From our friends at GW Athletics...
Men's Basketball Knocks Delaware From the Ranks of the Unbeaten, 66-56
With an ear-to-ear smile on his face to start the postgame press conference,
GW men's basketball head coach
Jamion Christian opened with a question... "How fun was that?"
Having just seen his Colonials knock the visiting
Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens from the ranks of the unbeaten, GW gave the Smith Center faithful every reason to smile on Saturday afternoon.
Delaware came to DC boasting a 9-0 record and receiving votes in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. After being on the wrong end of another monster double-double from
Arnaldo Toro (12 points, game-high 17 rebounds), and a sterling performance yet again from senior point man
Armel Potter (game-high 19 points and six assists), Delaware returns home with George Washington now in secure of early season momentum. The win marked GW's second straight victory, and fourth in its last five games, to return to the .500 mark for the first time since being 1-1.
Potter and Toro were all but unstoppable, with the former shooting 7-of-10 from the field and a perfect 4-for-4 from the free throw line, while the latter had almost as many offensive rebounds himself (8) as did the Blue Hens as a team (9). Also in GW's favor was what Christian has made a hallmark of his teams throughout his coaching career - the game within the game from behind the three-point arc. The Buff and Blue came in committed to making Delaware take twos not threes, and then limited their guests to just 2-of-13 (.154) three-point field goals. Not so coincidentally, as the Colonials buried four more threes than their opposition, that provided the difference in the 10-point game.
GW's victory margin marked its largest lead of the contest, that was largely a back-and-forth affair throughout. There were nine ties and 10 lead changes in a game that neither side held a lead for more than Delaware's 17:11 with an edge. At the 4:38 mark of the second half, the game stood knotted at 50-50, before the Colonials finished on a 16-6 run, not unlike the 10-0 run GW used to finish off BU in the team's last contest. Potter netted 10 of those final 16 points, including a triple with 2:00 to play that extended a two-point lead to five, and an and-one that gave GW a 62-56 lead with :46 ticks left that effectively put the game out of reach.
Christian used just seven student-athletes in the contest, as junior
Maceo Jack (11 points, three 3pt. FG) and first-year
Jamison Battle logged the full 40 minutes. Fellow first-year
Jameer Nelson Jr. gave the home team a fourth in double figures in scoring with his 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting from the field.
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| Junior Maceo Jack (#14) added 11 points & 5 rebounds |
Knowing the scoring punch Delaware was capable of, GW keyed on the hens big guns all game.
Nate Darling, who came in averaging 22.5 PPG, was held to 13 points on 3-of-14 shooting.
Justyn Mutts, finished with eight points and eight rebounds, after bringing averages of 15.2 PPG and 9.7 RPG to DC, and
Ryan Allen entered play with a 14.9 PPG average but was limited to 12 points on 3-of-14 shooting. GW senior
Justin Williams was a menace defensively, as he finished with a +8 plus/minus in his 18:27 of court time, all without attempting a single shot.
Now GW has a full two weeks off for Final Exams, and to prepare for
Harvard on December 21st at noon on ESPN+ and the TuneIn app with a chance to pull over .500 for the first time since being 8-7 on January 3, 2017.
Click here for yesterday's box score.
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| George's Army |
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| Santa "George" is coming to town |
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| Antler Ring Ross |
