By Palmer Johnson
Your George Mason Patriots went down to Knoxville to play a highly ranked Tennessee team, and fell 87-66. Mason Nation had some hope that they could pull it out, but unfortunately, it wasn’t their night.
Tennessee’s top performer was forward Jonas Aidoo, who ended up with 17 points on 7-11 from the field and 2-2 from three. Those were his first threes of the season. It was kind of hard to tell whether his scoring was a Mason problem or if he was just on that night. Probably a bit of both, he is an SEC forward after all.
Mason’s two bright spots were Darius Maddox and Woody Newton, who both have experience playing against teams as highly ranked as Tennessee. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
Maddox ended the game with 15 points on 5 for 11 from the field and 3 for 6 from three. A decent amount of his shots were ones he created near the end of the shot clock when the offense’s play didn’t work. The Virginia Tech transfer was pretty much the only one who could get anything going until Woody Newton had his run in the second half.
Newton ended up with 13 points on 4-5 from the field and 3-4 from three. He continues to be blazing hot from three and was one of the main reasons that the score looked respectable at the end.
The team’s biggest weakness this game was rebounding. Tennessee had 43 rebounds compared to Mason’s 27. You can’t win many games doing that.
Another bright spot was that the Patriots once again shot over 40% from three, with three guys, Maddox, Okojie, and Newton hitting at least 50% from behind the arc.
Baraka hits from deep!@baraka_okojie | #PatriotPressure pic.twitter.com/0dHAx9sOk2
— George Mason Men's Basketball (@MasonMBB) December 6, 2023
I was very pleased to see that the team did not give up during the game. They all gave 100% effort through the final buzzer.
This is something that the coaching staff can learn from and improve upon. You can learn a lot more from getting blown out than you can by blowing out some 350 ranked team. Mason had a long break after this game, hopefully they were able to go through the tape and see what they could have done better and what they will do in the future.
Next up, Loyola Maryland.
