Author: bygeorgemason

Hello Mason Nation! All the chalk talk this week is from the VCU game. I’m always up for arguing basketball so leave a comment below or follow me on twitter (@peteybuckets) and we can have words. Due to the disjointed viewing experience (thanks, MASN) there’s some stuff I wanted to highlight but don’t have on tape. Before we get to the good stuff there are a few things I want to talk about:

– Otis Livingston II has an outside shot at 2,000 career points. He’s already at 825 career points, which means he likely hits 1,000 in the OOC portion of next season. I did the math, and if we conservatively assume he has 65 games left in his career, here’s what he needs to average to hit different point thresholds:

o 14 points per game: 1,735 career points
o 16 points per game: 1,865 career points
o 18 points per game: 1,995 career points

So he gets to 2,000 by averaging a little over 18 points per game for the rest of his career. It’s a long shot, since the system Paulsen wants to play spreads out the scoring load, and he can’t really miss any time, but it’s fun to think about.

– Mason has a turnover problem, and it’s on both sides of the ball. We’ve lost the turnover battle badly in four of the past five games, turning the ball over 67 times vs just 36 turnovers for our opponents. That’s about six extra possessions per game the opponent gets a chance to get a shot up, which really reduces the margin for error in other aspects of the game. This problem is twofold – we’ve been turning the ball over a little bit more (60 turnovers combined against VCU, GW, Dayton, and Rhode Island), but we’re also not forcing enough turnovers. Mason is now the 6th worst team in the country at turning over the opponent. All but one team in the bottom 20 gives up an average of less than one point per possession, and that’s UCF, who has a 7’6” center anchoring their defense. Dave Paulsen teams have never generated a lot of turnovers, as he prefers to play a very conservative and conventional defensive style, but this is extreme even for him.

– Ian Boyd is coming on at the right time. Since being held scoreless in the Richmond game, he’s averaging 9.2 points on 54% shooting. Moreover, he looked very comfortable against VCU’s bruising style of play, which bodes well for the future. Mason will need a big lift from him off the bench if we’re going to make a run in Pittsburgh.

Alright, now on to the gifs that you came for.

One thing I took away from reviewing this game is that there was a lot more positive than I initially thought. The turnovers were mostly halfcourt mental mistakes, which is good because those are correctable. VCU’s press actually doesn’t bother our guards that much (it didn’t in the first game either). The bigger issue on offense was that we didn’t get many, if any, good looks with Mo Alie-Cox on the floor. He’s a tremendous paint protector and the guards looked hesitant to drive with him near the paint. On defense, you already know the story – we can’t stop Justin Tillman with a guard playing the 4.

Let’s get all the bad stuff out of the way first.

Early in the game Kier offers up almost no resistance to a Samir Doughty drive. Kier is usually a solid defender but this is an uncharacteristically poor effort. It looks like Doughty’s fake to the left puts Kier on his heels and he’s off balance for the rest of the drive:

I promise I won’t beat you over the head with Justin Tillman gifs but here’s a good illustration of how he bends our defense in bad ways. Kier comes down from the wing to help Grayer by doubling Tillman. Tillman kicks out to Doughty. Kier runs out and bites on Doughty’s shot fake, taking himself out of the play. Doughty drives and Grayer has to leave Tillman to contest. Even though Grayer’s contest is successful, he’s now out of rebounding position and Tillman gets an easy putback:

Here’s a really simple pick and roll action between Jequan Lewis and Mo Alie-Cox. First, every Mason player looks tired in this play. Each rotation is late. Second, this shows the dangers of Jalen hedging screens against VCU – when Alie-Cox shoots, Jalen is behind both him and Tillman. Even if Alie-Cox misses this shot (he doesn’t) VCU still probably gets an easy putback bucket.

One thing that stood out from rewatching the game was that Marquise Moore and Ian Boyd looked like the only guys who wanted to drive while Alie-Cox was on the floor. It’s tough to beat a team with a good shot blocker like that without penetrating, but a lot of possessions went like this – lots of dribbling, lots of swinging the ball around the perimeter, and a bad shot forced at the end of the shot clock:

Last Tillman gif: here’s another illustration of how easy his looks were all night. Credit Will Wade for drawing these up. Here he inbounds to above the key, gets a simple baseline screen from Ahmed Hamdy, and has all the space he needs to hit a turnaround over Boyd. I only gif’d two plays because I don’t want to torture you or myself, but most of Tillman’s buckets were this easy.

Okay, we’re done with the bad stuff now. As promised earlier, there was some encouraging stuff from this game. Really!

