Plundered.

By
Joseph Szymanski
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0
373

By Palmer Johnson

Mason got their fifth win of the season against the Pirates, giving them a record of 5-1. Your George Mason Patriots convincingly beat East Carolina 81-59.

It was Mason’s slowest game of the season, with each team only getting about 59 possessions, but the Patriots scored their second most of the season.

This difference between the teams’ twos certainly was something. Mason shot 74.2% from two, compared to East Carolina’s 36.8%. This is absolutely nuts.

I’ve noticed a trend of the opposing team’s highest volume scorer struggling against Mason, such as Monmouth’s Xander Rice (7 for 21), Austin Peay’s Demarcus Sharp (8 for 24), and South Dakota State’s NBA Prospect Zeke Mayo (9 for 20). ECU’s RJ Felton kept this trend going, shooting 2 for 10 from the field and ending with only 5 points and 0 assists. Skinn’s defense has a way of shutting down these volume shooters, and then they get frustrated and shoot bad shots when they cannot get anything going.

Amari Kelly didn’t score too much, but he did EVERYTHING else. It seemed like he was getting doubled every time he touched the ball, but he handled it well. Five assists from your center is crazy considering his previous career high was just three.

What a pass from Keyshawn Hall.

The sophomore UNLV transfer continues his dominance. Hall “only” scored 17, hitting 6 of his 12 shots, and got another double-double with 4 assists on top just for fun. Along with that, he stayed in the game after a lower leg injury that easily could have taken him out of the game and forced a goaltend minutes later. Tough. Board man gets paid. League him.

Ronny Polite had his best game of the season so far. He facilitated the offense and scored efficiently, ending up with 11 points, 3 assists, and 0 turnovers while shooting 5-9 from the field. ECU really couldn’t do much when he drove to the rim.

Baraka Okojie may have had a quiet scoring day, but his presence was still felt. He facilitated the bench unit, played defense, and drew a team-leading five fouls.

Jared Billups showed he could take advantage of his athleticism and cut to the rim. He had some nice dunks, scoring 10 on 5-6 from the field. Billups also got four offensive rebounds on top of that, he was a lowkey candidate for player of the game.

Darius Maddox remains Auto-Maddox, scoring 19 on 7-14 from the field. He was open a lot more than normal today, which is a bit odd. That’s what happens when your guards are getting to the rim, someone has to help off a shooter. Maddox gets my vote for player of the game.

Tre Wood got his first points as a Patriot. Wood is such a luxury to have as your third point guard. He’s such a shifty guy with the ball in his hands. Remember, Tre was once thought of as the fastest guard in the DMV back in his high school days, we saw that today.

Woody Newton was annoying the heck out of ECU, got 2 breakaway steals, hit 2 threes. He continues to do the dirty work, but had a loud 10 points. I don’t expect him to keep it up, but him shooting 8-13 (61.5%) from three this season has been awesome. It feels like he goes 2-3 from deep every single game. I’ve definitely said this before, but he truly has an NBA body. He shouldn’t be able to move like that at 6’9. A talent like Woody coming off the bench shows how complete this team is.

With good offensive games from both Polite and Billups, I hope they can keep this momentum going. This team could be unreal if Billups can outproduce expectations and Polite can get back to where he was near the end of last season.

Mason moved up the KenPom rankings all the way to 104 after this dominating win. Rankings don’t mean too much this early, but seeing the number go down does make me happy.

Next up, NJIT.

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