top-tier recruits and for which there are no quick fixes. When he was canned, several players and recruits bolted, interrupting the talent and development pipeline. 

Fischer hasn’t picked up the mantel. Not to say he won’t or is incapable, but his and every head coach’s job is more difficult than just two years ago. Coaches must retain as well as recruit, that is re-recruit their own players, and keep one eye on the transfer portal for potential help and to replace departures, in addition to the usual X-ing and O-ing their way past conference rivals. There’s a Wild West component to the portal, as coaches and programs figure it out. Mid-major leagues are suddenly farm systems for Power 5 conferences. A lot of kids who average 17 points per game for a mid-major are convinced that they can play for Michigan State. And there’s certainly tampering, with Power 5 programs reaching out through back-channels to gauge kids’ interest in transferring up. Many P5 programs would rather fill gaps with kids who’ve already played a year or two of college ball than with a high school recruit. On the flip side, a lot of players at P5 programs who don’t think they’re getting enough run bolt for what they believe are better opportunities rather than persevere. And in William and Mary’s case, sometimes players are just looking for something else, whether it’s better than 5-27 or being closer to home or simply a different environment. This isn’t an old guy lament. I’m all for players having more freedom and for being able to make money from their abilities. While the degree of roster churn is probably greater than most envisioned, it’s simply another result within a microwave society.

I observed a lot of sludge in Tribe basketball over the past 35 years. Good coaches, smart coaches struggled to gain footing. Success was often fleeting. Backslides were jarring. Shaver came closest to consistent success, and it even took him years to hit upon the right mix of playing style and recruiting to that style. Fischer says, publicly at least, that the transfer portal provides opportunities for the program. Spinning it positively is understandable, since he isn’t in a position to say, “it stinks,” and then turn to a potential transfer and say, “but not for you.” The portal feels like one more hurdle for a program that has plenty already.

NADIR ALERT

This is a goddamn work of performance art. It's as if Andy Kaufman chose basketball as his milieu rather than professional wrestling. I can't look away.

This Week in Wrenball: The Dreckoning

I'm afraid, friends, that the time has come to ask an important question about our Wrens.

Wrong school. Right emotion.

As I type this, W&M is playing its final home game of the season. They'll likely lose to Delaware to fall to 5-24 on the season. If it wasn't for Northeastern have a nightmare of a season due to COVID and injury issues, the Tribe would be DFL in the CAA. As it is, they're relegated to the conference tournament play-in game, where they'll likely be bounced in the first round.

The squad is unquestionably young. 77% of W&M's points have been scored by freshmen or sophomores. The young kids have also grabbed 80% of the team's rebounds and handed out 89% of its assists. Those numbers hold at least the hint of promise for the future. 

The present, though, not great.

Dane Fischer had a stellar debut year, blending Nathan Knight and Luke Loewe with some excellent transfers and salvaging the wreck of the program left in the wake of Samantha Huge's administrative malpractice. That 2019-20 team went 21-11 and finished second in the CAA before losing a terribly disappointing game to Elon in the first round of the conference tournament. Last year was a write-off - no coach should be evaluated on his team's performance during the insanity of the COVID season.

Soph Ben Wight has been a bright spot

But now, it's fair to ask whether Dane can coach at this level. He seems by all accounts to be a terrific guy, a role model who operates with integrity. But there's no escaping the fact that this team is poor, and it hasn't improved over the course of the season. The Tribe has lost six in a row, all but one by double digits. They've been outscored on the season by an average of 9.9 points per game, have 125 more turnovers than assists, and allow opponents to shoot 46.4% from the field. 

The 2021-22 Tribe will have the school's worst season since 2011-12, which was Marcus Thornton's freshman year. If they lose all four of their remaining games, they'll set a program record for most defeats in a season, and at W&M, that's a damning record to hold.

Tony Shaver had the Wrens in the CAA Tournament final within two years after that dismal 2011-12 campaign. There's no Marcus Thornton on this roster, so I'm not counting on Dane Fischer repeating that feat. He might not even get the chance if next year isn't a substantial improvement on this one.

Samantha Huge's salting the fields of W&M hoops may take a generation to undo.

This Week in Gheorgheball

I'm in the midst of one of the busiest periods I can remember on the professional front. It's bad enough that it's impacted my ability to dick around on the internet, but having to deploy my brainpower on work-related things has crowded out more important dipshittery. Case in point, we haven't fully baptized the new Tribe hoops season. 

