DOWN GOES DAYTON!

By
Joseph Szymanski
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2
3134

By Palmer Johnson

Your George Mason Patriots just took down the #16 ranked Dayton Flyers in front of an awesome EagleBank crowd. As a treat, the students got to storm the court.

This was the first win over a ranked team in EagleBank.

Mason now moves to 18-8, and more importantly, 7-6. The pillow fight seemed like a possibility due to kind of penciling this game in as a loss, but now the Patriots can be fighting for the 5-7 spots. Mason is currently the six seed, and if the season ended today, Dayton would be their second game.

KenPom may say the MVP was DaRon Holmes, but everyone who watched knows it was one of two players, Baraka Okojie or Malik Henry.

Malik Henry was unreal with his ball denial on Holmes. His athleticism is crazy to have in your back pocket, I had no clue that this team would be able to stay mostly one-on-one with Dayton. Tony Skinn, you are a wizard. Also, he had a couple fun dunks, including this lob.

It felt like Malik was a huge part of the crazy 24-2 run during the meat of the second half. He is such a luxury to have on the bench. If you need him, he’ll bring crazy energy and give you momentum, if you don’t, he’s the biggest cheerleader in the arena. Thank you, Mr. Patriot.

Okojie keeps putting together these crazy games where he just kind of takes over. Freshmen aren’t supposed to do that. The Canadian ended up with a career high 19 points on 5-6 shooting from the field and 9-9 from the line, along with only one turnover. The free throws were incredibly important down the stretch, as other Mason guys were struggling a bit. I watched a replay and Bill Rohland pointed out at the end all 19 of Baraka’s points came in the second half. ONIONS!

Baraka Okojie is the offensive MVP, Henry gets defensive.

Speaking of that run, Mason was sneakily down 11 early in the second half, but that run put them up 11.

Big props to Keyshawn Hall. He may not have had the most efficient night, but he got hurt at some point, could barely walk out of the locker room for the second half, and toughed it out. Also, he hit 9/10 free throws. Thank you.

We got ourselves a Ronald Polite game. Big Shot Ronny had 13 points on 5-7 from the field, and it felt like he scored exactly when it was needed. At some point in the game, I could see they were trying to get a post touch for him since he had Javon Bennett on him, who is listed at 5’10, but might be smaller. Polite truly is the Dayton killer.

Amari Kelly didn’t have a particularly good game on the defensive end, fouling out in 22 minutes, but he definitely wasn’t a slouch. Not sticking out against DaRon Holmes is a win. Kelly had a nice offensive night, scoring 12 on 5-5. He hit that crazy fadeaway midrange with around four minutes left, what a shot.

The two-point defense is back. Dayton shot higher from three than two, 42.3% compared to 40%.

The perimeter defense on Kobe Elvis also needs to be brought up, as he ended up shooting 2-11. If I remember correctly, Okojie and Billups were the guys primarily on him. That’s awesome.

It is still odd to me that you can beat Dayton by out-slowing them, as now they have lost all three of their games that had below 60 possessions, with Mason’s game having only 59 per team.

This will likely be a Quad 1 win, assuming Dayton finishes as a top 30 team. They were ranked 19th coming into Fairfax, and the loss did not move them down.

If you didn’t believe Skinn could coach before, you definitely do now. This is truly a signature win, something that will likely do wonders for recruiting.

With the Patriots winning their third game in a row, you can officially call it a streak. If the streak gets to four after playing at Loyola Chicago, Mason will have an outside, but realistic chance to get the four seed and double bye, as the next four after that are all games where Mason is favored to win.

Get excited, Mason Nation. We could be in the early stages of a big win streak. Who wants to face a red hot Mason squad in Brookyln?

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