Hoops notes

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Hope you all enjoyed my opponent spotlight on Monmouth's John Bunch this morning; there was just one question I neglected to ask him when I interviewed him Monday.

Are you playing?

Bunch made a fool out of me when he missed the game with a knee injury sustained in the final minutes of Monmouth's last game against St. Peter's.

I was disappointed, not just because I wasted all the readers' time this morning, but because I would have really enjoyed watching a 7-foot-2, 320-pounder play.

Now some more notes from Tuesday's game:

While everyone in the crowd seemed disappointed about not getting cheesesteaks after the Florida Gulf Coast game, I was more disappointed tonight.

The Quakers wouldn't have had to run up the score to get there; they just would have had to make layups.

The Quakers missed countless layups in both halves, and nearly everybody was responsible. Most notably, anybody who tried to tip in a rebound rather than catching the ball and going up strong for a layup or a dunk.

Michael Kach looked good in his first action in two years. The junior played five minutes and scored his only points of the game with a putback of a Darren Smith miss in garbage time.

For Ibrahim Jaaber, plays that would have been steals last season are turning into points for the opposition this year.

Jaaber is still aggressive on the defensive end, and it resulted in six steals against the Hawks. But his gambles have hurt from time to time this year when he whiffs on the steal attempt and there's nobody in help defense or it leaves somebody open when someone comes to help.