Welcome back to the George Mason basketball weekly rundown! Just like last week, we’ve got one really fun win and one really bad loss to discuss. That’s what three great halves of basketball and one half of nuclear meltdown will do. And away we go.
Dayton
The Dayton win showed what this team can be at its peak. Otis Livingston was scorching hot, threes were falling, and the supporting cast showed up in a big way. Those have all happened at different times this season, but Dayton was the first time they all coincided so seamlessly. The result was a rout in a game that Mason was supposed to lose, and the chance to move up the standings in a beleaguered A10.
We’ll get to the obvious story (Otis) in a minute, but first I want to point out some other things that went well. Greg Calixte and AJ Wilson played very solid defense on Josh Cunningham, one of the best big men in the conference. Cunningham went 3-9 from the floor and scored 15 points, aided by 9-9 shooting from the field, while only grabbing 5 rebounds. Sure, Cunningham was a big reason AJ was limited with foul trouble, but 3-9 shooting and 5 rebounds are both well below his season averages.
Mason also put up one of their best rebounding performances of the season. Dayton only grabbed 26 rebounds to Mason’s 39, including four offensive rebounds vs Mason’s eight. Once again it was a team effort, with Calixte grabbing seven, Ian Boyd grabbing six, and Justin Kier and Javon Greene chipping in five apiece. Mason hasn’t been a great rebounding team all season, so this was nice to see.
Also notable was that Kier spent a lot more time in the nominal point guard role, bringing the ball across halfcourt and initiating the offense. This has happened here and there all season long, but against Dayton it happened more than any other time I can remember. Kier was overshadowed by Otis, but he had a very solid night with 14 points, 6 assists, and 5 rebounds.
La Salle
Alas, the second half of the La Salle game was a cold splash of water on the face of anyone who allowed themselves to daydream that maybe, just maybe, this Mason had figured some things out and was turning a corner. In Philadelphia, everything that went right against Dayton went south for either the second half or the entire game. In the three halves of basketball from the start of the Dayton game to the end of the first half of La Salle, Mason shot 46 for 84 from the field, including 14-29 from three, while allowing opponents to shoot 33 of 86 and allowing just 9-40 from deep. In the process of getting outscored 37-17 in the second half, Mason shot just 6-29 from the field.
La Salle shot 12-31 from the floor in both halves, so the meltdown is mostly a story of how Mason couldn’t generate buckets in the second half. Kier was 7-8 from the field in the first half but only 2-4 in the second, as La Salle kept a big stationed in the paint to prevent him from getting to the rim. In the first half the paint was open when he got around his man; in the second Tony Washington was there to meet him. Shots weren’t falling when he had to pass out of the paint. Ian Boyd was 2-7 from the floor in the second half, Otis was 1-9, and AJ Wilson was 1-1. No other Patriot hit any field goals.
AJ Wilson played only three second half minutes, and Paulsen curiously went with a super-small lineup in crunchtime that featured Goanar Mar as the biggest Mason player on the floor. I call this curious because Mason was getting eaten alive by La Salle’s center Tony Washington, and Mason also lost the rebound battle in the second (28-17) as well. Granted, Mason wasn’t winning either of those battles with the bigs on the floor, and this might have been an effort to spark a failing offense, but it went poorly as Washington had a layup and a few big rebounds as La Salle pulled away.
Otis’s Dayton performance, and his legs
Otis continued to put together an All A10 caliber resume in the Dayton game, as he scored or assisted on 16 of Mason’s 28 buckets from the field. Dick Patrick already put together a fun breakdown of how Otis alone stretched the lead from 11 to 17 in the second half that does it justice. Otis is becoming the kind of player that can take over games through his ability to score on his own and create shots for his teammates; against Dayton he was in complete control. He has now scored or assisted on 41.5% of Mason’s buckets this season.
As fun as Dayton was, La Salle was just as bad. On 3-18 shooting, Otis put up just 8 points, though he did still manage 6 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals. It’s conspicuous that he played just 31 minutes, including only 12 in the second half, as he’s been carrying a tremendous minutes load all season long. He hasn’t played fewer than 33 minutes since the Rhode Island game that opened conference play. With such a short bench behind him and so many minutes logged the last two seasons, it’s possible that Otis needed the rest.
Jaire Grayer playing through pain
Last week I wondered if Jaire has been limited due to lingering pain from the injury that kept him out of the Richmond game. After another week of play below the lofty standards Jaire has set for himself, it seems fair to speculate that he’s probably not 100%. In the eight games since he went 9-13 from the floor back in January when Mason beat St. Louis, Jaire is 26-79 from the field (32.9%) and has only 3 blocks (he had 21 in the first 17 games of the season). He has also failed to record 6 rebounds or more in four of his last five games, only doing that five times in his first twenty-two.
His minutes have also come down significantly. He played sparingly in the Dayton win due to foul trouble, but in the last four excluding that one he’s played 23, 19, 31, and 29. His season average is still 31.5 minutes so this is a deviation from the norm. There are plenty of ways to measure it, but it’s clear that the explosion he’s used to playing with isn’t there at the moment.
Justin Kier
Kier was the Patriot who played well across both games this week. He combined for 33 points on 21 shots, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, and 2 steals. He had 9 field goals against La Salle, while no other Mason player had more than 4. His three-ball is still a work in progress, but his ability to finish at the rim and his mid-range game is working right now. According to hoop-math.com Kier is shooting a whopping 68% at the rim this season on over 100 attempts. He’s averaging 14 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game over his last five. If he keeps that up and the pieces around him fall into place, Mason can hang with anyone.
That’s it for this week, Mason fans. Check back next week and go Mason!
