Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The CAA Tournament is taking place in Washington, DC this weekend and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD will be covering all of the angles so you can look forward to a cascade of coverage in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our series with Monday’s semifinals:
After Asian night and BBQ night the past 2 evenings…tonight’s pregame meal was Italian: chicken parmesan/meatballs/noodles/breadsticks! Let’s tip things off:
Game #1 (Delaware-Hofstra) was neck-and-neck through the 1st 10 minutes. Ryan Allen made a couple of layups and Justyn Mutts did a ton of damage in the lane including a reverse layup, REB/follow dunk, and an old-fashioned 3-PT play to keep the Dragons in the hunt. Eli Pemberton had a huge game on Sunday but was somehow even more lethal from long-range on Monday with 4 shots from behind the arc in the 1st half. His backcourt teammates Desure Buie/Jalen Ray each nailed a pair of threes to give the Pride a 40-28 halftime lead. Hofstra continued to pull away in the 2nd half via some help on the boards from their “big” men, as 6’7” Isaac Kante had 11 REB and 6’5” Tareq Coburn had 12 REB. The Pride opened up a 22-PT lead with 8 minutes to play and Delaware could have given up but they started full-court-pressing and forced several turnovers to keep it interesting. Coach Joe Mihalich was forced to call a timeout before the wheels came off the train:
Hofstra made some FTs down the stretch and ended up with a 75-61 win and a spot in the title game after losing that same game last March. In the postgame press conference I asked Coach Mihalich whether he preferred to play a Northeastern team who he swept this year by a combined 6 PTS or an Elon team who he swept by a combined 50 PTS(!). He answered that regardless of the opponent the tourney would have to be won by playing 3 tough games. He said that Elon is not the same team that they played earlier this year, and that while whatever his team did to sweep Northeastern worked, they will have to come up with some new ideas for Tuesday night:
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I am sure that Game #2 (Northeastern-Elon) was fantastic but I have to be at work in the morning so I stuck around for tip-off to make sure it counted and then headed home: you can just read about it yourself in the morning. That’s all for now, but feel free to check back tomorrow for the championship game recap!