VCU’s full court pressure can work against them. Marquise is very well-suited to take advantage of a stretched-out defense that’s not set yet. He does so here and gets to the rim easily. Note that Hamdy is on the floor instead of Alie-Cox – that’s a recurring theme any time Mason hits a layup.

Marquise does the same thing here. Doug Brooks attempts to pressure him well above the arc, but that’s a bad idea. Marquise’s first step is too quick. He goes around Brooks, around Doughty, and over Tillman for the layup. Note: Alie-Cox is on the floor, but he’s guarding the wing on this possession. I have no idea why Wade would have Tillman anchor the 2-3 instead of Alie-Cox, particularly since Alie-Cox wasn’t in foul trouble, but maybe he’s keeping that in his back pocket for a potential rematch.

Again, there was a lack of penetration from Mason’s offense all night. Here’s a play from Ian Boyd that shows how important dribble penetration is. Boyd gets around Tillman, Brooks steps up off Jalen, and Boyd hits Jalen for an easy layup:

Jaire was quiet in this game (5 points on 2-5 shooting) but I really liked seeing this from him. He splits the seam in the 2-3 zone and hits a pretty floater over Tillman. He doesn’t do this often enough, and he can become a really dangerous player if he adds these drives to his arsenal:

These next two gifs are a celebration of Slim Otis. Mason lets VCU’s defense stretch out across the halfcourt. Jalen screens VCU’s Jonathan Williams out of the play. Otis takes the ballscreen and has Doughty and Hamdy in front of him. He goes to his left around Doughty (longer defenders like Doughty usually bother Otis) then takes the ball right at Hamdy, who can’t stop him from finishing with his right. This is a good way to take advantage of Alie-Cox being off the floor.

A very similar play happens here with Relvao on the floor. Again Williams is roadkill on the ballscreen, and Otis goes right at Hamdy, who fouls him while giving up the layup. Hamdy simply can’t defend the paint like Alie-Cox can.

Relvao gave us some good minutes, which is always encouraging to see. Here he comes through with a help side block of Williams that starts a fast break. Otis leaves the ball for a trailing Boyd, who finishes over Tillman. One sneaky surprising thing about this game is that it looked like transition favored Mason.

This was my favorite play of the night. It’s a simple pick and roll with Kier and Jalen. It doesn’t really create any space, but it gets Alie-Cox on his heels. Jalen goes right up into him and completes the play while drawing a foul.

People call Kier a point guard but he hasn’t really played a point guard role at all this year. Otis and Marquise take turns initiating the offense, and Kier does most of his work off the ball. Here, however, he initiates a great drive and dish, using the ballscreen to get into the paint and set up Karmari for an easy layup. Kier still has some freshman mistakes to work out but plays like this make him easy to love:

Finally, here’s Ian Boyd once again driving into the teeth of VCU’s defense. Against the toughest, most physical opponent we’ll play all year, Boyd looked totally comfortable.

If Mason sees VCU again, Dave Paulsen absolutely has to come up with a different way to guard Tillman or else he’ll eat us alive again. Assuming Dave has something in his bag of tricks for Tillman, there’s a lot to suggest Mason could make it a competitive game in Pittsburgh.

That’s all for this week’s breakdown. Until next week – go Mason!

Happy Friday! There was no post last week due to me being out of town. Click here to see what it looked like two weeks ago. Yes, I’m reusing the Marquise gif as the header because it’s awesome. Let’s get to it right now:

THE FAVORITE: Jaylen Adams, St. Bonaventure

19.2 points, 3.7 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 2.1 steals, 0.1 blocks

22.5 PER, 27.2% USG, 1.52 PPFGA

I’ve spoken my peace on Jaylen in previous posts, so I want to point out something interesting – his shooting percentage is really bad (38.6% from the floor, 47.4% eFG) but he gets to the free throw line so much it doesn’t matter. He’s shooting 9.1 free throws per game in conference and hitting about 80% of them, so he still scores at a very efficient rate compared to the number of shots he takes.

SO CLOSE: Marquise Moore, George Mason

16.9 points, 9.9 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.1 steals, 0.7 blocks

23.5 PER, 26.2% USG, 1.34 PPFGA

Mason has played four games since the last A10POY post and Marquise had sub-par scoring outings in two of them (12 points on 12 shots against Dayton, 8 points on 11 shots against Duquesne). He also has only 11 assists in the past four games, so a couple things are trending in the wrong direction for him. He’s still in the two spot on the strength of his incredibly unique season, the colossal load he’s asked to carry for the young Patriots, and his ability to defend the opponent’s best perimeter player night in and night out. He has an opportunity to finish the season with an exclamation point on the road against VCU tomorrow.

