Goooooood evening AUHoops fans! Hope you're all enjoying your Thursday night and basking in the glow of last night's revenge win against the Navy Midshipmen. I wasn't able to make the game because I was running a beer tasting for some AU alums downtown, but I want to thank Bobby for filling in admirably as the conductor of the liveblog. He did such a good job that maybe he should do it all the time. I kid, I kid, Bobby, I won't saddle you with that.
I went through and read everything I could get my hands on, including the liveblog notes, and I have some thoughts about the Senior Night victory. Thought I'd share them with you, and I encourage you to share your own in the comments.
- After going a month without scoring 20+, Vlad has returned to his impaling form and scored 20+ in back-to-back games. Huge game for him last night as he just missed a double-double with 28 points and 9 rebounds. This bodes very well for the Eagles as Vlad seems to be coming out of the relative funk he was in and is scoring points in bunches. We'll need him to keep this up for the rest of the season for the Eagles' year to end on a bright note.
- Troy continues his hot shooting ways. Last night he was 4-8 from downtown and finished with 16 points. Good to see him get to the free throw line for 6 shots as he hasn't been getting to the line with any regularity. Fun fact: this was the first game all season where he had more than 4 FT attempts in one game. Shame that that's the case because he's a pretty good FT shooter (76%). Hopefully he'll get more comfortable at drawing contact. We've seen with Vlad recently that if you can draw some contact you can make an absolute killing at the line. Would love to see Troy take that page out of Vlad's book.
- Tough game for Lump last night. For whatever reason, he really did not do well against Navy this year. In the two games he averaged just 22.5 minutes and attempted 9 shots total. The two Navy games are the only ones in the past eight where he hasn't scored in double figures. He was in foul trouble last night, which gave Tony the chance to come in off the bench and snag some minutes. The freshman did well and scored 4 points and got 4 boards in just 15 minutes. Good that Tony can come in and effectively spell Lump.
- What does it say about how far Nick Hendra has come that he has 5 assists and 3 turnovers and it looks like a bad game? After recording 16 assists to just one turnover in the past two games, the very respectable 5:3 assist to turnover ratio looks pedestrian. However, Hendra chipped in 11 points, include three huge long range buckets and also pulled down two boards and recorded two steals. Huge senior night for Nick who has really had a remarkable fourth year as an Eagle.
- 21 turnovers for this team and we still won by 11? Bizarre. This was by far the highest turnover total of the year (they had 18 against UMES waaaaaay back when). Luptak was a culprit here as he had six turnovers (matched against six assists). Not often that you see a team have 21 turnovers and still dominate this game in the fashion that they ostensibly did.
- Seems like we came out with a chip on our shoulder last night. After opening 7-1 and then being behind 8-7, we went on a long run and never really let up. Navy made a bit of a run late in the second half, but they never got closer to 4. Good to see this team playing with that kind of fire and the desire to really take it to a team. Hope that keeps up.
What did I miss? Feel free to leave it in the comments!
Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!
Vlad's increased output was becausee Holy Cross and Navy didn't come at him hard and fast with the double team. Bucknell is the best at this; they race at him like they're putting out a fire, and it's an effective strategy against us.
ReplyDeleteWe need to be prepared that, whoever we face in the first round will throw all their efforts into stopping Vlad.
I'm pretty astounded that Navy was able to Stump the Lump as they did. Wednesday's game was probably the most stumped I've seen him. Poor Lump got into foul trouble early, and looked frustrated on the bench most of the first half and definitely got an earful from JJ more than once. Glad Tony was able to pick up the slack, but I remain baffled as to how such a small team can stifle Lump like that. Fortunately Lafayette is a much better matchup for him.
ReplyDeleteAlso, 21 turnovers is incredibly high, as we were averaging 13.5 per game prior to this one - one of the top marks in the nation, in fact. The fact that our pockets were picked so thoroughly (and honestly, a lot of it had to do with some slippery hands on our part as well) and we still won is a testament to how badly we wanted to beat Navy. We had some passes where we just gave the ball away, mostly half-court heaves used to break the full court press.
Finally, congrats to Nick on some CLUTCH three pointers near the end. Navy was getting far too close for comfort, and it's Hendra's sharp shooting that truly put them away. We also hit a season-high 11 threes this game (4 from Vlad, 4 from Troy, 3 from Hendra), which put us over the top. Our shooting saved us, that's for sure, as we weren't killing them on the boards either with Lump so terribly stumped.