DEFENSE! Mason Tops Tulane in a Bayou Brawl

By
Joseph Szymanski
-
67
873

By Palmer Johnson

Your George Mason Patriots went on the road and beat a quality Tulane team 69-66, a nail-biter. This game is a Q2 win at the moment, but could end up being Q1 if Tulane does super well in conference play.

Skinn showed us the type of coach he is. His team goes down 13, 11 at half. He coached them back into it instantly after the break.

Mason set the pace of this game. They got the pace down to 69 possessions, which was tied for the lowest pace of the Green Wave’s season. Tulane lost the other game they were tied in tempo with, so Mason may have put together the blueprint to beat them. Sorry.

Since they played at such a slow pace, they were held to a season low at 66, with their previous low being 76 against Mississippi State. More importantly, they also had their season low for points per possession, averaging .96, with their second lowest being .97 against Mississippi State.

Tulane shot twos at a 64% rate before this game, the best in the country. They shot 37% from inside the arc against Mason. A -27% difference is just crazy. DEFENSE!

I have no numbers to back it up, but the eye test told me that this was the most zone-heavy game from Mason this year.

Mason dominated this game in pretty much every statistical category except for one, turnovers. As soon as a player tried a spin move, you knew Tulane was going to get the ball. That will have to get cleaned up if they want to be a consistent team in conference play.

The biggest difference in the game was the first ten minutes of the second half, where Mason won 23 to 9. ADJUSTMENTS!

On offense, the team was pretty passive in the first half, but in the second half, Polite became aggressive and set the tone for the rest of the offense.

Ronald Polite was clutch. I got to tweet out “BIG SHOT RONNY” twice, he really stepped up. Not only did Polite hit some big shots, but he stuffed the stat sheet, and is my pick for player of the game. 16 points on 7-11 shooting, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists. That’s what Mason Nation has been looking for from him.

Not only was this Ronny’s best game stat-wise, it was also his most impactful. It wasn’t against NJIT in a blowout, it was in a road game where Mason was the underdog. Polite’s aggressiveness in the second half along with being relatively safe with the ball helped bring Mason back into the game, and then win.

Darius Maddox held it down early when he was the only one who could get much of anything going. If he wasn’t hitting those threes early, Mason may have been in too deep a hole to dig out of.

Woody Newton played backup center again, and while you’d rather have Malik Henry out there and have Woody on the wing, he’s doing better than you could reasonably expect for a wing.

Amari Kelly cemented himself as a high-tier defensive center tonight, if he hadn’t already. Manning the interior defense against the most efficient two-point offense in the country and making them shoot 27% below their average is just crazy. Kelly has put himself in A10 DPOY conversation. Along with his stellar defense, he was getting boards, and improved throughout the game on offense.

This game made me feel so much better about Mason. They could have fallen apart and taken a 20-point loss on the road, but they came back and punched Tulane in the mouth in the second half.

Next up, the out-of-conference finale, North Carolina A&T.

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