Your 23-7 and 14-3 George Mason Patriots are taking on the 10-20 and 5-12 Richmond Spiders in the last game of the regular season.
Since I have already done an article on them, I will not cover the background stuff. I would recommend reading the one from January before this one.
The Spiders are short DeLonnie Hunt, who got hurt during or shortly after the Mason game, and Apostolos Roumoglou, who seemed to be a positive in the starting lineup from the short time I saw them.
Richmond By The Numbers
The Richmond Spiders are the 241st ranked team on KenPom, with the 241st offense and 228th defense. In conference play, Richmond has the 14th ranked offense and 12th ranked defense.
Mikkel Tyne has been playing complete games recently, as he has played 50, 40, and 40 minutes in their last three games. Over their last five games, KenPom has him playing 98% of the PG minutes, and it does not have anyone else for those 2%.
It is kind of odd that KenPom lists him at PG considering he only has a 12% assist rate, but I guess so. They are not going to list Mike Walz there.
Mooney has his guys playing at the slowest pace in the conference, at 62.4 possessions per game. This comes on the offensive end, as their average possession length is 20.5 seconds, slowest, and their defensive possession length is seventh, so slightly faster than median.
Offense
The offensive numbers look like what you would expect for Richmond, minus having the 11th ranked eFG% at 48.9%. They have the third lowest turnover rate, but have the worst offensive rebound percentage, which is a choice by Mooney, and the lowest free throw rate, which is a product of having so much off-ball movement and not much on-ball movement.
The Spiders make 48.8% of their twos, 12th, and 32.7% of their threes, 9th. The Spiders take 43.8% of their shots from behind the arc, which is fourth.
The free-throw percentage doesn’t matter crowd wins this round, as Richmond is first in the conference in free throw make rate at 82.5%.
Chart from CBBAnalytics
Their eFG% was actually not too bad in February. They would have won some games if their defense didn’t fall apart. There has only been one game in March, so I would assume that they are closer to their February offense than the one-game sample size.
Dusan Neskovic has been their clear number one option, taking 29.4% of the shots. He’s actually been a pretty good option, with a 57.4% true shooting percentage, due to him being 13th in free throw rate, sixth in fouls drawn per 40 at 5.4, and making 93.7% of his 79 free throws, which is first. Neskovic has shot 31.2% from three on 80 attempts, and made 50.5% of his 103 twos.
The stats really do not like Mikkel Tyne, but he is probably their best option at PG. 46.8% true shooting, negative assist-turnover rate, 26.9% from three on 67 attempts.
Jonathan Beagle has been better as a scorer, but has not brought the passing you would have hoped for, with a 17.5%-26.4% assist-turnover rate ratio. He has at least given you 58% true shooting, and draws 5.2 fouls per 40.
Mike Walz might be their best overall player, with a 55.4% true shooting, but more impressively, a 27.7% assist rate, which is fourth in the conference. Walz also has the 17th highest offensive rebound rate at 8.5%. He leaves a decent bit to be desired inside, as he shoots 46.6% from two, but has made 48.4% of his 31 attempts from three.
With the rest of the guys, when it comes to shooting, it is a mixed bag. They pretty much only have one more good shooter, Jason Roche, who’s made 39.7% of his 73 attempts, 10th, but has only taken four twos. B Artis White has made 27.3% of his 66 shots, and Collin Tanner has made 28.6% of his 28. I am leaving out DeLonnie Hunt and Roumoglou.
Defense
The defense is slightly better than the offense, as they are not truly awful in any category, but there is no standout stat like turnover rate with the other end.
Richmond is 12th, 10th, 7th, and 11th in eFG%, turnover forced rate, defensive rebounding, and free throw rate. Not good, but not awful. Just bad.
The Spiders’ opponents shoot 35% from three, which is 14th, and 52.7% from two, 9th. Unfortunately for Richmond, teams are taking the most threes against them at 49.9%. That is pretty much half, which is the high-end for NBA squads.
Chart from CBBAnalytics
The rim and three defense has been awful. That might be a lot of DeLonnie Hunt being injured, as they are likely giving up more rim pressure since the backup cannot stay in front of his man, which also leads to a cascading effect of people having to help over and eventually leaving someone open from three.
The Spiders have some guys who can get into foul trouble, but they make sense. Jonathan Beagle is at 5.5 per 40, which is not ok, but freshman Ryan Soulis is at 4.8 and senior Jack D’Entremont is at 5.3. d’Entremont played at D3 Washington & Lee until this season, so it’s almost like he is a freshman.
Mike Walz has the seventh highest defensive rebounding percentage at 20.8%. He is also a bit of a playmaker, with a 2.5% block rate and 1.4% steal rate.
They have some more playmakers, with Beagle having a 4.7% block rate, Ryan Soulis having an 8.3% block rate and 1.4% steal rate, and Collin Tanner having a 2% and 2.1% block and steal rate.
Richmond Scouting Report (17:00 to 7:00 First Half vs. Fordham)
I wanted to watch the Dayton game, but it was not on ESPN+.
ESPN+ had technical difficulties and lost the first three minutes of the game. We did not miss any Richmond scoring.
Both of these teams are really bad, but Richmond looked worse.
Offense
Richmond uses their bigs to seal off the paint protector on drives.
There is an illusion of shooters “getting” open, but it is more the defense deciding that it is not worth covering 25% shooter in the corner.
Fordham ran a 3-2 zone, Richmond got a very contested shot at the rim, and a three from a bad shooter.
Mikkel Tyne will use off-ball screens to get open looks. He makes too many mistakes to not have any high-end skills.
Neskovic looks more wing-y on offense than I remembered. He will also take some long twos.
B Artis White is fine when he drives, but he does not do it very often.
I saw one of Jason Roche’s four two-point attempts.
Defense
Richmond was not very good in transition, which is really bad, since they choose to not offensive rebound so they can better defend in transition, but they let up easy stuff regardless.
The Spiders ran some man press.
There were lots of stationary help defenders hoping the ball-handler would run directly into them.
Walz will generally stay inside or near the paint.
Beagle is pretty good one-on-one.
What Does This Mean for Mason?
This game is absolutely meaningless for seeding, but it will prepare you for the tournament, as Richmond is the type of scrappy team that could make a game close.
Jalen Haynes went out at the end of last game with what was hopefully a cramp, but regardless of what it is, I would personally not play him in a “meaningless” game.
I think Mason wins this game 65-60. It will probably be closer than we want it to, since that is how Richmond games go.
If Mason wins, they would have the same record as VCU, with VCU having the tiebreaker. I personally think the one seed is the regular season champion, but the A10 counts anyone with the same record as co-champions.
I’ll put it this way. I will call VCU the co-champion to be annoying, but I will not say the same for Mason.