So until I get a few minutes to unpack all the boxes of strategy and organizational structure and sales plans that are cluttering my mind, here's a brief tour of the new season(s) on the hardwood.

We'll start with a Tribe-adjacent item. Now that I'm a VCU Dad, I've paid even more attention to the Rams than I might've previously. Many of you will recall my affinity for former Ram and now Denver Nugget rookie Nah'Shon 'Bones' Hyland. You should buy tickets on the Bonesmobile now, 'cause they're only gonna get more expensive. 

After an immaculate career-high 18 points (and three assists, three boards, and two steals) in the Nuggets' blowout win over Portland, Bones is averaging 9.1 ppg, 2.3 apg, 2.1 rpg, and 1.0 spg through the first 10 games of his NBA career. According to local sources, he's the clear leader of Denver's second unit, bringing energy and a knack for scoring off the bench. He's got work to do on the defensive end of the court, but there's no doubt he belongs. And Nugs fans love him. 

Closer to home, the Knightwolf hasn't had a breakout moment in Minnesota, but he has scored in consecutive games for the Timberwolves. Nate Knight got two against the Clips on Friday and another pair against the Lakers on Sunday. He's averaging 32 points per 48 minutes. Baby steps.

Been kinda avoiding actually getting to the point, because the point, well, it's not particularly enjoyable. The Wrens have lost their first two games, getting throttled at Wake Forest before coming home and losing by 12 to an American team picked to finish fifth in the Patriot League. 

The Tribe is really young, with graduate transfer Brandon Carroll starting alongside three sophomores and a freshman. Frosh point guard Tyler Rice has 15 assists through two games, which I assume is some sort of record. Sophomore big Ben Wight averaged 16 points in 21 minutes/game in the two losses, getting to the line 21 times and making 17 figgies. Soph Connor Kochera is coming off a CAA Rookie of the Year campaign and is the only guy other than Wight getting double digits.

There's a long way to go, starting tonight at Norfolk State, and Dane Fischer has proven to be a solid head man. But this team looks to have a whole lot of room (and need) for improvement. Not sure I'm counting on this to be the year we go dancing.

This Week in Wrenball: Let's Get This Over With

Here's a small measure of how unusual this NCAA men's basketball season has been: we haven't published the word "Wrenball" on this website in 2021. In fact, our only post about William & Mary basketball this season was a preview in November. 

In that preview, I wrote this, "Says here that anything better than 10 wins in the Wrens' 26 scheduled games would be impressive. Also says here that playing more than half of those 26 games might constitute good fortune." The Tribe finished this bizarre, dare I say stupid season with a 6-9 record, 4-6 in the CAA. So they played more than half of their games. Yay?

As a league, the CAA was an embarrassment in terms of its management of COVID-related scheduling. The Colonial was DFL in the NCAA in terms of percentage of scheduled games played, completing 56.9% of the 90 games on the slate at the beginning of the year. The NCAA average was 85.9%. FOGTB Jerry Beach wrote the following in his CAA Tournament preview:

"The scattershot nature of the regular season schedule created a silent but detectable tension within the league — with rescheduling decisions left up to the teams, some coaches felt their peers were less eager to play something close to a full schedule — and also made scouting and projecting the tournament harder than ever."

If the stories get told, that "silent but detectable tension" would make for a hell of a yarn. Delaware cancelled a game against W&M because they didn't have enough healthy players - not due to COVID, but to injury - and the league (and the Tribe) let it go. JMU got to 8-1 and suddenly found it challenging to schedule games. Convenient, that. Drexel wanted to take on all comers, but nobody really went out of their way to take on the Dragons. Suffice it to say that the CAA league office demonstrated a total lack of juice, and if this half-assed season is the league's swan song, it's out with something even less noisy than a whimper.

As for me, I watched a lot of Big Ten games. Saw a whole lot more Chase Audige than Luke Loewe, if we're being honest. And if we're being petty.

The Tribe's season was too incomplete to offer any kind of analysis. Dane Fischer's team showed a few glimpses, sweeping Towson when they got into a bit of a rhythm. But W&M went on COVID-related hiatus and came out of it just in time to lose a pair of games by an average of 20 points to an Elon team that lost its first seven games of the league season. Heading into today's tournament opener, the Tribe has played just those two games since January 31.