THE ‘T’ IS FOR ‘TURNSTILE’: TJ Cline, Richmond

18.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal, 0.1 blocks

25.5 PER, 28.3% USG, 1.45 PPFGA

“Turnstile J Cline” might be a little harsh but I can’t put TJ Cline ahead of Moore or Adams knowing how well both of them contribute on defense. Cline’s dad played for the Washington Generals, which explains a lot about TJ’s game – spin the box score on offense, offer no resistance on defense. I’ll offer this all with the caveat that if I were betting money, I’d bet on Cline to win it since an 18/8/6 line is insane – according to college basketball reference, Cline would be the first to ever post such a line in conference play in college basketball history.

DARK HORSE: Kendall Pollard, Dayton

14.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.8 blocks

23.8 PER, 27.7% USG, 1.65 PPFGA

Pollard has a higher usage rate and scores much more efficiently than his teammates, Charles Cooke and Scoochie Smith. I’ve written about this before. I still think he’s Dayton’s best POY candidate.

STILL IN CONTENTION

Peyton Aldridge, Davidson

20.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.4 steals, 0.9 blocks

25.1 PER, 25.7% USG, 1.33 PPFGA

Aldridge’s efficiency numbers have suffered recently (his early season production was probably unsustainable to a degree) but he’s still putting up 20 points and 8 boards while contributing a lot defensively. The first four are the guys I think have a shot to win – Aldridge leads the best of the rest, for now.

Charles Cooke, Dayton

14.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.1 steals, 0.9 blocks

20.7 PER, 24.7% USG, 1.36 PPFGA

Cooke is either the best or second best player on the best team in the A10, and his ability to use his length is a big part of Dayton’s suffocating defense. For the purposes of these rankings, he just hasn’t been an efficient enough scorer to warrant a grade over the guys ahead of him.

Tyler Cavanaugh, George Washington

18.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 0.6 steals, 0.2 blocks

24.7 PER, 29.4% USG, 1.44 PPFGA

About three weeks ago I said Cavanaugh was basically 80% of Peyton Aldridge. He might have read that and used it as motivation (or toilet paper) as he’s been rampaging through the league since then. He’s averaging 21.6 points and 9.3 rebounds per game over his past six. He’s rocketing up the leaderboard, but what hurts him is his lack of contribution outside of points and rebounds, and the token resistance he offers on defense.

SECOND OR THIRD TEAM CANDIDATES

Jack Gibbs, Davidson

20.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.5 steals, 0 blocks

21.4 PER, 29.5% USG, 1.27 PPFGA

Gibbs is moving up the board, but he’s still been much less efficient than the guys ahead of him.

JeQuan Lewis, VCU

14.9 points, 3.2 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.2 blocks

20.3 PER, 23.6% USG, 1.33 FFPGA

Matt Mobley, St. Bonaventure

18.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2 steals, 0.2 blocks

20.7 PER, 23.4% USG, 1.43 PPFGA

Justin Tillman, VCU

13.9 points, 9.5 rebounds, 0.4 assists, 0.4 steals, 0.5 blocks

26 PER, 23.3% USG, 1.38 PPFGA

Most of Tillman’s important numbers have dipped in the past two weeks. His arrow is pointing down.

Hassan Martin, Rhode Island

12.5 points, 6 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.4 steals, 2.1 blocks

25.2 PER, 24.7% USG, 1.44 PPFGA

Hassan Martin is still kind of a trendy first team pick but I’m not buying. I guess he makes sense if you feel obligated to put a traditional center on the first team, but no way I’m making room for him over the likes of Pollard, Aldridge, or a number of other guys.

EC Matthews, Rhode Island

14 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.3 blocks

16.5 PER, 26.3% USG, 1.28 PPFGA

Matthews is also a guy that’s going to get a lot of first and second team votes, but that’s a byproduct of Rhode Island being good in the standings. He simply hasn’t been as good as the guys ahead of him.

KEEP AN EYE ON:

Scoochie Smith, Dayton

Jordan Price, La Salle

ShawnDre’ Jones, Richmond

Multiple games with multiple gifs in the breakdown for the first time this week! I’m going to jump around between games and try to stay coherent so buckle up.

