HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel will spend the upcoming months covering several Georgetown basketball home games, with a very special reward coming in March. However, since it is a rare occurrence to have a top-100 match-up in DC these days, he was in attendance Friday night for the George Mason-George Washington game at the Charles E. Smith Center and prepared this photo essay.
I made it to the other 3 gyms in DC back in November (American/Georgetown/Howard), but it took me a few months to complete the superfecta. GW follows the ain’t-broke-don’t-fix approach to pregame meals because it works just fine: pizza and Coke Zero. Tonight’s color commentator is 1 who is very familiar with the District: former Hoya star/2-time NBA All-Star Roy Hibbert:
But the star of the show is GW strength and conditioning coach/HoopsHD legend Robert “Handy” Handerahan!
Let’s tip it off on Friday the 13th:
We have 2 solid coaches tonight in GW coach Chris Caputo (bottom)/GMU coach Tony Skinn (top):
Unfortunately for the former, it looks like GW is still missing 2 starters due to injury (Rafael Castro/Bubu Benjamin). In Castro’s absence, C Luke Hunger caught fire early with 12 PTS in the 1st 9 minutes on a pair of layups, a fadeaway jumper, and a pair of threes:
GMU started 18-1 this season but had lost 3 of 6 since then and were searching for a way to get back on track. G Masai Troutman (left) almost matched Hunger’s hot start with 9 PTS in the 1st 9 minutes, and big man Riley Allenspach (right) dominated the paint with a layup/turnaround jumper/dunk to keep the Patriots within striking distance at halftime as they only trailed 32-30:
I walked down to the court during halftime and got a nice view of the jersey retirement of former GW PG Shawnta Rogers, who was named 1999 A-10 POY as a SR after leading the nation with 3.6 SPG, then spent more than a decade playing pro basketball in several foreign countries:
GMU G Jahari Long tried to keep his team in it during the 2nd stanza with a trio of trifectas, but as you might be aware, this has not been a good sports week for any Patriots:
In contrast, GW PG Jean Aranguren is having a heck of a February. Last weekend he had a triple-double at Duquesne, and tonight he got to the basket at will in a near-perfect effort with 16 PTS on 7-8 FG/1-1 FT:
Since Oscar Night is rapidly approaching, I think the best way to describe tonight’s result is “The Hunger Game”. The big man made all 3 of his shots from beind the arc despite being just a career 20% 3-PT shooter, finished with 31 PTS after only scoring 31 PTS in the entire month of January, and helped his team pull away in the 2nd half as they cruised to a 72-53 win.
In the postgame press conference, I noticed that Coach Skinn’s team had been 4-0 this year while wearing gold, so I asked him if he was a superstitious guy who would immediately burn those jerseys. He smiled and said that he did not even know it was Friday the 13th (strike 1):
In 1 of my most leading questions ever, I wondered if Coach Caputo ever recalled beating an opponent this good by this many PTS with this many injured starters. I expected a resounding “no”…but instead he claimed it would have been 2 weeks agao against St. Louis if some calls had gone his way. He did admit that this 1 is up there with some of his best victories: he has beaten Dayton a couple of times in conference play when they were a top-100 team, and he beat a South Florida team earlier this year that has a good chance of winning the American (strike 2):
Hoping to avoid the strikeout, I begged Hunger to explain how it was possible to score 31 tonight after scoring 31 in January. He said that while most of his looks tonight were good ones, there were 2 shot that he threw up which happened to go in. His MO is to be consistent: even when he arrived and knew that he would have to take a backseat to Castro, he just tried to be the best teammate that he could be. He never gets too down: even if he is only playing 10 minutes, he always has a positive mindset.
That is a wrap for now, but check back in the weeks ahead as the postseason is almost here!
