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 Sunday’s quarterfinal quadrupler:
The pregame “meal” was a box lunch with a cold sandwich/chips/cookie: better than nothing…I guess. If you are looking for some below-average basketball, 2 of the biggest factors are playing the earliest game of the day and doing so after setting your clock ahead 1 hour for daylight savings. Let’s tip off a LONG day of basketball with Game #1 (Drexel-Hofstra), which as I could have predicted in advance gave us a mediocre halftime score of 25-22 with the Pride in the lead:
Hampton, VA native Jalen Ray made his triumphant return to the DC/MD/VA area with several layups and a 3 in the opening stanza for Hofstra, while Drexel’s James Butler was well on his way to a double-double with a couple of jump shots and a REB/putback. Dragon SR Zach Walton also had a double-double and showed off his entire repertoire in the 2nd half with a corner 3, a tip-in, a finger roll, and a lovely reverse layup. Hofstra did not get a single bench point but was still able to pull away thanks to SR Eli Pemberton: he had a personal 7-0 run coming out of the break to extend his team’s lead to 32-22 and cause Drexel coach Zach Spiker to call a timeout:
Pemberton continued making layup after layup the rest of the afternoon to finish with a game-high 19 PTS, a career-high-tying 12 REB, and not a single turnover as his team cruised to a 61-43 win. Not pictured: a guy in the Hofstra band who plays the cowbell: if you got the fever, he has the cure!
In the postgame press conference I asked Pemberton whether tonight’s great effort coming on the heels of his career-high 35-PT Senior Night effort the previous weekend was evidence that he is playing the best basketball of his life. He agreed that he is playing the best that he ever has, and credits it to just listening to his coaches. This is his last go-around and he is going to give 110% because his brothers are fighting hard for him:
Game #2 (Delaware-Charleston) promised to be the best offensive battle of the day featuring 2 of the best scorers in the conference. Cougars’ SR Grant Riller watched his team get off to an 8-0 start and made a 3 and a pair of jumpers in the 1st half. However, Blue Hens’ JR Nate Darling made a trio of his own trifectas en route to a 15-PT 1st half that finished with his team up 32-27. The 2 stars kept it going all day long both inside and outside, with Riller winning the individual scoring battle 26-25. However, Delaware F Justyn Mutts did a little of everything (12 PTS/11 REB/5 AST/3 STL/2 BLK) to help his team hold on for a 78-67 win.
After noticing that the Blue Hens had 3 players/1 assistant coach who attended DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland, I asked Coach Martin Ingelsby about the importance of the connection between the 2 schools. He told a story about being a grad assistant at Wagner when his current assistant coach Corey McCrae was a freshman player there. He told Corey that if he ever became a head coach then he wanted him to be 1 of his assistants. The reason he keeps the pipeline alive is that it is important to get guys from a winning culture along the I-95 corridor:
Dinner was a huge improvement over lunch: brisket/chicken/mac & cheese/corn/cornbread! The attendance improved as well for Game #3 (Elon-William & Mary) as all the members of the tribe came together to form a sea of green and gold in the arena:
Before each game the CAA presented its all-conference awards to the players about to take the court. In the case of W&M SR PF Nathan Knight, it took about 30 seconds to announce all of his awards (including offensive/defensive POY!):
Not pictured: the female W&M cheerleaders getting together to lift their male counterparts into the air! Elon’s Saturday night hero (SR Marcus Sheffield) picked up right where his game-winner left off with a pair of early 3s and a jump shot to give his team a 13-2 lead as the arena got noticeably quieter. Knight is the big man who gets the headlines but it was 6’8” Italian Stallion Federico Poser who came off the bench for the Phoenix and made a jump hook, a REB/putback, and a pair of jumpers to help his team maintain a 6-PT lead entering halftime. The only thing closer than the score was when the mascots got in each other’s grills:
William & Mary finally realized that it should get the ball to Knight as often as possible in the 2nd half, and he made a ton of dunks/layups and 10-11 FTs for a 24-PT/10-REB evening before fouling out in the final minutes. Sheffield kept getting into the lane and making floaters once he got there but it was his teammate Hunter Woods who stole the show: 20 PTS/5-7 3PM/a career-high 15 REB and only 1 TO while playing all 40 minutes. An impressive stat line for anyone, but when you consider that Woods is a 6’6’ FR and the Tribe’s frontline includes a 6’10” PF and a 7’ C it is simply incredible, and that kind of effort is how you pull off a 68-63 upset with your season on the line and become the 1st #7 seed to reach the CAA semifinals since 2004.
I literally could not comprehend how Woods was able to do that so I requested an explanation. He said that his scoring was a result of his teammates finding him in open spots, and his rebounding was due to the combination of his mindset/high motor that allowed him to get extra possessions for his team:
I am sure that Game #4 (Northeastern-Towson) 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 some semifinal action!