There were a meager handful of bright spots for the Wrens. Connor Kochera was named CAA Rookie of the Year yesterday on the strength of scoring 13.9 ppg and making 37% of his threes. Loewe continued his steady improvement, averaging 16.0 ppg and leading the team in assists. He was named to the All-CAA Second Team. Mekhel Harvey should've been the CAA Defensive Player of of the Year, blocking 3.3 shots per contest while only averaging 20.5 minutes. He and Loewe both made the league's All-Defense team.

But honestly, the sooner this season is over, the better. As I wrote in that season preview,  "I'm afraid that Nathan Knight's professional contract may well be the highlight of the season for Tribe fans." I see no reason to come off that prediction.

As for the tournament itself, read Beach's preview if you want intelligent analysis. I'm picking Drexel to win it all from the 6 seed, and I'm taking Elon to beat JMU in an 8 over 1 upset. Karma's a bitch, Dukes.

Next season can't get here fast enough.

This Week in Wrenball: Back to the Future

The 2019-20 Wrens' season was a rollercoaster. It started under a cloud, the wound from Tony Shaver's unceremonious and undeserved firing still fresh. (Karma, it turns out, is still a bitch.) The Tribe lost multiple important parts from a team that was widely considered the favorite to win the CAA to transfers in the wake of Shaver's dismissal.

Dane Fischer took the job and inherited a dispirited fanbase and a decimated roster. He and his staff dug in and secured commitments from three key transfers: Andy Van Vliet, Bryce Barnes, and Tyler Hamilton came to campus to support Nathan Knight. And W&M started the season 4-0, and probably should've beaten Oklahoma in Norman. 

The rest of the non-conference schedule was a bit of a plateau, with a blowout loss to Stanford balanced by a thrashing of Old Dominion, until W&M dropped its final two pre-league games to St. Joe's and St. Francis (PA), neither powerhouses.

But those letdowns were followed by six straight wins to begin CAA play, which were followed by a 2-5 stretch that included losses to mediocre Drexel and UNCW teams. And of course, Fischer's guys rebounded to win their final five games of the season to finish with a 13-5 league record, good for the second seed in the first CAA Tournament to be played in Washington, DC.

Where the Tribe lost to an Elon team it beat twice during the regular season, including 10 days prior to the first round of the tournament. That loss on March 8 was the last time I was in a sports arena in 2020.

Well done, @wmsportsblog

Dane Fischer, regardless of the circumstances of his hire, can really coach. Nathan Knight is the best player in W&M history. The first of those will be put to the test this season. The second is the reason.

Knight's draft-day signing by the Atlanta Hawks makes three W&M players in five years inking deals with NBA teams (Marcus Thornton and Daniel Dixon both had deals with the Boston Celtics.) His departure, along with the 7'0" Van Vliet, Barnes, and Hamilton change both W&M's roster and Fischer's options at both ends of the court.

The Tribe head man will have to figure out how to replace 54% of his team's minutes, 64.2% of its made field goals, 71.6% of its made free throws, 68.2% of its rebounds, 57.9% of its assists, 85.2% of its blocks, 68.8% of its steals, and 63.3% of its points. The 2020-21 Tribe has one senior who played more than 9 minutes last year. That player, Luke Loewe, made huge strides last season as a complimentary option, hitting 43.9% of his threes and scoring 10.7 ppg, while making the CAA's All-Defensive team. It remains a very open question whether Loewe can be as productive while playing a more central role offensively.

For this half-assed blogger's money, the key to whether the Tribe will live down to preseason predictions (the league's coaches and nearly every observer tap W&M to finish 10th of 10 teams in the CAA) is whether Thornton Scott can stay healthy and produce at a different level. Scott has flashed impressive skill at times during his first two seasons in green and gold, but he only played 19 games last season, and various injuries limited him to 7.3 ppg. Even with the limited playing time, Scott was second on the team in assists, averaging more than four per game.

Thornton Scott, the key

Quinn Blair and Miguel Ayesa didn't start a single game between them, and averaged 4.8 and 4.6 ppg, respectively. Blair's a grinder, and Ayesa can shoot it, but asking them to make a big leap may well be a question we don't want answered.

Incoming freshman Yuri Covington (a touted 6'1" point guard), Jake Milkereit (6'5" wing), Connor Kochera (6'5" guard) and redshirt frosh Ben Wight (6'9" forward/center) will all likely get a chance to earn significant minutes. At least two of them have to be big contributors for the Tribe to be anything more than bad.

With only three players 6'7" or taller, the Tribe's ability to protect the rim and get to the glass will change dramatically. There are multiple potential lineup combinations for Fischer that will see five players all around 6'5" on the floor, running interchangeable offensive and defensive concepts. If 2019-20 was the story of twin towers and team chemistry, 2020-21 will be very much a test of Dane Fischer's chops.

