HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel took a break from the Georgetown beat to check out the Harvard-GW game yesterday:
The pregame meal was Domino’s and a bottle of water: it may not be fancy but it certainly got the job done on a cold Saturday afternoon. Winter break at GW meant there were plenty of good seats available but at least the band played on while the mascot danced:
Let’s tip things off:
My perch up in the 200 level meant that I could peek right into the Colonials huddle: I feel like a real Patriot! I will not give away any secret strategy but 1 innovation that caught my eye is how Coach Jamion Christian’s staff uses a chart of their opponent’s players during timeouts. It is a simple thing but for a visual learner like me it seems simply ingenious:
Harvard will only play 1 home game from November 15-January 3 and it showed during the 1st half as the team looked a bit ragged at times. They were both inaccurate (1-7 from behind the arc) and unaggressive (2-4 from the FT line) as Harvard coach Tommy Amaker tried to do some problem-solving during a timeout:
The player who kept them in the game on offense was PF Chris Lewis, who dominated inside with dunks/layups/old-fashioned 3-PT plays:
On defense the key guy was SG Rio Haskett, who collected a trio of STL and was even able to convert some of them into PTS on the other end. For a player who comes off the bench he has very active hands and always appears to be having fun on the court.
1 familiar name on the GW roster is FR PG Jameer Nelson Jr. (son of the 2004 national POY at St. Joe’s). The good news is that he is not just living off of his father’s name: he can actually play and his layup at the buzzer gave his team a 39-37 halftime lead. The bad news is that he went 0-3 from the FT line despite entering the day as an 81.5% FT shooter:
The shooting star for the Colonials was SG Maceo Jack, who made a 3-PT shot on 3 straight possessions during 1 stretch to really get the crowd into the game. The passing star was SR PG Armel Potter: in addition to using his speed to get into the lane and make a bunch of layups, he also tied his career-high for a game with 7 AST in the 1st half. Coach Christian began the 2nd half with a quick heart-to-heart with Potter on the bench:
Coach Christian has a very short rotation so when his super-sub Justin Williams collided with Harvard’s Bryce Aiken with 13 minutes left in the game and had to go to the locker room you got the sense that the starting 5 would have to play even more minutes than usual. The other big injury occurred off the court, as 6’10” PF Ace Stallings had a huge BLK that sent the ball into the stands…and right into the face of a helpless member of the GW dance team. She jogged off the baseline to collect herself and thankfully it did not appear to require a trip to the ER: no photo available.
The refs helped out with about 10 minutes by whistling 4 different Crimson players for fouls during a 19-second span: needless to say Coach Amaker looked like he had received a lump of coal in his stocking:
Jack went ice-cold in the 2nd half (a scoreless 20 minutes due to 0-5 shooting from behind the arc) but his teammates both young and old picked up the slack. FR SF Jamison Battle continued his weekly improvement with a trio of 2nd half threes to tie his career-high of 18 PTS:
Potter kept making both layups and smart passes to finish with 22 PTS/10 AST in what has to be the best all-around game of his career. Unfortunately, big man Arnaldo Toro was unable to provide much interior assistance after picking up his 3rd foul just 2 minutes into the 2nd stanza and then his 4th foul with 12 minutes remaining in the game. With Toro on the bench Lewis was able to keep making dunk after layup while finishing with an efficient 22 PTS/10-13 FG and not a single turnover. He also got help from his fellow SR big man Robert Baker, who converted a pretty alleyoop from Aiken and a couple of REB/putbacks to end up with 14 PTS/6-8 FG/3 BLK. Harvard only made 2 threes all day but won 88-75 thanks to superb FT shooting (16-18), a ton of PTS in the paint (62-28 advantage), and some great bench scoring (26-2 advantage).
Coach Amaker did not hold a postgame press conference but I asked Coach Christian how he balances his desire to have his best players in the game while also keeping them somewhat rested, as his 3 top scorers each played the full 40 minutes. He said that it is a battle every game due to a variety of factors: who is healthy, how much time off they have before their next game, etc. He lamented that having Williams pick up 3 fouls in less than 3 minutes of action before getting injured hurt his team because when he is on the floor he provides such great understanding of the game. He also admitted that he would love to get his starters’ minutes down to 32/game as his optimal #:
That’s it for now: happy holidays to all!