MBB Game 31 - vs. James Madison (2/29/20, 4 pm)

[Wags]

The regular-season finale. Senior Day. The 1 seed at stake. Consecutive outright CAA regular-season titles at stake. Going into the CAA tourney winning 9 of 10 instead of with two straight losses at stake. And revenge for last year's spoiled Senior Day at stake. So, a lot more on the line in this one than originally expected after losing last night.

This one should never be in doubt. Start early and never let up. Wire to wire. Get it done and let Desure, Elijah and Conner enjoy their last game in Hempstead (barring an NIT home game, but we don't want to mention that!).

Hope it'll be a good crowd. The seniors and the team deserve it.

Win this one easily and "leap" (on 2/29) into the CAA tourney on a good note!

[Polito]

I'll be there w/my group, let's get some butts in the seats get this W and send them to the CAAT the right way!

[HUSID74]

Yup this game has become BIG.....I for one think that last night was a WAKE UP call to this team that we can't take ANY opponent for granted...how many times last night did Towson players literally jump over our guys to get rebounds????

We need EFFORT tomorrow night!

[Pride97]

Yup this game has become BIG.....I for one think that last night was a WAKE UP call to this team that we can't take ANY opponent for granted...how many times last night did Towson players literally jump over our guys to get rebounds????

We need EFFORT tomorrow night!

Half the time they didn't even jump - fell right into their hands. Their positioning was far superior inside.

[Wags]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2020/2/28/me ... -mack.aspx

[Wags]

Yup this game has become BIG.....I for one think that last night was a WAKE UP call to this team that we can't take ANY opponent for granted...how many times last night did Towson players literally jump over our guys to get rebounds????

We need EFFORT tomorrow night!

Some of it was effort, but I think most of it was just a bad matchup. Credit to Towson for using its physicality and superior size and strength to its advantage on the glass and with denying Buie.

Some of the per-game goals Joe wrote on the board were:
- Win the 50-50 balls
- Not allow second shots
- Be strong with the ball

After the game, he said they did none of that or anything else that was written on the board. He also said, "Every time there was a 50-50 situation, [Towson] came up with the ball… I thought that we weren’t able to get where we wanted to with the ball." That was especially true for Buie. They simply wouldn't let him penetrate at all. Credit to their staff and team on that. Buie had a season-high 15 FTA at Towson. Last night, none.

[triplec2195]

We're 13 point favorites in this game and we need to play like it. No hiccups in this game!

[EvanJ]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2020/2/28/me ... inale.aspx is Hofstra's preview titled "MBB: Hofstra Hosts James Madison In Regular Season Finale WHITE OUT." We are 21-13 (.618) against JMU. Thanks to free tickets from Jojogunne, JMU will break a tie with W&M for the opponent I've seen the most, as it will be my fifth time, and Hofstra is 2-2 vs. JMU when I am there. It will be my fourth game against JMU in the six years from March 1, 2014 through today. It will be by twelfth game against a team from Virginia, which doubles my second most, which is 6 against North Carolina teams. Hofstra is 12-13 (.480) in home CAA games I've been to.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/ ... game31.pdf is Hofstra's Game Notes.

https://jmusports.com/news/2020/2/28/me ... fstra.aspx is JMU's preview titled "Dukes Set to Close Regular Season at First-Place Hofstra." It says:

"Buoyed by his 40-point explosion the two teams' matchup in Hempstead last season, Lewis enters Saturday averaging 22.5 points and 5.2 rebounds in six career games against Hofstra. He has scored more than 20 points four times in that period."

Lewis is fifth in JMU history with 1,535 points, and he could pass Ron Curry, who is fourth with 1,550. Nisenson is fourth on our list with 672 more than Curry, and Stokes is fifth on our list with 613 more than Lewis.

JMU incorrectly says we are 20-13 against them. We were 20-13 against them before winning there this season. They have won four of the last five at Hofstra. I wonder how many teams can say that.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/ ... astern.pdf is JMU's Game Notes.

http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=289713 will have statistics. Going to the game means I wouldn't be home for the end of 2:00 P.M. games, but the CAA doesn't have any games before 4:00 P.M. today.

https://static.caasports.com/custompage ... m#team.ind has JMU's statistics. They have eight players averaging at least 10 minutes, and none of them are seniors. Antanee Pinkard, who has scored 24 points in 174 minutes, is their only senior. He has 59 career points in three seasons for them after one season for Hill College. His season-high of 5 points was against us, and we're the only CAA team he has had a 5-point game against. Matt Lewis (first with 18.9 PPG), Darius Banks (second with 12.4 PPG), Dwight Wilson (third with 10.1 PPG), and Zach Jacobs (fifth with 6.7 PPG) are juniors and have combined for 64.7 percent of their points. That must be among the leaders. Deshon Parker, who averages 9.7, is a sophomore and their top scorer who isn't a junior. Parker (4.07 APG and 1.78 A/TO) and Lewis (exactly 3.5 APG and 1.53 A/TO) are point guards. The last time we had teammates with at least 3 APG and at least 1.5 A/TO were seniors Jenkins (4.78 APG and 2.16 A/TO) and Kelleher (3.32 APG and 2.18 A/TO) in 2010-2011. In the 22 seasons from 1998-1999 through 2019-2020, that is the only season in which we had two players do that.