Says here that anything better than 10 wins in the Wrens' 26 scheduled games would be impressive. Also says here that playing more than half of those 26 games might constitute good fortune. I'm afraid that Nathan Knight's professional contract may well be the highlight of the season for Tribe fans.

W&M kicks off the season at ODU this evening. Tribe thumped the Monarchs by 17 last year. Tribe will not thump the Monarchs by 17 this year.

This Year in Wrenball: The Greatest

In February 2017, we mentioned Nathan Knight for the first time in this cobwebby corner of the internet, describing his play in an otherwise desultory loss to Towson. As we wrote, "[F]reshman center Nathan Knight grabbed three boards (two offensive), scored a basket, made two free throws, and ran the floor to make an acrobatic block on Tigers veteran forward John Davis. Knight's efforts helped the Tribe extend their lead to 15, and though they ultimately blew that lead, it was a bit of a coming out party for the exuberant 6'10", 250-pound newcomer."

The title of that post was The Next One(?), posing the question whether Knight would some day have as much impact on the W&M program as the sainted Marcus Thornton. Now, three years later, as Knight capped college career by earning CAA Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors and making the list of the final five players on the 2020 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar National Center of the Year award, the question's changed.

Is it possible that Nathan Knight is the best player in W&M hoops history?

I toyed with the notion a few weeks ago in a Wrenball post, calling it blasphemous. And it's somewhat hard to compare ball-dominant, whippet-fast, edge-of-your-seat shooting guards with solid, active, all-court 6'10" post players. But if we take the eye test out of it, and try to remove the passion, the stats suggest it's not all that close.

Nathan Knight is the GOAT.

Knight's career numbers equal or surpass Thornton's in nearly every way. They both averaged 17.1 ppg over their illustrious careers, though Knight has yet played three fewer games (and needs 62 points to pass Thornton's school record of 2,178). Thornton has more assists and steals, though not as many more as you'd imagine. Knight, the second-leading rebounder in school history, has more boards this season than Thornton had in his whole career - again not a huge surprise given their size and positional differential.

Efficiency stats tell a more striking story. Knight is a far more efficient scorer than Thornton was, and his career Player Efficiency Rating (PER), which seeks to measure a player's overall contribution, adjusted for pace and competition, is a robust 30.9, which is good for 10th all-time...in the NCAA. His 34.9 this season is tops in the entire country. The excellent Thornton's PER was 18.5. His senior year, he posted a 21.8, good for 8th. In the CAA.

Knight wasn't the only member of this year's surprising Tribe squad to earn conference honors. Junior guard Luke Loewe joined Knight on the All-Defense first team, senior Andy Van Vliet earned third-team all-league honors, and head coach Dane Fischer was named the CAA Coach of the Year.

Bittersweet that last bit. Fischer's a great coach. We'll be lucky to keep him for five years, if his first year is anything to be believed. He's calm, smart, and obviously capable of maximizing talent. The circumstances of his hiring still gall, and that won't change. It's not his fault, so we'll celebrate his success, and root for the Tribe.

Root for the Tribe, indeed, as they take their 21-10, 13-5 record and second seed in the CAA Tournament in Washington, DC. They play the winner of this evening's JMU/Elon play-in game (which will be done by the time you read this, so insert the correct team name accordingly). Nothing's certain in a league with as much parity as the CAA (with lots of people picking the 6th seeded Northeastern to win the tournament), but W&M was 4-0 agains the Dukes and Phoenix this season and will be heavily favored to win their quarterfinal.

If they do, they'll face the winner of the quarter between the aforementioned Huskies and Towson. Knight beat Northeastern at the buzzer twice this season, while the Tribe split with the Tigers (each team won on the road by double-digits), who always give us trouble with their physicality. Crapshoot, thy name is CAA semifinal.

And if by the grace of God, Fischer's kids get to the tournament final on Tuesday night, they'll almost certainly see Hofstra, the league's best team for most of the season. W&M smoked the Pride by 27 on Long Island early in the season before Joe Mihalich's team returned the favor by 23 in Williamsburg in February. Have I mentioned crapshoots?

Nathan Knight just became the first player to win both POY and DPOY in the CAA since George Mason's George Evans did it in 2001. Evans' Patriots went on to win the CAA Tournament that season. May history repeat itself, and may the basketball gods finally have mercy on our tormented souls. Somewhere, Tony Shaver would smile.

