Last night was not a great example of the beauty of basketball, but it did allow us to flex our collective muscles in the face of a little adversity.
The offense was dead in the first half. The ball movement seemed a step behind (and didn’t push through to a good shot), there was too much dribbling, and every possession seemed to end in someone trying to produce points out of an iso. It didn’t work: we logged 33% shooting, and trailed 26-22 at the break.
The second half was a different story. Justin and Malcolm (who combined for 33 of our 59 points for the game) went to work, scoring of our 14 in a 14-2 run that put us up eight. After GW made a mini-run to get within four, Justin woke the crowd up with a thunderous tip-slam off a perfectly missed Nolte three, and then Darion Atkins went to work around the rim, producing six points and pushing the lead back to double digits. At that point — up 11 against a team that had only managed 35 to that point — this thing was pretty much iced. This was a nice throwback to last season, where tenuous first halves would become exuberant blowouts in the second.
I ID’d three things I wanted to see improved, and we passed every test. For all of our sluggishness on offense, there were only eight turnovers (an acceptable 14% of our possessions). We owned the defensive glass (79.4% of defensive boards) and the interior in general (nine blocks, and Kevin Larsen — who was a test in himself — managed just two points and coughed up four turnovers against a steady stream of post traps), and the leaky perimeter defense I was worried about harassed the Colonials into a steady stream of contested twos. Kethan Savage produced 13 points and gouged us a little with his quickness off the bounce, but also only managed to attempt nine shots and didn’t record an assist.
GW shot 38.1% on twos in this game, and the three Colonials with the biggest presence in the lane combined to make three of 11 tries.
Darion Atkins was great. He was a monolithic defensive presence all game, and remained engaged in the game throughout despite being an afterthought on offense for most of the way — something he’s had problems with before. He — and Justin, who settled in for the second half and produced another 18 point effort that included the first two “HOLY SHIT, IT’S JUSTIN moments of the season, further showing off his newfound maturity and well-rounded offensive game — were my players of the game.
Tennessee State is up next.
