Tomorrow night’s game against Lehigh presents one last chance to catch our collective breath before we dive into a stretch of five consecutive games against teams ranked in Ken Pomeroy’s top 100, two of which come away from the JPJ. The Mountain Hawks have experience (they start two juniors and a senior), skill (center Tim Kempton is the reigning Patriot League Player of the Year), and accolades (they were picked to win the Patriot League) but shouldn’t afford us too stiff of a challenge.
The Mountain Hawks are 0-4 for the second consecutive year, but it’s not as bad as you think. Losses to Yale, Columbia, and Syracuse are to be expected and one to a comparable foe like Canisius is excusable on the road, and I’m sure that they’ll eventually salvage their season with their conference slate and end up in some alphabet soup postseason tournament.
The common threads in their four losses have been poor perimeter defense and defensive rebounding. Lehigh opponents are getting quantity (three of their first four foes each hit 11 threes, and Yale made nine) and quality (they’ve made 40% of them) from distance. Lehigh is turning opponents over at a high rate (20.8% – all four opponents have crossed the 20% mark) but have cancelled out any good that does by either allowing a made three or repeated tries at the basket (Lehigh’s giving up a 43.5% offensive rebound mark) on possessions that finish with a different outcome. Canisius grabbed 22 offensive rebounds against Lehigh in their most recent outing. We didn’t allow our 22nd until the second half against Long Beach State, in our fourth game of the season.
Lehigh’s offense has been underwhelming. They’re shooting 39% from the floor, turning the ball over a ton (19.7% of the time), and are getting an alarmingly high percentage (17.3%) of their shots blocked. Yale blocked 12 Lehigh shots, and Syracuse took out seven, which exemplifies the issues they’ve had finishing inside (41% on two pointers so far this season) and led to a reliance on the three (36.2% of their shots, of which they’re making 35.4%).
The 6’10” Kempton — son and namesake of 12-year NBA center Tim Kempton — is the go-to guy: he’s scoring 17.3 points per game, doing much of his damage so far by using his deep repertoire of post moves to get to the line. He actually has more free throw tries (44 FTA, double-digit tries in three of four games) than shot attempts (37) so far. It’ll be interesting to see how we guard Kempton. All of our bigs have been foul prone at times, so guarding him one on one could be a challenge, but Kempton is also a good enough passer (20.8% assist rate) to kick the ball to an open teammate against our post trap.
6’4” Austin Price scores 15.3 points per game and is 10-25 on threes, senior forward Jesse Chuku is their third double figure scorer (10.8 per), and point guard Kahron Ross is struggling with his shot (8.5 ppg, 1-11 on threes) but is an effective distributor, especially via the pick and roll.
I don’t think these Mountain Hawks have what it takes to slow the roll we’re on offensively if we were able to bring any of it home from Charleston. Guys were knifing to the rim there, and the ball was crisply moving from the lane back out to shooters for rhythm looks (we made 25-49 of our threes, 51%, in the three games). Teams with turnover issues (see: FSU) tend to struggle against us, and I think our sheer numbers will wear them down.
Finally, their biggest weakness (defensive rebounding) matches one of our biggest strengths (we’ve grabbed 36.7% of our own misses).
Verdict:
A 15-20 point win in front of whatever home crowd hasn’t left for Thanksgiving vacation already. I’ll be there.
