#ToBeFrank: Mason Steamrolls Fordham

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Daniel Frank
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Photo: Daniel Frank

It’s nice to have a blowout win for a change. And a home game at that. In a season that has been pretty depressing at times, between covid pauses, game postponements and cancelations, and general questions about the future of the program. It was nice, at least for tonight, to push all of that to the periphery even for just one night.

This was the first Mason men’s game I’ve been to all season, and the first men’s basketball game in 343 days. I was stoked just to be in the doors tonight. But Mason’s second half performance made it a lot of fun!

The first half of this one was kinda suspect to be truthful. I truthfully thought that Fordham was the better team in the first 20 minutes of this one.

Fordham actually took the lead midway through the first half, but Mason closed the half on a nice 11-4 run to have some breathing room at the break.

The second half…WOW. Fordham opened the scoring with a Joel Soriano bucket 2:06 into the second half. The Rams did not make a field goal for nearly seven and a half minutes.

With 10:33 left in the game, what was a 33-27 game had become a 54-30 game.

But Mason wasn’t done yet. The Patriots run continued. When it was all said and done, Mason’s run finished at 32-5. THIRTY-TWO TO FIVE. At this point, Mason had taken a 33-27 game and blown it wide open to a 65-32 game.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy runs in basketball, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen something that absurd before. It’s cemented by the fact that I still maintain Fordham looked like the better team in the first half. By the second half, Fordham barely looked like a team at all.

And, oh the memes were fun.

In all, George Mason out-scored Fordham 44-20 in the second half, and that includes some late garbage time buckets from the Rams in the final two minutes that made the game look slightly closer than it was. Still, the Patriots held on to their lead to win by 32 points, their second-largest win total of the season and third-largest since joining the A-10 (counting conference games).

Of course, with such a large margin, Mason was able to completely empty their bench. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know who like three of the guys on the floor were at the end of the game. Jack Tempchin, Chance Konnor, Mekhi McCray, Lysander Rehnstrom, and Jake Nichols.

Jack and Chance both got in the score book, with Jack hitting a pair of free throws, and Chance recording his first career field goal.

All in all, pretty fun night. I’m not going to blow this out of proportion and say that suddenly Mason can compete again with top teams. Jordan Miller eluded to it in the presser: they even recognize that they want to run with the big boys of the league, and Fordham is most certainly not a big boy. It was nice to see guys hitting shots and guys get playing time that rarely, if ever, do.

Like I’ve said since game #1, we all know what this team is capable of. We know what their ceiling can be. The problem is that we’ve seen a LOT of what their floor can be too. If Mason really intends to prove they deserve respect, they need to do it against a team that isn’t Fordham sans a head coach. Don’t get me wrong, this was a very fun win, but one step at a time here.

The boys will not have a game this weekend with Duquesne remaining on covid pause. Dave Paulsen said that he’s hoping to get a game added for next Wednesday, so we’ll see if that comes to fruition. The next game on the schedule as it stands now is February 20 at VCU. The Rams beat Mason on their home floor back on January 6, 66-61. Mason wants to prove that they have grown and taken a step? They’ll have their chance to prove it. For now, the Patriots sit in 9th place at 5-6 in the Atlantic 10. Time will tell if they can avoid the play in game in the A-10 Tournament.

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