Game 9: Catawba College, Wednesday, Dec 17th, 7 PM AT THE RAC, NO TV

psyclone

Hall of Famer
Nice tune-up for Saturday's game with IONA who is 6th in the country in pts per game and 341st in ppg given up. The team hustled throughout and most of the team seemed to enjoy themselves. I suppose several dunks off of nice passes leads to that--good highlight reel material.
 

99 Patriot

Starter
GIVING DAY 2023
Couple of thoughts:

The RAC is fun. It was not near capacity though which was a sad statement.

The second half at least felt a lot like Shenandoah. Good that we are able to pound it inside and crush teams with no size. Sadly I'd say their guard play was equal to ours, or at least close to it.

Winning helps, but it did seem like the team was loose and enjoyed playing basketball. That was nice to see.

Lastly, I know it would be a hit to our overall attendance numbers, but I'd play the vcu game there each year. Limit it to 3-500 student tickets and season ticket holders only. This would keep out the annoying vcu fans (except for those tix we are mandated to provide) and would be as good an atmosphere as we could possibly have. It would also be a big incentive to convince people to buy season tix.
 
Couple of thoughts:

The RAC is fun. It was not near capacity though which was a sad statement.

The second half at least felt a lot like Shenandoah. Good that we are able to pound it inside and crush teams with no size. Sadly I'd say their guard play was equal to ours, or at least close to it.

Winning helps, but it did seem like the team was loose and enjoyed playing basketball. That was nice to see.

Lastly, I know it would be a hit to our overall attendance numbers, but I'd play the vcu game there each year. Limit it to 3-500 student tickets and season ticket holders only. This would keep out the annoying vcu fans (except for those tix we are mandated to provide) and would be as good an atmosphere as we could possibly have. It would also be a big incentive to convince people to buy season tix.

Just let Pavarotti in, the older dooschbag in the crew cut who always wears the black jacket, and the homo-erotic bandleader. And Rodney.

And also only let like six guys of theirs into play. And they don't get any timeouts.

And their locker room has to be out in the woods.

Then we only lose 72-58
 

MasonFanatic

Moderator
Staff member
⭐️ Donor ⭐️
GIVING DAY 2023
I don't think their guards were as good as ours, but they badly outhustled us for the first 25 minutes. Our ball handlers would take their eyes off the ball like this was a practice walk-through, and they would get stripped. We got more aggressive in the second half, though. I think I heard we had 12 turnovers at the half (including 2 terrible charge calls...), so that means we only had 3 in the second half.
 
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mrmangos02

Four-star Recruit
Watching this game was easier in the second half but Catawba still got to the basket with ease, their shots weren't going in. One could say it was because of good defense, but lets be honest....it was because they cant shoot (which is why they are DII).

Hard to look at silver lining. IMO, even though we put up 99 points, it was a bad outing for this team.
 

psyclone

Hall of Famer
Watching this game was easier in the second half but Catawba still got to the basket with ease, their shots weren't going in. One could say it was because of good defense, but lets be honest....it was because they cant shoot (which is why they are DII).

Hard to look at silver lining. IMO, even though we put up 99 points, it was a bad outing for this team.

Granted it was against a Division 2 team, but you don't have to be a complete kill-joy over a 30 pt win. A "bad outing"....when we shoot over 67% and 50% from 3, and have 21 assists (more than twice what we've been averaging).

As for Catawba getting "to the basket with ease" but missing, not because of good Mason defense, but just because Catawba can't shoot, your overlooking some numbers.

Mason had 13 blocks in the game, nearly all of which came near the basket. Catawba, which shot 35% for the game (they've averaged 43% for the year), missed 45 shots in the game, 13 of the misses were 3's. So of Catawba's 32 misses on 2 pointers, essentially 40% (13/32) were because of Mason's blocks.

Lopsided wins don't come often for us these days---try to enjoy them when they do occur.
 
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