This Week in Wrenball: The Reckoning

This is the first TWIW post in 2020, making this surely one of our least-productive seasons in terms of postcount. (Kindly refrain from commenting on how productive we are when we're actually posting a lot.) This lack of content does not reflect a diminished interest in the Wrens. I follow them as closely as I ever have, possible more. Rather, I haven't posted anything because I'm still wrestling with how to process this team, given everything that's happened in the program.

I want W&M to succeed. I want Dane Fischer to build on the fine start to his head coaching career. I want the kids to thrive.

I don't want Samantha Huge to be rewarded for the way she fired Tony Shaver.

And those are the dueling emotional states that have informed my interest in this most intriguing of seasons.

After starting 6-0 in league play, W&M stumbled a bit, losing five of their next seven games before
righting the ship and winning two in a row. The Tribe are now 18-10, 10-5 in the CAA, good for outright second place behind red-hot Hofstra. They'll be favored in each of their final three games (at Towson and Elon, and home against James Madison. The likely worst-case scenario for Fischer's team is a top-four seed in a CAA Tournament that promises to be wide open.

#1bid4wmtribe isn't necessarily likely, but it's a hell of a lot more possible than our early-season prognostication might've suggested. We didn't think they'd win 10 games after losing six of their top seven scorers from 2018-19 via graduation or transfer. Dane Fischer, it turns out, can coach.

The 39 year-old Fischer is calm, measured, and smart. He reminds me a lot of Brad Stevens on the sidelines. I've seen the Tribe play twice in person this season, the latter of those games from front-row seats, courtesy of W&M's athletic development staff. During that game, Samantha Huge sat down right next to me and spent about a half engaging with the high-dollar donors that also had seats in the area. She may have thought that I was one of those fancy types. Reader, I tell you that she is very invested in Fischer's success. I did not offer my opinion of the way the young coach got his job. Who do you think I am, Marls?

On the court, Fischer's team is winning through a combination of a very unique pair of lefty bigs, defensive effort that's not been the norm in Williamburg, and balance throughout the team after those twin towers.

6'10" senior Nathan Knight has made the list of the top 10 finalists for the Kareem Abdul Jabbar award given to the nation's top center. Knight is averaging 21.2 points and 10.9 rebounds per game. He leads the CAA with 1.4 blocks per contest. He's first in the nation in defensive rebounds with 228 (and fifth in overall rebounds), as well as Player Efficiency Rating.

Knight needs 108 points to become W&M's all-time leading scorer (he has at least four games left). He'll finish third all-time in rebounds, and second in blocks. It is possible - and increasingly logical - to argue that he's the best player in Tribe history. And if you know how I feel about Marcus Thornton (who's jersey was retired on Saturday), you'll know how blasphemous that sounds. But it's getting closer to true.

7'0" senior Andy Van Vliet (a lefthander like Knight), averages 13.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game, and makes 36% of his threes (he's taken and made more than any other W&M player). Junior guard Luke Loewe averages 10.4 points per game and has proven to be a very effective on-ball defender. In two games against Charleston, Loewe held defending CAA Player of the Year and likely NBA draftee Grant Riller to 20 points on 6-21 shooting. Four other Tribe players are getting at least 4.4 points or 2.0 rebounds. They're all chipping in.

As always, the CAA Tournament will be a crapshoot. League leader Hofstra will deserve the top seed they'll likely get, and they beat W&M by 23 in Williamsburg a few months ago. But the Tribe beat them by 27 on Long Island in January. The Tribe have beaten every team that's beaten them in league play, other than Towson, and they'll get a chance to rectify that on Thursday.

This will be Dane Fischer's first trip through the postseason as the head man. The evidence suggests it won't fluster him. Seeing W&M get to the tournament final might fluster me, though.

I'd probably get over it.

This Week in Wrenball: The Pair Up There

Hurriedly getting one final Wrenball post up while we can still brag on the Tribe's undefeated record.

W&M topped Hampton on Friday, 78-65, to run its season mark to 4-0, the team's best start since 1992-93. Senior transfer Andy Van Vliet scored a career-high 22 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, grad transfer Bryce Barnes added a career-high 21, and stalwart big man Nathan Knight had a quiet game by his standards, going for 15 points and a game-high 13 board.

