By Palmer Johnson
Your George Mason Patriots look to improve to 8-2 against the 1-9 Loyola Maryland Greyhounds.
The Greyhounds are coached by Tarvaras Hardy, who’s been there since the 2018-19 season and has a record of 60-94.
Loyola Maryland By The Numbers
Loyola Maryland is the 330th ranked team per KenPom, compared to Mason’s 98. The Greyhounds have the 341st ranked offense and 273rd ranked defense.
They have a similar tempo to Mason, just a bit faster.
On offense, the Greyhounds turn the ball over 21.5% of the time, which is bottom 30 in the country. A lot of these are steals, as they are also bottom 20 in offensive steal percentage. Jared Billups and Woody Newton should be able to get some pick-sixes.
Loyola Maryland moves the ball around a lot, with 58.6% of their field goals being assisted, that’s 46th in the country. They’ll also be taking a lot of threes, although hopefully not too many will go in. 39.6% of their shots are threes, but they’re only going in at a 32.2% clip.
As you can see, they are super super cold in the paint. I guess that’s what happens when you have a 5’8 guard who hasn’t been producing from three.
On defense, there’s not too much that pops out at me, except that their average possession length while on defense is 28th shortest in the country. I’ll have to watch some of them to see what that means.
Another thing that is somewhat interesting is that teams don’t take a lot of threes against them, but they don’t really let teams feast inside either.
They aren’t good on defense but they aren’t awful.
I can’t really take too much away from this shot chart, maybe they’ve faced a ton of lefty big men? Wherever they’re forcing teams to be cold, there’s another spot that’s somewhat equivalent that they’re equally hot from. It does look like teams are hitting their long midranges.
Their top scorer is 5’8 sophomore guard Deon Perry. He certainly is a shot taker. Perry is averaging 12 points, 4 assists, and 3.4 turnovers on 33.9% from the field and 28.8% from three. His 2 point percentage is up 8% from his freshman year, but has decreased his efficiency from behind the arc by around 13%. He can put the ball in the hoop from deep, it just hasn’t fallen this season. Definitely something to watch out for.
Another player to watch out for is 6’5 wing David Brown, their best shooter. Brown is hitting 42.9% of his threes on 3.5 attempts per game, but will occasionally have a 3 for 4 day, like he did against Missouri.
Offensive efficiency is not the name of the game for Loyola Maryland, as their top two scorers, Perry and D’Angelo Stines, are both shooting below 35% from the field.
Loyola Maryland Scouting Report (Full Game vs. La Salle)
I chose to scout the La Salle game since they’re a familiar A10 member, the game has a similar pace to what Mason’s projects to be, and it was a road game for Loyola Maryland.
On offense, Perry’s turnovers are probably a product of him passing to cutting guys a lot. It seems like he has predetermined whether he’s passing it there or not regardless of what the help-side defender is doing. Some more notes on Perry, it looks like he has to heave the ball every time he shoots a three. Imagine what a dude looks like when he’s shooting from just across half court. It caused him to airball his first attempt. Perry took a pull-up long mid-range from one step inside the line. If he does that against Mason, I’ll be very happy.
In a 2-point game with .9 left in the half, Perry catches the ball wide open way behind half court and doesn’t even attempt to heave it. Unless there’s something that stops him from being able to chuck it that far, that’s awful.
The offense tries to throw ball over the underneath defender to get it inside. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.
Golden Dike, Loyola’s 6’10 forward, airballed a free throw badly. He’s been shooting 43.6% from the line this season, but shot 32.9% last season. That’s a hack-a-Shaq candidate.
Two of their forwards, #4 Alonso Faure and #11 Milos Ilic, are very comfortable passing out of the post and acting as secondary playmakers.
Loyola got La Salle’s Khalil Brantley in foul trouble with 3 in the first 12 minutes. Watch out for Billups getting fouls early.
La Salle has occasionally pressed full-court, while it hasn’t worked super well in regards to causing turnovers, Loyola isn’t taking advantage of it.
Loyola had five turnovers in the first four and a half minutes of the second half. Things can fall apart quickly. They were mostly a guy either making an AWFUL read, or chucking it out of bounds.
On defense, Perry has active hands on defense, will challenge hand-offs, will probably get a couple fouls, but will be annoying to play against. He will play on the offensive guy’s blind side a bunch trying to get a steal, hoping they don’t notice he’s leaving a guy wide open.
Loyola Maryland played a pretty normal half-court defense for all but one possession I believe. They went into a zone for the first time with a minute left in the first half, La Salle got and missed an open three.
La Salle was held POWless for the first 13 minutes of the game. It didn’t seem like La Salle was missing particularly high quality threes.
The Greyhounds ended up losing this game, but they were up 11 with around five minutes. How did they get this lead, and how did they lose it?
Loyola got this lead because for a couple minute stretch, they played super aggressive defense, which caused either a turnover or an open La Salle shot, and La Salle wasn’t hitting their open shots. On three straight possessions, Loyola hit heavily contested shots near the rim with crowded paints, which included an and-one. They traded baskets for a bit, which eventually ended up with Loyola finally getting their 11 point lead.
Loyola lost their lead because La Salle kept passing up good looks looking for the great one. On the other end, Loyola started turning it over again. La Salle went on an 8-0 run in around 1:30. They didn’t do anything crazy, just watched Loyola shoot themselves in the foot and then hit their open shots on the other end.
A couple times late, La Salle got Perry switched onto a wing or big guard in the post, which caused the rest of the defense to collapse inside a bit, leaving their shooters with better opportunities. If Mason can get Perry on a Billups or Maddox type guy, their defense will struggle.
The team out of Baltimore scored 1 point in the last 4:49 of the game because they got a lot of bad shots, missed their open shots, and turned it over way too many times.
At the end of the game, both Brickus and Brantley, their two top scorers, had quiet and relatively inefficient games, yet La Salle won.
What does this mean for Mason? Even if Darius Maddox and Keyshawn Hall can’t get things going, Mason will still have a very good chance of winning.
Prediction
Mason wins 80-60 and moves on to 8-2. Ronald Polite doesn’t let Perry make an impact on the defensive end, and the Patriots use their size to make sure he cannot get open looks. If he sees a couple go in, it could be rough. I think Polite gets himself a 20 piece today, with most of his points coming inside on his patented contested layups.
I know it’s winter break and conference play hasn’t started, but Mason Nation still needs to show up and show out.
