By Palmer Johnson
Your George Mason Patriots fell on the road to Richmond and George Washington to extend the losing streak to three, drop their record to 13-5 and conference record to 2-3.
Richmond
Mason lost on the road to Richmond with a score of 77-70.
This game will make us remember Jordan King for a long time. 31 points on 15 shots, he was on fire. Some of them were very quality shots but a decent bit of them were heat checks that Mason couldn’t do anything about. Not only did he do all that scoring, King also collected five steals, which is not something I noticed during the game.
The two best performances for Mason were probably Ronald Polite and Amari Kelly. Polite ended up with 13 points on 5-9 shooting along with six assists. Kelly had 13 points on 6-10 shooting, but more importantly, he shut down Neal Quinn with the help of Malik Henry, forcing him to go 3-10 from the field.
The trend of going down a bunch in the first half on the road is getting a bit old since you can’t always come back from such deficits.
George Washington
Mason lost on the road to George Washington to the tune of 75-62. This was a rough game.
I attended this one, and a decent bit of Mason fans showed up. Those that were there were excited and loud.
The offense really struggled in this one, nobody was hitting their threes and George Washington didn’t let Mason take advantage of their defenders helping off their man.
Nobody on the Patriots could handle freshman forward Darren Buchanan, which is worrying since it’s likely that we have to watch him for the next 3 years.
A bright spot was kind of Amari Kelly, who scored 14 on 5-10 from the field, even with missing multiple bunnies. It seemed like Stretch Akingbola wasn’t doing a very good job of defending him one-on-one and Kelly was getting the exact shot he wanted, it just wasn’t falling.
Looking Forward
You can’t undo the three-game losing streak, but you can end it at three. Mason really, really, really needs a bounceback win at home against St. Bonaventure. They can’t let the season unravel like this. If they lose against Bonny, it’s going to be so tough to get back on track, since after the home game against Rhody, they’ll play a lot of very good teams at home, and a lot of mediocre teams on the road.
I hope I get to write a victory article soon, they’re much more fun to do.
