Mo Cassara preached caution after the Flying Dutchmen led
wire-to-wire in beating William & Mary Jan. 12 to earn their second win in
three #CAAHoops games. With the memories of an 0-fer December still fresh,
Cassara reminded his listeners that “…it’s not going to be easy, we’re going to
have some more dips and some more ups and downs.”
It didn’t take the Dutchmen long to prove Cassara clairvoyant.
The Dutchmen’s 57-46 loss to George Mason Jan. 19 doesn’t look that bad on the
scoreboard, and an 11-point loss on the back end of a two-game road trip to a
program that has owned the good guys since The Great Screw Job (Hofstra is now
2-9 against George Mason since twitch Tom O’Connor wasn’t in the room twitch
but who’s counting?) would seem to be the type of competitive defeat that could
provide the Dutchmen some fuel and some optimism as the February rematch with
the Patriots and March’s CAA Tournament approach.
Except…hoo boy, this was some dip. A historic one, even, for
all the wrong reasons, and a loss that proved just how tenuous the Dutchmen’s
trip on momentum will be for the remainder of this season.
We could get creative with the adjectives to describe the
Dutchmen’s shooting in Fairfax, or we could just state the facts: It was the
program’s worst single-game performance in a generation. The Dutchmen were an
ice cold 11-of-48 (22.9 percent) from the field, the fewest field goals in a
game since the Dutchmen had 11 baskets against Boston University Feb. 15, 1995 and
the lowest shooting percentage since Hofstra shot 21.5 percent against UNLV Dec.
30, 1992.
The Dutchmen didn’t set any negative records from outside,
but not for a lack of trying: They were 1-of-13 on 3-pointers and missed their
last nine attempts after Taran Buie’s 3-pointer with 14:45 left in the first
half.
The top three scorers for the Dutchmen—Buie (14 points),
Stevie Mejia (10 points) and Stephen Nwaukoni (eight points)—combined for 32
points on 9-of-31 shooting. Everyone else was (doing the math) 2-for-17. Three
days after draining five 3-pointers against Northeastern, David Imes was
0-for-8 from the field. Oof.
And it could have been worse: The Dutchmen were just 4-of-25
from the floor in the first half, when they endured stretches of 7:30 and 7:15
without a field goal. They “improved” to 7-of-23 in the second half, but had
just one field goal in the final 10 minutes, a span in which they went
scoreless from the field for 8:11.
Such droughts made it even easier than usual to believe the
Dutchmen were right there on the road against a superior foe. One basket apiece
during those three extended droughts and it’s a five-point game. Sigh.
Of course, there were other elements to the defeat that
probably would have cropped up and haunted the Dutchmen anyway, most notably
the assist-to-turnover ratio of 1:5. Not a misprint—three assists, 15
turnovers. The Dutchmen also didn’t maximize their opportunities at the free
throw line, where they were a good-but-not-great 23-of-31 against one of the
most foul-prone teams in the country.
A down week (spoiler alert: The next week was a down one
too) after an upbeat one? We can’t say we weren’t warned.
3 STARS OF THE GAME (vs. George Mason, 1/19)
3: Stephen Nwaukoni
2: Taran Buie
1: Stevie Mejia
SEASON STANDINGS***
26: Taran Buie
23: Stevie Mejia
15: Stephen Nwaukoni
7: David Imes
7: Jordan Allen
4: Moussa Kone
3: Daquan Brown
2: Matt Grogan
Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com
or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.
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