Jerry Beach has nor written an "I'll Be Quirky: James Madison" or posts about our seniors yet.

[Wags]

Connor goes to the bench at 17:29. Thought they'd at least give him until the first media timeout.

Pemberton scored the first 9 for Hofstra and singlehandedly led JMU, 9-6. Was 14-6, HU on a great crossover by Buie that set up his first made shot (a jumper), after JMU led 6-3. Was 14-8 at the first MTO.

Good sign as Ray has hit his first two shots, both 3s, to make it 17-10.

[Wags]

11-2 run makes it 38-23, HU.

Pemberton is already halfway to his career-high of 28 with 7:49 left in the first half.

[Wags]

Wow. 61-33 at the half. 13/21 from 3.

Team record, I understand, is 17 made 3s in a game. So, they're four short of that.

Eli (24 pts) is four short of his career-high.

And they're already four short of what they scored on Thursday.

[Pride97]

Nice exclamation point on the season. Took control early and it was never in doubt. Shot lights out today. Clearly the better team.

Great to see Connor get the start and that Joe was able to take Eli and Desure out of the game late to get the the ovation they deserve for their Hofstra careers.

Great achievement to go back to back! Hopefully they can finish this season off with a tourney championship too!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[EvanJ]

We reach 90 with 11:19 left, so we were on pace for the 120s, but we scored only 7 after that. We were favored by 13, and JMU came close to covering the spread with the 97-81 final. Our lead peaked at 34 at 87-53, so JMU ended on a 28-10 run. Buie missed his last 3 free throws, including two after being fouled with 3:10 left. He shot free throws 3-6, and it was the first time in his career that he attempted at least 6 free throws and missed at least half. We entered with a .782 free throw percentage to JMU's .651, for a difference of .131. JMU shot 13-16 (.813), and we shot 13-19 (.684), for a difference of .127 in favor of JMU, which is .258 off from a .131 difference in favor of us. Another way of looking at it is that entering the game, JMU averaged 7.7 missed free throws, and Buie averaged 0.6 missed free throws. Today there were 3 of each. JMU also had a higher field goal percentage.

Our 20 made threes are tied for third in CAA history. Delaware allowed a lot of threes in 2016-2017, as Northeastern broke the CAA record with 21 on January 5, 2017, and UNCW tied the record on February 4, 2017. It was the first time this season that a team made at least 20 threes in regulation of a conference game. Alabama made 22 in an overtime loss at Auburn, but Alabama made only 19 in regulation. It was the eleventh time a Division I team made at least 20 threes this season including that overtime game and six wins over non-Division I teams. I also have to mention non-Division I Multnomah, who made 21 threes in a 146-89 loss at Eastern Washington. Multnomah attempted 90 field goals of which 58 were free throws. They lost by 57, so making 40 threes would have forced overtime if everything else was equal. Eastern Washington made only 9 threes, but shot twos 50-67 (.746), and free throws 19-23 (.826). Mason Peatling scored 54 for Eastern Washington. He's a senior who averages 17.3 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.5 blocks. Eastern Washington is tied for first, so Peatling could hope to be drafted if he has a good game in the NCAA Tournament.

We had an extremely good ratio of 18 assists/5 turnovers = 3.6. It was our season-low in turnovers, with our previous low being 5, and our season-high in assists/turnovers.

We used ten players, and JMU used nine. It's really unusual for us to use more players than our opponent. Our bench played 66 minutes, but it goes down to 36 if you count Coburn as a starter and Klementowicz as a bench player. Klementowicz played a season-high 5 minutes. Because Coburn was great on Thursday and Ray was slumping, I was surprised Ray started. I expected Coburn to start with Ray not starting because of Klementowicz. We had a significant amount of time where Trueheart was our only forward. Kante played 26 minutes, Schutte played 6, which means for 8 minutes neither of them played. Going into today, we had played 1,200 minutes, and Kante, Schutte, and Hughes combined for 1,179, which is 39.3 per game.

