It is December in DC so that can only mean 3 things: holiday parties, stories about the Redskins that include the phrase “mathematically eliminated”, and the BB&T Classic in Chinatown. This year we got 1 competitive match-up (Temple-GW) and…1 battle of an undefeated team vs. a winless team (Coppin State-Georgetown). Sadly, no Hill Country BBQ on this year’s pregame menu (just lukewarm pizza) but a nice long 2-hour break between the 2 games that allowed everyone to catch their breath. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel spent all day at the Capital One Arena…and lived to tell about it. Today we cover Temple-GW in Part 1, and check back later this week for Part 2 about Coppin State-Georgetown.
When Hoops HD sits right behind the basket, we sit RIGHT behind the basket: 
They might not know exactly who I am…but I have been called worse, and perhaps there is some truth to the rumor that we are merging with a medical insurance website!:
Pregame intros were nice:
Cheerleaders as well…even if there not were a lot of fans around to lead in cheers:
Temple-GW was a classic tale-of-2-halves game with the Colonials building a 40-25 lead by halftime. 1 team lived by the 3 in the 1st half (GW: 6-10 3PM) and 1 died by it (Temple: 1-7). Time was really flying because somehow neither team made a single FT before halftime! Obi Enechionyia barely kept the Owls in it through the 1st 20 minutes with a pretty finger roll, baseline fadeaway jumper, and a jumper that bounced once on the rim before dropping in. GW used a balanced attack featuring several different scorers: Arnaldo Toro/Jair Bolden each made a pair of threes, and Patrick Steeves banked in a leaner at the buzzer to give his team what seemed like a stranglehold at the break.
The 2nd half was a completely different story thanks to Coach Fran Dunphy instructing his team to play more full court defense and his stars finally playing to their potential. The Temple coaching staff is so fascinating: they have the best coach in Penn history (Dunphy), my former college neighbor (assistant coach Shawn Trice), and the 2001 NBA 6th Man of the Year (assistant coach Aaron McKie):
Shizz Alston made a pair of threes and extended his consecutive made FT streak to 46 (3 shy of Lynn Greer’s school record), while Quinton Rose had his own person dunk contest as he got to the rim on 3 separate occasions for sensational slams. The X-factor was Alani Moore II, the 5’10” sophomore who returned to his hometown of DC and almost won the game all by himself. With his team down by double-digits late in the game, Moore made a corner 3, then stole the inbounds pass and found Rose for another 3 to cap a 10-0 run in just 75 seconds, but it would not be enough. GW’s 2nd half star was SR Yuta Watanabe, who made a pair of threes and had a huge BLK at the rim to deny Rose with 41 seconds left. However, we also witnessed the coming-out party for FR G Justin Mazzulla: the younger brother of Joe (the former West Virginia PG Joe who played 145 games and went to the 2010 Final 4 under Bob Huggins) did a little of everything including an acrobatic layup off the glass, grabbing a loose ball and then converting a layup, and even taking a charge on the 6’10” Enechionya with under 3 minutes to play.
Temple had a couple of chances to tie it at the end but kept missing 3-PT shots as GW escaped with a 71-67 victory. Temple’s defense was dragging a bit in the 1st half but the Colonials are not going to lose many games when they shoot 27-45 from the field. It might not be as cool as the Miami football turnover chain, but Jair Bolden received the “Ghost Belt” due to all of his hustle plays (oh how it shines!):
I asked him at the postgame press conference what he was going to do with the belt, and he said that the winner just hangs it in his locker so that everyone else can be jealous. Unbelievably, the Owls have still not played a home game this season, so I asked Rose/Coach Dunphy if they were excited to finally play in front of their home fans this Wednesday…but they did not take the bait. Rose said he wished he could have returned home with a win, and Coach Dunphy said that his team was excited to play at Madison Square Garden last week and today in DC.
