MBB Game 29 at Delaware on 2/22/2020 at 4:00 P.M.

[EvanJ]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2020/2/21/me ... aware.aspx is Hofstra's preview titled "MBB: Huge Clash On Saturday As Hofstra Visits Delaware."

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/ ... game29.pdf is Hofstra's Game Notes.

Jerry Beach said that last week's win over UNCW was our tenth unicorn score of the season, which ties last season's amount. A unicorn score is the first time we won by that score. I checked the 81-74 score we beat Drexel by. It wasn't a unicorn score, but our only previous 81-74 win was before Mihalich was born. It was at Manhattan in the second-to-last game of 1954-1955.

Buie's 26 points gave him 1,207 and passed former teammates Green and Bernardi (1,186) and Gustys (1,184) for 24th. He could pass Demetrius Dudley and John Mills (1,220) and Carlos Rivera (1,225) for 21st, and with a very big game he could reach the top 20 as he's 33 behind Roberto Gittens. He's 79 behind Mike Tilley, so he should be in 20th going into the CAA Tournament. The only player other than Rivera who played in the CAA who Buie could pass is Kenny Adeleke. Jenkins, JWF, Agudio, Stokes, Pemberton, and Apodaca (who played in the AE and CAA) will remain our top six who played in the CAA. His 6 assists gave him 505, and he remains fifth. He's 17 behind Frank Walker and 55 behind Darius Burton, so he will probably finish fourth unless we win games after the CAA Tournament. At his average, he needs ten games to pass Burton. Two games (one win) after the CAA Final would be eight games. He has 193 steals, so he should reach 200, and the question is if he can have at least 7 in three games to reach 200 at home. He's sixth in steals and 20 behind Jenkins. Just like with passing Burton in assists, at his average he needs ten games to pass Jenkins.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/bluehens.com/d ... fstra2.pdf is Delaware's Game Notes. They haven't written a preview, but the preview might not have anything that isn't in the Game Notes. Their .482 field goal percentage is 11th of 353 teams. Nate Darling is 14th with 21.4 points and has made his last 32 free throws to increase his percentage over .050 from .798 to .849.

[triplec2195]

Hope this game doesn't disappoint it has the makings of an intense tourney game maybe the championship game but clearly we want payback. We're 1 to 1.5 favorites from what I've seen. Lets take care of business and keep our road percentage on the rise.

[HUSID74]

Surprised that were favorites, even given the slightest margins of 1-1.5 points.

This is a statement game...we win we have beaten every team in the League...if we lose Delaware would have to be the favorite going into the tournament.

I see this as a toss up game with hopefully our guards pulling it out at the end...FINGERS CROSSED!

[triplec2195]

Surprised that were favorites, even given the slightest margins of 1-1.5 points.

This is a statement game...we win we have beaten every team in the League...if we lose Delaware would have to be the favorite going into the tournament.

I see this as a toss up game with hopefully our guards pulling it out at the end...FINGERS CROSSED!

I was surprised as well and I'll state the obvious looking at the game in Hempstead. Mutts isn't going to score 30 but Darling will probably will get more then 11 he only had 2 points in the 2nd half. Mutts kept them in the game but also Allen didn't score. A different kind of game today yes with our guards taking over and getting us to the foul line. Should be a good one!

[EvanJ]

https://www.vegasinsider.com/college-ba ... las-vegas/ says the line moved from us by 1 to Pick, and the over/under increased from 150.5 to 152.

KenPom predicts two CAA games to be decided by 1, with Delaware winning 76-75 and Northeastern by 1. In the Sagarin we're 102nd, and the next best team is Charleston with a rank over 50 percent higher in 155th. The gap in the Sagarin is bigger than home court advantage to predict us to win by 0.93 (Overall), 2.06 (Predictor), 0.61 (Golden_Mean), and 0.18 (Recent).

http://defiantlydutch.blogspot.com/2020 ... aware.html is Jerry Beach's "I'll Be Quirky: Delaware."