Knight's double-double was his fourth of the season - The Commodore has gone for double digit points and rebounds in every one of the Tribe's games and is averaging 18.5 points and 11.8 rebounds. Van Vliet's not far behind him at 17.3 and 9.5 per outing. The 7-footer has recorded double-doubles in three of W&M's four contests.

The two (forthwith known as The Pair Up There) present a unique challenge for opposing defenses. Knight's a classic post, with an array of inside moves and a powerful 6'10" frame. He's only made 1 of 9 three-pointers this season, and he's only a 24.5% career shooter from deep. Van Vliet's connected on 43.8% of his threes, extending the opponent's defense to open up the inside for Knight. And in the limited highlights I've seen, the transfer from Wisconsin's also got decent footwork in the paint himself. Oh, and both of the them are lefthanders, a vexing proposition in its own right.

Van Vliet was just named CAA Player of the Week. One of the Tribe's key challenges this season was figuring out whether anyone could share the offensive load with Knight and relieve the All-CAA pivot of the responsibility of carrying the team himself. With Van Vliet and Thornton Scott (12.8 ppg, 52.4% from deep), it looks like coach Dane Fischer's found something that's worked, at least in the early going.

That going gets a lot rougher this evening on the road against Oklahoma. We're not going to win, but it'll be really interesting to see how the dual-big setup fares against a Power Five opponent.

This Week in Wrenball: Not in the Face

Here at the internet's third (maybe fourth)-leading purveyor of William & Mary men's basketball information, we're not in the business of beating dead horses*. Good thing, because the equine carcass of the fallout from the firing of Tony Shaver heading into a season where he had an odds-on chance to win the CAA is deader than Rasputin.

* Let's not kid ourselves. Beating dead horses, hitting recurring themes, tilting at familiar windmills - those things are our stock in trade. Bite me, Randy Newman.

"What have I gotten myself into?"

No, we're not here to wallow in what might have been. W&M's 2019-20 season starts today, and we've got to go to mock-battle with the team we've got. New head man Dane Fischer sends his team out against a fairly mediocre High Point team this evening, a team that will give the green in Green and Gold an alternative meaning.

W&M returns players that accounted for 38.2% of the team's 2018-19 minutes, 13.7% of made three-pointers, 38.6% of rebounds, 44.8% of assists, and 38.2% of all points. Without context, those numbers represent a daunting challenge. If you realize that senior pivot Nathan "The Commodore" Knight represents 65% of the returning rebounds, 41.3% of assists, and 73.3% of the points, you begin to understand the nature of the task at hand.

Knight, arguably the best big man in W&M history, enters the season on the short-list for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar award, given to the best center in the NCAA. (Shouldn't it be called the Lew Alcindor award, though?). He averaged 21.0 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game last season, the first NCAA Division I player to do so since Tim Duncan in 1992. That's lofty territory. The first-team All-CAA and first-team CAA All-Defense awardee will undoubtedly be the center of attention for opposing defenses, and savvy coaches will go after him at the defensive end in an effort to get him in foul trouble.

Fischer will be counting very, very heavily on transfers Bryce Barnes (5'11" guard, averaged 6.1 points, 2.7 assists and 2.4 rebounds per in 25 games at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Tyler Hamilton (a 6'4" guard who averaged 1.8 points and 1.3 boards in 11.8 minutes/game at Penn), and Andy Van Vliet (a 7'1" center with excellent outside touch, who redshirted last year after transferring from Wisconsin, where he averaged 3.4 points and 1.4 rebounds his junior season) to augment returning point guards Luke Loewe and Thornton Scott. Scott showed flashes during his freshman year, while Loewe is a decent defender and not much more. Your humble blogger doesn't really know much yet about freshmen Miguel Ayesa (who apparently can shoot the ball with some aplomb), Ben Wight, and Thatcher Stone, other than the fact that he's going to confuse the latter with Thornton Scott a lot, and that at least one of them had better be a stud if this team's gonna do anything at all**.

** If you're thinking this all sounds like a shaky foundation upon which to build a winning team, you may be correct.

Lionel Richie's Commodores had depth and experience. Nathan Knight's Pips, a lot less so.

CAA coaches tabbed the Tribe to finish 7th, which says a lot about Knight, and not much about coaches' ability to forecast. CBS Sports' Matt Norlander rates W&M 296th out of 353 Division I teams, which feels about right. For me, if we win 10 games and finish out of the CAA cellar, it's a good season.

Which is a Huge step down from where this squad might've been had the AD given Tony Shaver one more year. Not over it. Not nearly.

