Thanksgiving used to be about food/family/football, but thanks to college basketball we now have tons of tournaments on Turkey Day including 2 in the Bahamas (Battle 4 Atlantis and Baha Mar Bahamas Championship), 1 in Vegas (Las Vegas Invitational), 1 in Florida (ESPN Events Invitational), and the Wooden Legacy in Anaheim. This year’s edition of the 1 way out west includes 2 teams from California (San Diego State/USC) and 2 teams from the East Coast (Georgetown/St. Joe’s). HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel is 1 of the few people in Anaheim this week who is NOT at Disneyland so that he can bring you as much basketball as possible. He commences his coverage with a review of Thursday night’s doubleheader.
1 of the 4 squads will be thankful to hoist this trophy on Friday night:
Thanks to my friend Sam who is staying at the Marriott I had an easy walk to the Convention Center for a night of Thanksgiving basketball. Thanks to COVID my Thanksgiving media meal was…a box lunch, but I learned long ago to not complain about free food. The crowd is pretty sparse for Game 1 because St. Joe’s is 2700 miles from Anaheim and USC…loves their football team. I knew that the Hawk was famous for waving his wings throughout the entire game, but I did not know that he waved 1 wing during the national anthem while placing the other over his heart:
Let’s serve it up and see who wants to eat!
The Hawks flew across the country for their 1st game all year away from Hagan Arena so I was not sure how much energy they would have, but they kept it competitive for the 1st 20 minutes. Their leading scorer is Taylor Funk and he brought both the noise and himself with a 3 and a pair of jumpers:
The surprise star was grad student Ejike Obinna who transferred in after playing at Vandy. I still cannot tell if he has an outside shot, but the good news is that it does not matter because he just kept making hook shots off the glass and layup after layup against a USC team whose average height of 6’7” is top-5 in the nation:
1 of those tall Trojans is 6’9” Chevez Goodwin, who matched Obinna dunk for dunk and hook for hook:
USC coach Andy Enfield brought Boogie Ellis in as a transfer after 2 years at Memphis and it seems to be working out well for everyone involved as both his old team and new team are currently undefeated. He got off to a hot start this year from behind the arc with 8-17 3PM but did most of his damage in the paint on Friday by driving in for leaners/layups/put-backs to help his team build a 38-26 halftime lead:
It was a different half/same result for Obinna in the 2nd stanza: hooks/layups/dunks as he recorded his 2nd double-double of the season with 18 PTS/9-13 FG/10 REB in only 28 minutes of action. Coach Billy Lange must have told his team to stop letting Ellis “boogie” his way into the lane…but instead of battling the big men the 6’3” guard just took what the defense gave him and made several jump shots to finish with a team-high 17 PTS. The man responsible for inside scoring was Joshua Morgan, who last stepped onto this court 2 years ago when he was a player at Long Beach State and I was at the media table watching my Penn Quakers score 95(!) PTS against the Beach. I may not have aged gracefully since then but Morgan certainly has with a dunk and some layups. He entered this game having made exactly 1 FT this season and 0 last season, but looked rather comfortable at the line by making 5-6 against St. Joe’s as his team won handily by a score of 70-55:
In the noticeably dark postgame press conference I asked Coach Lange about how he had unlocked Obinna’s potential. He politely said that Obinna deserves all the credit because he loves basketball and is 1 of the best “souls” that he has ever met:
Since Obinna faced several big SEC opponents during his time at Vandy I wondered if he changed his style of play when facing a supersized team like USC. He responded that he approaches every game the same way and just does whatever it takes to win because, “I am a winning guy”:
My question for Morgan was how it felt to be back in Anaheim on an undefeated team after playing here 2 years ago on a team that lost 21 games. He laughed in disbelief and said that it was a definitely a different experience because it is always fun to win:
His teammate Ellis knows a lot about winning, especially in neutral-site games (as he won each of his last 4 in March en route to an NIT title), so I inquired how he plays so well when there are few fans cheering/booing in the stands. His answer was that it is due to a lot of effort/communication and that he felt his team was in control of the pace of the game the entire time:
