Another fun stat from today: Mezie hit his first three since the first game of his freshman year.

I have been lamenting our lack of sped all season.  Today we played a team that was slower than us.  As a result, our ability to get to the hoop as well as our defensive rotations were all that much quicker.  Daley, who reminded me a bit of Chris Monroe (a “power guard” didn’t simply have an off game...we defended him excellently.  We switched defenders on him periodically and there was always help if the prime defender got beat.  The defensive game plan was excellent.   On offense, not only did St Joes lack of speed allow us to consistently beat them off the dribble, but it allowed that extra split second for the three point shooters to get off the shot, resulting in our shooting close to 50% from beyond the arc.  Also loved our assist to turnover ratio today.  It was running close to 3 to 1 for most of the game.

Great bounce back after a tough one at Fordham! The team clearly came out more energized and I guess they needed to get back home after a couple games away. Two blowouts in three games is impressive.

Another fun stat: Chase Paar and Anthony Longpre both went to Glenelg Country School, and both bigs finished with double doubles today.

Longpre might have had a career game against us, but I was actually pretty impressed with him offensively and thought he was their best player easily on that end (not a high bar). Defensively, he isn't great but St. Joe's as a whole is lousy on that end. His stroke on his jumpers looks really weird, but shooting 36% from deep as a big man is pretty good. The thing that stood out to me most was his ability to put the ball on the floor at 6'10", which means you can't necessarily over play him along the perimeter. I knew that this was going to be a tough test for Chase based on that, but credit Paar for holding up relatively well. There were a couple of times where he found himself stuck underneath the hoop and Longpre took advantage with a couple and ones on drives that hopefully Chase will be able to contest with more experience. Longpre camps out along the perimeter a lot, but still managed to pull down 10 rebounds and dish out three assists. Under the right system and coaching, he can definitely be a rotation player, and I see why many coaches liked him out of HS.

Daly reminds me a bit of Pat Steeves with his rec league like moves. He definitely has a nice touch shooting the ball, but I really liked our defense often times triple teaming him and making him give the ball up. With the lack of talent on SJU this year, limiting him basically meant we had the game in the bag. It was clear that SJU was less athletic than us, but in terms of pace they like to play a lot faster than us and I thought that would be a bigger factor than it ended up being. Unlike the UMass game for a stretch, they never forced us to play faster than we wanted to, partly because their defense is terrible.

The difference for me was our freshmen vs. their freshmen. Our frosh far and away outplayed theirs. Brown had some nice moments for them offensively in the second half but struggled a ton defensively. Moore had a couple nice possessions in the second half but otherwise was a non-factor all game. Knox honestly didn't look like he could even play at the A10 level. On a thin team that relies a lot on these guys to contribute (as well as a former walk-on Freeman who even started) that made a big difference in the game.

It was nice to see us put up a season high 85 points offensively today and see the shots go in after the Fordham game. Unlike the Rams though, SJU didn't really pack the paint and force us to shoot from deep (it probably wouldn't have made a difference today the way we were stroking it, but still). Driving lanes were very wide for our guards to get in near the hoop, or find a cutting man who could get in the lane just as easily for a quality shot near the paint. SJU looked pretty clueless defensively. They aren't abysmal offensively, but if they are trying to become a better A10 team they will have to try way harder on the defensive end. Might be a lack of personnel.

Defensively, I liked our approach on Daly as mentioned, but the mayhem in particular has been exciting to see. The guys are clearly getting more comfortable in the system. The number of turnovers we've generated the past couple of games getting into the passing lanes has been amazing. 6 steals today which is definitely above our season average.

I thought the walk-ons should have had more run as well late in the game. Surprised AT didn't even play at all. He looked like he was dressed for the game, but never came in.

Player Breakdown:
Jamison - nice to see his threes go in again. Had a nice move early on to create separation from Daly and convert on a three. Also had a memorable moment defensively stealing the ball and taking it the other way for a layup, and another play cutting to the hoop and finishing. He has come a long way on both sides of the ball. Even led the team in steals today with 3! Nice bounce back game overall, despite some foul trouble (a couple were borderline calls). With Pierre going 0-9 today, Jamison is back in the league lead in made threes with 61.

Chase - the most excited I've been watching a freshman big in some time. Chase showed quite a bit defensively. While there are times where he finds himself out of position, he had some impressive denials at the rim today, including one play where he used his long arms to take away a possible made layup for Joe's and pass ahead to Maceo who had an incredible finish. He is pretty reliable with finishing down low (I like that we try to get him going early on most games) but two of his misses I'm sure he would have liked to have had back. They were really good setups that should have been converted, but that didn't matter in this game I guess. Congrats to him on his first double double! Many more to come.