This Week in Wrenball: Fisch or Cut Bait

I have never in my adult sporting life experienced a situation quite like what's happened with the William & Mary hoops program over the past three weeks. In a nutshell, the ambitious young athletic director fired the school's best-ever coach to a resounding chorus of 'what the fuck are you doing' and proceeded to botch the hiring of the next coach to the point where it was obvious to everyone that the Tribe had failed and failed and failed again to land its top choices.

While all this was happening, five of the team's top seven returning players announced their intent to explore their transfer options, while a sixth, all-CAA center Nathan Knight, declared himself eligible for the NBA draft.

It was, to put it succinctly, a goddamn mess.

Yesterday, the school announced that 39 year-old Dane Fischer has been hired as the 31st coach in W&M history. Fischer, who's been an assistant coach for the entirety of his 16-year coaching career, has been on the bench at George Mason for the past four years. Prior to that, he worked with Mason head coach Dave Paulsen at Bucknell and Rider.

Fischer is a highly-regarded young coach, lauded as a very effective recruiter and a gifted offensive mind. Our man in Fairfax, the one who looks like Scott Hamilton and is on texting terms with Paulsen, says the Mason coach expects Fischer to do very well as a head coach.

And in his opening remarks as the Tribe head man, Fischer sounded all the right notes:



In particular, I was curious to see whether Fischer referenced his predecessor, Tony Shaver. He did, in a gracious manner. If nothing else, Fischer gives good press conference. AD Samantha Huge and President Katherine Rowe stretched the bounds of credulity, though, in repeatedly insisting that W&M's new hoops priorities included winning championships, but continuing to compete the right way. We had a coach that competed the right way, and he was the most successful CAA head man over the past six seasons, his only failure having the dice come up snake-eyes during the annual tournament crapshoot.

I wish Fischer no ill will. In fact, I hope he's wildly successful. But as I said on Twitter earlier today, just don't ask me to he happy for him. Doing so, at least now, feels like a betrayal of Shaver, the coach who gave us hope where none existed previously.

Win one for Tony

None of the players who've taken steps to explore their options outside Williamsburg have actually decided to leave, so Fischer's first order of business will be to demonstrate his prowess as a recruiter and coax them back into the fold. If he succeeds, W&M will enter next season with one of its best teams in years. If not, his first few seasons may test his faith and the patience of an obviously impatient athletic director.

When Fischer rolls the balls out in October and preps his team for a new season, I'll be rooting for them. Unlike my Twitter acquaintance @JeffACherry, who said earlier, "Personally I hope they lose every game next year.", I haven't the luxury of cheering for poor results for the Green and Gold. And if Samantha Huge's bold (ill-advised, rash, tone-deaf?) move pays off in an NCAA Tournament bid, I'll be thrilled for the kids and for generations of W&M players and fans. If that unlikely event comes to pass, I sure hope Tony Shaver is there to see it.

In Whom Do We Trust Now?

Since at least 2008, it's been our custom to repeat 'In Shaver We Trust' when assessing the fortunes of the William & Mary hoops program. Now, we have no idea where to place that trust. Certainly not in neophyte athletic director Samantha Huge, whose firing of Shaver without seeming regard to the obvious consequences has likely doomed the Tribe program to the cellar of the mediocre CAA for at least the next several years.

To recap the state of affairs, Shaver was fired after W&M lost to Delaware in the first round of the 2019 CAA Tournament, despite the fact that his team had just become the only current CAA member to win 10 or more league games in six consecutive seasons, and with little regard for the fact that the team he had returning next year would've been a favorite to win the league. Since the firing, which was nearly unanimously panned by the hoops intelligencia, four prospective starters on next year's squad have entered the NCAA's transfer portal - seniors Justin Pierce and Matt Milon are considering leaving as graduate transfers, and freshmen Chase Audige and L.J. Owens are willing to sit out a year to transfer.

Pre-enactment of Samantha Huge making it rain

Rumors abound that Huge is willing to significantly raise the bar on salary to attract a name coach to Williamsburg. On Twitter, @CoachingChanges (I have no idea who runs it, but they consistently seem to get things right - they had Shaver on the hot seat last year and I got pissed about it, but they sure knew more than I did) suggested yesterday that W&M would pay as much as $700k/year for the job. That's more than double Shaver's package. Other rumors have the budget even higher, on the hunch that there's a deep-pocketed donor willing to drop the cash.