Pemberton had 35 points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists. Buie had 26 points, 3 rebounds, and 9 assists. They both had 2 steals. Because of the big difference in assists, I would give Buie player of the game, but you could go either way. Coburn and Ray were close for our third best player. Coburn scored 14 to Ray's 12, but Coburn attempted 3 more field goals which more than makes up for Ray attempting 2 more free throws. Coburn having 1 rebound was horrible. Ray had 2 more rebounds and 2 more assists, but he didn't have any steals, and Coburn had a career-high 4 steals.

Points per game changes:

Buie: 18.3 to 18.5
Pemberton: 16.7 to 17.3
Kante: 11.7 to 11.5 (1 more point than Ray)
Ray: stayed at 11.5, to the nearest hundredth he went up .02
Coburn: 10.9 to 11.0

When I saw that Ray was fourth in scoring, I assumed Coburn was third. I saw Kante go back and forth between fourth and fifth, but I didn't realize he moved up to third.

[EvanJ]

Great achievement to go back to back! Hopefully they can finish this season off with a tourney championship too!

Thanks to his injury redshirt, Buie became the third player since we joined the CAA to win three regular season titles. VCU won in 2006-2007, 2007-2008, and 2008-2009, which was the only streak of three during that time. Eric Maynor, who won POY in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, and T.J. Gwynn were the only players on all three of those teams. I didn't check if anybody played in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 and took an injury redshirt in 2008-2009 while still on the roster, but anyone who did that couldn't have contributed to the 2008-2009 regular season title. UNCW won regular season titles in 2001-2002, 2002-2003, and 2005-2006. I check if they had any fifth year seniors in 2005-2006, and their only fifth year senior played elsewhere in 2001-2002, had a redshirt transfer season in 2002-2003, and played for UNCW in 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006.

If Buie had been injured one game later, he would have needed to win an appeal for a redshirt season, or 2016-2017 would have counted and he would have graduated last year.

Edit: Buie's free throw percentage decreased from .858 to .843. Pemberton increased from .848 to .851 and took our lead. Here's a breakdown:

Buie: First 21 games 97/110 = .882, last 10 games 21/30 = .700
Pemberton: First 21 games 66/82 = .805, last 10 games 54/59 = .915

What's good is that Pemberton has 41.8 percent of his attempts in the last 10 games, and Buie has only 21.4 percent of his attempts in the last 10 games. The last 10 games is 32.3 percent of the 31 games.

Brevin Galloway shot 1-9, but he had 6 steals to increase his CAA lead over Buie. Going into today, Galloway was 26th in Division I in steals per game, and Buie is 27th. If everyone else remained the same, Galloway would move up to 15th.

[HUSID74]

Just a great day for Hofstra and Hofstra basketball. Great loud crowd, some students actually showed up, and a great showcase for our seniors.

Actually thought at one point we could win this game by 50 Joe clearly throttled the Boys back.

On to Washington with great feelings all around...rest up guys for the WAR to come, and we'll be there with you!

[Wags]

Finally, a major bench contribution.

Coburn with 14 pts, going 4/9 from 3.

[triplec2195]

Finally, a major bench contribution.

Coburn with 14 pts, going 4/9 from 3.

Too funny and with Trueheart, Burgess, Silverio and Schutte logging 32 minutes all we had to show for it offensively was a three from Burgess who played 1 minute.We had a few rebounds(5) and I guess in terms of defense these guys held their own. Silverio missed all 3 shots he took but I don't think he shot any air balls. I know that Trueheart contributes to this team in ways that don't necessarily show up in a box score just with his size and wingspan on the court. It's just going to come down to our starting 5 for three straight days leaving it all on the court. It's doable.

[Polito]

A blistering display of firepower, shock and awe type arial attack! I mean that was something to see - and the game wasn’t even as close as it ended, could’ve been a 30-40 pt win if HU hadn’t scaled back and let up in the 2nd half

Was to bounce back, perform in front of a great crowd at home, senior day, and heading into the conf tournament - a great day all around.

Now... for what matters most. Raise the focus dial to MAX, get locked in, and GET IT DONE.

[EvanJ]

Our 5 turnovers were our fewest since we had 5 in an 80-77 win at Drexel on February 28, 2019. It is tied for our fewest turnovers in the 36 games I've been to with JWF's win at the buzzer over Northeastern last season.

We became the second team from 2010-2011 to the present to make at least 20 three-pointers and commit 5 or fewer turnovers against a Division I team. Four of the five times before us were against non-Division I teams. Davidson made 26 threes and committed 1 turnover in a 110-62 win hosting Charleston Southern on November 10, 2017.

[HU76]

Using Trueheart at the 5 a couple of times seemed to work well.