Here are the statistics links:

Us: http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=278240

Northeastern at Drexel (2:00 P.M.): http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=285380 (Northeastern favored by 2.5)

Elon at Towson (2:00 P.M.): http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=282557 (Towson favored by 8.5)

W&M at James Madison (4:00 P.M.): http://stats.statbroadcast.com/statmonitr/?id=285652 (W&M favored by 3.5)

Charleston at UNCW (7:00 P.M.): http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=282076 (Charleston favored by 6)

[EvanJ]

We went down 8-0 and called timeout, up 11-10, and trail 18-14. With 11:18 left, Delaware committed an offensive foul for their seventh, and Kante has our only 1. Schutte got 3 offensive rebounds and 1 block in 2:17.

Edit: We lead 23-22. The statistics say 25-22 because they gave Pemberton a make when he missed. Silverio will shoot a one-and-one to try to give us more bench points than the zero we had at Drexel.

[Cards]

Up 1 after 13 minutes. Guys are really hustling. Great effort so far!

[Cards]

Great rebounding by EP, TC and Mutts. Tie game about 2 min left in half.

Up 1 at the half. UD hits half court shot split second after the buzzer - waived off!

[HUSID74]

Playing hard, not shooting well. Our bench is killing us with turnovers missed free throws etc.

Settle down guys and get this done!

[EvanJ]

We went down 43-40 and went on an 11-0 run to leads 51-43. It's now 51-45, and Delaware has the ball after our fifth foul of the half with 10:47 left, which is more than the four fouls we had in the first half. Buie has 19 and Pemberton has 16. Mutts has a double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Allen made a three for his first points against us this season.

[Hof_Judge99]

As the announcers continue to cry our lead has reached double digits, with the two seniors carrying us. Thankfully Darling is having a rare off game and despite having a double double Mutts hasn’t killed us.

[HUSID74]

Big time win against the second best team in the league at their place with a big crowd.

We showed the League that we are the best team and we can't be beaten once we get the lead with our guard play.

Desure and Eli were awesome, with Tariq and Isaac with good games as well.

Getting excited!

[EvanJ]

We led by as much as 17 and won 78-62. Delaware scored 31 in each half. Delaware shot twos 20-35 (.571) and free throws 7-7, but shot threes 5-24 (.208) and had fewer shots because we had 5 more rebounds and they had 4 more turnovers. Jalen Ray, Ryan Allen, Kevin Anderson, and Dylan Painter combined to average 46.5 before today. Today they combined to score 11 by shooting 4-29 including threes 2-11, and free throws 1-2. Ray shot field goals 1-11 includes threes 1-3 and shot free throws 1-2. If baskets didn't have backboards, he would have shot 0-11 because he banked in a three. The Delaware players shot field goals 3-18 including threes 1-8 and no free throw attempts. The bench did not attempt a field goal for the second consecutive game, and Silverio missed the first of a one-and-one while playing 4:01. Trueheart played 12:13, Schutte played 9:34, and Burgess played the last 0:55. Pemberton played 38 minutes, and Buie played 79:05 in two games before being replaced by Burgess.

I hoped we could clinch the 1 seed when JMU came back from down 14 to tie it. W&M won 78-74. After JMU fans threw streamers after their last game in the JMU Convocation Center, the refs determined that JMU fouled with 0.9 left after missing a three that would have tied the game. Andy Van Vliet missed the first and made the second. The make let W&M cover the 3.5 point spread. Northeastern won 77-68 at Drexel and Towson won 84-71 hosting Elon. Elon, Drexel, UNCW, and JMU will play in the First Round. Elon and/or Drexel can tie Northeastern. Northeastern swept Drexel, and both of them split with Elon. Therefore Northeastern would win a two-way tie with Drexel or three-way tie. If Northeastern and Elon tie at 8-10, they are both 0-2 vs. Hofstra and would be 1-1 vs. W&M because Elon needs to beat W&M to make a tie. Northeastern has a better record than Elon against all of Charleston, Delaware, and Towson.

[The Shadow]

HU played very well in a tough UD Senior Day environment. 11-4 on the rode, and 2-0 on neutral courts. Team sure seems to be able to pull victories on different courts. DB and EP lead the way, playing like the clock is ticking for their HU seasons. I sure hope they can get 5 more wins.

[EvanJ]

Thanks to having a redshirt season allowing him to play this season and in 2015-2016, Buie can become our first player to win three Division I regular season titles! I don't know if anybody won three regular season titles prior to Division I, but it wouldn't be as impressive.