While I think it's a good thing that W&M will invest more into the program, I can't for the life of me figure out who would take the job right now. Or perhaps, who would take the job for the right reasons. A talented young guy like UMBC's Ryan Odom or a LeMoyne's Patrick Beilein would have to know that they'd be taking on total rebuild at a school with serious academic demands and constraints - even modest success is at least three years away. A retread like John Thompson III, who worked with Huge at Georgetown, would want serious money, and would view the job as a career rehabilitation opportunity. And why would someone in that scenario (assuming we're not talking absurd cash) take the W&M job given the high likelihood of failure.

Nathan Knight's senior season is gonna be...whew, man

In all likelihood, we're going to wind up overpaying for a middling assistant with a modest profile, probably repped by Parker Executive Search, a firm that specializes in athletic executive recruiting, in a you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours transaction designed to help Huge land her next job. My greatest fear, other than the obvious reality that we'll be fucking terrible on the court for the next five years, is that we're looking at Rick Boyages v2.0.

Man, I hope I'm wrong. But that would be really unusual. This, as we've said ad nauseum, will likely do down as a Huge mistake.

Emergency Wrenball Post: In Shaver We Trusted

We've been over the numbers ad nauseam. The 2-18 record in CAA Tournament play between 1985 and 2003. The 11-45 mark the Tribe hoops squad put up over my first two years on campus. The run of 17 years with a single postseason victory. The 21 seasons between 1985 and 2007 with two winning seasons (one of those 14-13). The 100-38 loss at Duke in 1992.

We don't understand, either, Coach

And of late, the six consecutive seasons of double-digit conference victories. The double-digit overall victories in 12 of 13 years (by far the best such stretch in W&M basketball history). The four CAA Tournament finals. The six-point lead with 70 fucking seconds to play in the 2014 CAA championship game. The seven first-team All-CAA players. The best-shooting team in America in 2017-18, and one of the best of all-time. William & Mary's all-time leading scorer.

The first set of digits represents William & Mary basketball's history before Tony Shaver was hired from Hampden-Sydney in 2003, figuring he had one last, best shot to test his mettle at the Division I level. After a couple of years of scuffling, he scrapped his up-tempo system and adapted to the players he was able to recruit, and built an offense tailored to disciplined, smart athletes who could shoot, even if most of them couldn't jump out of the gym in the early years. Which led to the second group of numbers.

Stats are interesting, and you can build a story around them if you're so inclined. W&M Athletic Director Samantha Huge seems to have built a narrative that suits her vision around a single stat, or lack thereof. In firing the best coach ever to have worked the sidelines in Williamsburg, she noted that, "We are forever grateful to Tony for his commitment and service over 16 years to William & Mary. He is a teacher not just a coach and his impact on hundreds of young men will be felt by them for years to come." Nothing to quibble with there.

Huge went on to say, "However, we have high expectations for our men's basketball program, including participating in the NCAA Tournament, and we will not shy away from setting the bar high.  Now is the time to begin a new chapter in William & Mary basketball." The 0-fer the Shaver put up when it comes to NCAA Tournament bids is the Scarlet Number that Samantha Huge couldn't overlook.

At the mid-major level, every conference tournament is a crapshoot, a lot like the Major League Baseball playoffs. Four, five, six teams in each league have hope entering the postseason. Look at Saint Mary's this year. Or Bradley. Or Northern Kentucky. All we can ever ask as alumni of a school like William & Mary is to have hope.

Before Tony Shaver, we had none. Since our first miracle CAA Tournament run in 2008, we've had it in spades, and three other times, we were one game away from history. After the 2008 CAA Finals loss to George Mason, we wrote this:

"But as we noted in this space just yesterday, the loss does nothing to diminish the joy this unlikely group of kids brought to W&M’s generally subdued alumni. For the briefest of moments we were allowed to pretend we belonged, to plan trips to the Boise or Sacramento or Tacoma subregionals, to shout ourselves hoarse watching a game that actually mattered, and to dream. Generations of us had never even allowed ourselves to dream. When we talk about this team, that’s the thing we’ll remember – not that they finally fell short, but that they let us dream, hope, and care. And at some level, that’s the magic of college basketball, that an obscure school from a mid-major conference can make otherwise mature (it’s in the eye of the beholder, people) adults let loose the bonds of logic and rationality and really, deeply believe in the most unlikely outcomes."

When we talk about Tony Shaver, we won't talk about the 226-258 record or the eight losing seasons. The thing we'll remember is not that he lost more than he won, but that he let us dream, hope, and care. And that's a hell of a thing.

In Shaver We Trust.