Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The A-10 Tournament is taking place in Washington, DC this week 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’s gets us started with a recap of a pair of 1st round games on Wednesday.
Seems like I just finished the CAA tourney at the Entertainment & Sports Arena but now I am trying to make a seamless transition to the A-10 tourney at Capital 1 Arena. The pregame meal, like the crowd today, was sparse: cold sandwich/chocolate chip cookie, and once the food was gone it was gone for good. On the plus side, I was not even there for 15 minutes before having a pair of A-list sightings:
Joe Lunardi eating!:
…and John Feinstein broadcasting!:
Good news is that I have a great view from the 2nd row at midcourt, bad news is that my view is of mostly empty stands, but attendance will keep going up and up the rest of the week:
And as if my location was not good enough, shout-out to the conference for giving each member of the media a lovely thank-you gift of not 1 but 2 pint glasses (I even made it home without breaking them!):
Let’s tip it off:
GAME #1: La Salle vs. St. Joe’s
You know that this Penn alum is a sucker for an old school Big 5 matchup: #PhillyPride! 6’10” Explorers SR Clifton Moore looked great early with 13 PTS in the 1st 12 minutes, helping his team build a 39-27 halftime lead. Their reward was to come back out of the locker room for the 2nd half to see the Hawk standing at center court still waving his wings:
The Hawks had a big man of their own, as 7’ JR Charles Coleman came off the bench to pour it on in the 2nd half, finishing with a double-double (18 PTS/4-5 3PM/11 REB). While the 2 big men canceled each other out, St. Joe’s had no answer for JR SG Jack Clark (no not that 1!) and his 20 PTS/13 REB as La Salle hung on to win it 63-56.
In the postgame press conference I asked Clark (who set a career-high last Saturday with 30 PTS) if he was playing the best basketball of his life. He agreed that he was, and that the biggest factor was not anything physical but simply his confidence. He has been working with his coaches and spending time in the weight room, and it seems to be paying major dividends:
Moore had previously been 0-7 from behind the arc this year vs. the Hawks before making a pair of threes today, so I wondered if La Salle coach Ashley Howard would give him the green light the rest of this week. He responded that it is never easy when you do not have time for a pregame shootaround in the arena, but that Moore is the hardest-working guy on the team who took advantage of the opportunities he had (including a big shot down the stretch):
GAME #2: Rhode Island vs. Duquesne
The Dukes entered this contest on a 16-game losing streak…which sadly is NOT the longest losing streak I have seen in DC this year, but FR Primo Spears (who turns 21 on Thursday!) looked, well, primo in the 1st half with 17 PTS/3 AST as his team was up 41-37 at halftime and the streak looked like it might come to an end after all. We even saw the ever-popular “ball stuck behind the backboard” moment:
The Rams were not going to win it at the FT line as they are a terrible FT shooting team (as evident by their 11-18 performance tonight), but they picked a great time to get hot from behind the arc (10-20 3PM) as they mounted a comeback, which made their mascot happy:
Spears almost won the game singlehandedly, finishing with 30 PTS while playing all 40 minutes, but Rhode Island had great balance scoring with 5 guys in double-digits as they avoided the upset by holding on for a 79-77 victory.
In the postgame press conference I asked JR F Antwan Walker (17 PTS/3-3 3PM/11 REB) how it felt to win a game on this floor for the 1st time since he was a freshman at Georgetown who played 3 minutes in a 4-PT 2-OT win over St. John’s in January of 2018. He said it went back even farther than that, as he played his high school championship game in this arena, so he was excited to come back here and win with his current team:
Rhode Island coach David Cox has his own local roots (college at William & Mary, high school coach at Archbishop Carroll, assistant coach at Georgetown, etc.) so I wondered how he enjoyed his own homecoming. He reflected that while he did not get a lot of time to dwell on it earlier this week, when he walked into the home team locker room he started to feel a bit nostalgic. He even recalls coming to the building in his younger days as a basketball spectator:
That is a wrap for the 1st round, check back tomorrow for a 2nd round quadruple-header!