[daHUPride]

EVANJ - interesting about Buie-he has been a non-self-hyping leader that has gotten better every season and ever game.
SHADOW- agree and took the word out of my mouth-DB & EP are playing at a different level of meaning
HUSID74- I am too, getting excited

This was a big game. Road/Talented Opponent/Statement
It meant something and these 5 performed - this group doesn’t panic

I say this almost year - but I am going to miss these seniors

Be at the Mack for 2 more- try Ing to get a group for Saturday- these guys deserve it

[Wags]

Big time win against the second best team in the league at their place with a big crowd.

We showed the League that we are the best team and we can't be beaten once we get the lead with our guard play.

Desure and Eli were awesome, with Tariq and Isaac with good games as well.

Getting excited!

Seemed like a decent contingent of Hofstra fans. They were at least loud on some of those big shots from Buie and Pemberton in the second half.

Another good second half offensively to get the W, just like on Thursday.

Good sign for D.C. that they can sort of replicate games or halves back-to-back, away from home:
- They had the road trip with the 86-63 win at Elon on a Thursday, then the similar 83-60 win at W&M two days later.
- This road trip, down 35-34 at the half at Drexel, they win on the strength of 47 second-half points. Then, two days later, 32-31 at halftime, and 46 pts in the 2nd.

Gotta love what we're seeing from Pemberton. He rarely got to 20 pts in a Hofstra win over the first half of the year. But even today, only 6/16 fg, but 10/10 ft, to get 25 the hard way. No coincidence that he reached 23 or more in half of the 8 games and double figures in all 8 games on this winning streak.

Also says a lot that they can win by 16 with Ray going 1/11, including 0/8 from 3.

We know they have to cut the nets (I think they finally will this year), but for some of the questioning we've seen here (even earlier this year) about the program under Joe and whether he was the right one to lead them to the NCAAT, these facts are undeniable - you have to at least put yourself in the best position possible, and his teams have done that a lot recently:

0 CAA titles over Hofstra's first 14 years in the CAA
3 CAA titles (shared or outright) in the past 5 years, starting in Joe's third year at Hofstra.

Granted, the CAA has become easier to get through, and that's a lot of it, but it's still a very competitive league. When you have 3 first-place finishes in 5 years, you're doing something right. This is also obviously the first time Hofstra has ever clinched back-to-back CAA titles of any kind in men's hoops. So, that's worth celebrating tonight, even before they likely clinch it outright next week.

[EvanJ]

https://gohofstra.com/news/2020/2/22/me ... t-win.aspx is titled "MBB: Hofstra Clinches Share Of Regular Season Title With Eighth Straight Win."

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/pl ... melog/2020 is Pemberton's game log showing 24 consecutive free throws made before today, and he shot 10-10 today. Buie tied for the seventh longest streak in CAA history with 35, and now Buie may not have the longest streak by a Hofstra player this season. The CAA record is 45, so if Pemberton can make at least 12 without a miss in two home games, he would break the CAA record. I hope Hofstra would announce it. Breaking a CAA record on Senior Day would be going out in style, albeit winning the CAA Tournament for the first time would be a bigger deal.

We shot free throws 20-23 (.870) one game after 21-24 (.875). It's the first time we had consecutive games with at least 20 made and a percentage of at least .870 since we shot 20-23 in a 74-71 win at Elon on January 12, 2019 and 23-26 (.885) in an 87-72 win hosting UNCW on January 17, 2019. The CAA has game-by-game statistics for the last fifteen seasons including this one. Our snubbed 2005-2006 team had only one game with at least 20 made free throw percentage of at least .870. If other teams remain the same, we would move up to seventh of 353 teams at .784.

[Polito]

Missed a lot the past few days w/a big loss in the fam, but had to come say what a big time road win against a quality team looking to make their own statement - the D we are seeing right now is not like any under JM since his arrival - this right here could be the difference maker we've been so desperate for - this team is peaking and streaking at the exact right time!

2 more to go, and it's time to GO GET THOSE NETS

[Wags]

Missed a lot the past few days w/a big loss in the fam, but had to come say what a big time road win against a quality team looking to make their own statement - the D we are seeing right now is not like any under JM since his arrival - this right here could be the difference maker we've been so desperate for - this team is peaking and streaking at the exact right time!

2 more to go, and it's time to GO GET THOSE NETS

Sorry, Polito. My condolences. Hope you and your family are coping okay.