I missed the start of the nightcap because the 1st press conference ran long. Proving the adage that there is no rest for the weary, I saw Coach Enfield sitting courtside for the 1st half of Georgetown-San Diego State to do some quick scouting:
I knew the San Diego State student section (aka The Show) is legendary at Viejas Arena, but I was happily surprised to see that the alumni could keep it up 90 minutes away in Anaheim on a weeknight holiday. Even though USC is a considerably shorter distance away the Aztec fans were by far the best ones here: chanting/standing/stomping to help support their team. However, it was a young Hoya duo who did a decent job of silencing them early. Defending Big East tourney MOP Dante Harris made a ton of jump shots early to rack up 10 PTS in the 1st 8 minutes:
Preseason Big East Roy Aminu Mohammed kept getting to the rim for layup after layup and had 11 PTS in the 1st 10+ minutes:
The good news for Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing is that his 2 young stars outscored San Diego State all by themselves in the 1st 11 minutes (21-17)…but the bad news is that it is hard to beat a team that has won 9 of 11 neutral-site games during the past 24 months when nobody else in your lineup is scoring:
I saw plenty of Matt Bradley during his career at Cal when he went 0-4 vs. my Wildcats. 1 thing I had not see him do was wear Demarshay Johnson’s #11 jersey: 
I asked several media folks why this was happening but nobody seemed to know. I tracked down Bradley’s SID and was told it was because he did not have his own jersey with him: oh well, I do not function at 100% after a day of turkey and stuffing either! As far as his on-court performance it was spectacular on both ends of the court. On offense he made a few jumpers as well as a 3, while on defense the 6’4” senior took a charge against Mohammed and then somehow blocked a dunk attempt by 7’2” Ryan Mutombo. 1 player who was unstoppable at dunking was Bradley’s teammate Tahirou Diabate, who scored 8 PTS in the 1st half on a 1 layup and 3 dunks:
The Aztecs’ ability to keep calm and watch even their secondary scorers knock down threes as the clock was winding down was awesome. Trey Pulliam (a 25% 3-PT shooter this season) made a 25-footer late in the half to beat the shot clock, and his teammate Adam Seiko (a 21% 3-PT shooter this season) nailed a 3 at the halftime buzzer to give his team 40-32 lead. Georgetown was unable to respond from long range in the 2nd half: they were top-15 in the nation this year at over 41 3P% but only made 4-20 on Friday night. They also were underwhelming at passing the ball. Pulliam did not score that well with just 7 total PTS but he had more AST (8) than the entire Georgetown team (6), proving once again that having a SR PG who you can trust to run the offense is a great luxury:
After doing very little in the 1st half, Pulliam’s teammate Lamont Butler exploded in the 2nd half with steals/layups/threes. The sophomore guard had only averaged 8 PPG during his 1st 4 games this year, but scored 11 straight PTS by himself in the 1st few minutes after halftime to help his team keep from cracking:
Mohammed is only 4-12 from behind the arc as a freshman but you can see him continuing to improve every single game. He kept getting into the lane over and over to finish with a career-high 20 PTS, including a layup that cut the deficit to 57-53 and brought some loud cheers from the few Hoya fans in the house. However, his teammates faded down the stretch and were outscored 16-5 in the final 10 minutes of a 73-56 loss as Coach Brian Dutcher picked up his 100th win as a D-1 head coach in only 132 games on the sideline:
There were no Georgetown players at the press conference so I just asked Coach Ewing how impressed he was with Mohammed’s improvement from day to day. His answer is that he expects Mohammed to be 1 of his team’s best players, but that while he was happy with his effort the team did not play the way he wanted them to as a group:
My question for Coach Dutcher was about Butler’s 2nd half stats. He said that Lamont is like any other player in that, “When you make the 3 you are always dangerous”:
I read that Bradley grew up 45 minutes away from Anaheim so I wondered if he had a lot of family/friends in the arena tonight. He responded that he had about 20-25 family members there and that it was just really nice to play in front of any fans after being unable to do so last year. I followed up by reminding him that he is winless in 4 career games against the Trojans. He agreed that it is a game that he really wants to win and that “we have had it marked on our calendar”:
That’s a wrap for Day 1, check back in the days ahead for continuing coverage from the happiest place on earth: a college basketball court!