JNJ - it was clear that this game meant something to him based on the way he played. His three point stroke is really coming along and today was his best performance yet. As mentioned earlier, SJU left wide gaps in the paint for Jameer to get in and finish some acrobatic layups, and of course they missed boxing him out on that putback dunk (reminded me a lot of Juice's last year, forgetting who that was against now). Gave us some nice rebounding too. Free throw shooting was off, but that was pretty much the only thing that didn't go his way today. Also had a nice deflection along the sideline that led to a turnover. Won't be included in the stat sheet, but little winning plays like that add up over the course of the game. Hope this strong performance is a sign of things to come! Great game (also nice to see his dad in GW gear!). JNJ also gets the game ball for today (who else would it be?).

Armel - after a couple games of sloppy passing, nice to see him get back to distributing the ball well with 7 assists to just 2 turnovers (the team did a great job as a whole not turning the ball over today - just 7 turnovers!) He had his usual tough finishes in traffic, but I liked that he decided to take a few threes today even if they didn't go in (the first two especially came close). If he can become a threat shooting the ball, teams are going to have a hard time guarding him (they do already with his penetrating ability) and lanes will open up a bit for him to fake on threes. Solid job as usual.

Maceo - nice to see him shoot the ball well these past few games. When Maceo makes shots and contributes offensively, this team becomes pretty tough to guard even with its current configuration. Would like to get him to the line given he's basically automatic from there. The coaching staff ran that football play that we executed successfully in the Delaware game again, and credit goes to Maceo for staying with the play after Daly blocked his initial attempt. He's in a good rhythm shooting the ball right now.

Amir - was a bit more in control today which was nice to see. Although it's slightly disappointing he hasn't been a go-to guy for us (in terms of scoring), he has played the glue guy role perfectly during conference play. Again today filled the stat sheet with 6 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal, and 2 blocks. One of those blocks he had coming from behind was really impressive, and did a good job making an extra pass on one play that led to an open Chase dunk. His only bad turnover was trying to make a no look pass to Ace who was surrounded by a bunch of Hawk players. Gave us good minutes today overall.

Ace - broke his streak of five straight games with 2 points scored. Didn't do too much today in his 6 minutes, but we didn't need him to.

Shawn - continues to do a great job passing the ball. Even with Armel graduating after this year, I'm slightly less concerned about our PG play next year with JNJ improving by the game, Amir as a secondary ball handler in many lineups, and Shawn showing great poise even though he doesn't usually see too much time on the floor. His ability to pass out of the double team and find Maceo open for three was really awesome (I think he also found Maceo in the corner for three on a possession where we ran things a bit more uptempo than usual). Shawn has been giving us some quality minutes for much of the season and that has been much appreciated. 5 assists in 6 minutes is wild.

Mezie - nice to see him make a three in the game. I was surprised he didn't pump fake when he got the ball at the top of the key, but the staff has clearly been working with him to expand his range, and nice to see that work pay off. It was just his sixth attempt from distance this year (he was just 1-5 his freshman year). Offurum has also shown to be a pretty decent defender at times as well. There will definitely be games coming up where we'll need the bench to give us some quality minutes, and so far it's nice to see that Shawn and Mezie can be trusted to come in and provide that.

Next up is Davidson at home. We haven't had too much success against them recently, dropping the past four contests. If we can continue to defend the three tightly (there were times in the second half of this one where we kind of got a bit lackadaisical - understandable given our lead) I genuinely think this one is winnable since it's at the Smith Center. The Wildcats have been playing a bit better of late, and shutting down Jon Axel in particular will be a challenge. Will be a fun one for sure.
 

Not often you see a game with all five starters in double figures in scoring!

dmvpiranha wrote:

Great game (also nice to see his dad in GW gear!)
 

Lol, I didn't realize it was him wearing the JNJ hooded sweatshirt until people started coming over to talk to him.

Really good analysis by DMV, as usual. 
Noticing all the things we seem in the game--and much more.
Longpre has come along and had a double-double against us. A big man like him would have been
a significant contributor on the team in previous years and this year, too.
  However, seemingly less urgent now. Chase's upside and what we hope from incoming Noel, maybe (and a big maybe) the 2nd semester transfer Hunter Dean, Javi, if he stays --and maybe if we are lucky, another (healthy)
year for Arnaldo, would leave us in decent shape, if everyone is healthy.

JNJ was named A-10 RoW again.  That's two for him and two for Battle.  Maybe Paar has one in him too.  Future looks bright.

Local news station WUSA9 recently aired a short segment on Jameer Nelson Jr's performance against St.Joe's. It's good that at least one local outlet has picked up on how well JNJ is playing as a freshman!!



 

Jameer just has, "just scratching the surface" written all over him.

His true ceiling, you can see glimpses of in every game.