The story of the Fordham game, in the first half anyway, was that the team did a great job of taking advantage of Fordham’s gimmicky trap-heavy defense. Fordham leads the A10 in steals, but that doesn’t mean they’re good defensively. They gamble hard, trapping and sometimes even triple-teaming in an attempt to force turnovers. This can be effective under the right circumstances, but when it doesn’t work it looks really ugly.

Here on the first bucket of the game, Marquise turns the corner and is chased by two defenders into the paint. A third defender tries to slide in for the charge, while the other two reach in to try to help. Freeze the gif while Marquise is in the paint and you’ll see he literally has all five defenders within arms’ reach. He dishes to a cutting Jaire for an easy basket:

On the next play Otis spins away from the pressure. 32 on Fordham takes a step toward him to trap, but then backs off. He doesn’t realize that Marquise is cutting toward a wide open lane, and he’s already been beaten badly. Sengfelder (#43 on Fordham) is late with the help, giving Marquise the and-one layup.

On this play, Marquise catches a piece of the paint and dishes to Otis. Otis heads into the lane, drawing the post help away from Jaire and leaving no defenders on the weakside. Otis dishes to Jaire for a nice assist and an easy layup.

Here’s yet another extreme example of Fordham’s defensive style. Jaire gets the ball in the corner and gives it to Jalen to avoid the trap. Jalen is then triple-teamed. Fordham has four defenders on the strong side between the arc and the paint when Jalen has the ball. Jalen finds Marquise at the top of the key, who swings to Kier for a wide-open three.

Even by Fordham’s standards this looks like a broken defensive play. Three defenders are above the arc, in an apparent attempt to trap the ballscreen Jalen is trying to set, and the other two defenders are occupied on the wings. Marquise goes left opposite the ballscreen, burns his defender, and finds little resistance on his way to the rim.

Fordham mixed it up a little in the second half and had a lot more success with trapping and forcing turnovers. They also went zone for a few possessions, which didn’t work out well for them. Here they’re in a 2-3 zone. The spacing on the wings is poor and leaves a big hole for Marquise. Marquise charges to the rim, and Sengfelder, who is not a rim protector, is powerless to do anything to stop him.

The biggest story of the week for those wondering about the future of Mason basketball was Karmari Newman. He was an animal against Richmond, and a few plays demonstrate why I think he has the highest ceiling of any of the first year players. Here he uses a shot fake to get his defender up in the air, blows past him, then pulls up for a long two. Everything about this play is silky smooth.

Now here’s a reverse angle of a spinning drive he had. He catches a pass from Jalen at the top of the key, spins away from the help defender, and gets raked across the arm to go to the line. Karmari’s shooting is one thing, but his ability to get to the rim opens up a whole other dimension for his game. Guards who can shoot are a dime a dozen in college basketball; guards who can score at the rim are worth their weight in gold. He’s still seeing limited minutes, but he makes one or two of these drives each game.

Once again, Jalen’s post play was pivotal in beating Richmond. They sent a few screaming doubles at him and he made them pay each time. Here, the weakside post defender abandons the wing to double Jalen. Jalen gets a hockey assist for hitting Marquise, who swings it to a wide open Jaire in the corner:

On this early possession he’s patient enough to realize that Richmond’s rotation is busted and no one is marking Karmari. He skips this pass to Mason’s sharpshooter for another open three:

“Jalen’s torture chamber” might become a weekly entry. This week, Jalen welcomed Cline to the Thunderdome once again. Here Richmond leaves Cline, a very poor defender, isolated on Jalen. Jalen takes him to the woodshed and draws Cline’s fourth foul while he’s at it:

“Otis’s impossible layup” is another contender for a weekly entry. Feels like he does this once or twice a game. How does he even get this shot off, much less in?

Now let’s check in on the other freshmen. Troy was a mixed bag this week. He got flustered against a Fordham triple team and turned it over here:

But then he caught a nice pass from Marquise, pivoted, reversed, and scored. We don’t need Troy to be anything special on offense at this point, but it’s a tremendous help if he can avoid turnovers and convert the easy opportunities our guards are going to generate for him.

Ian Boyd has been quiet since coming back from his suspension (6 points, 2-7 shooting against Richmond and Rhode Island), but he’s still doing a lot of things you love to see out of him. Here he is boxing ShawnDre’ Jones into oblivion. He gets the rebound and misses the layup, probably because there should have been a foul called, but Temara’s there to clean up the mess:

Another weekly entry idea: Your Justin Kier moment of zen. There’s always plenty of material. This week: Kier is sneaky awesome at leading the fast break. Here are two plays where he sets up his teammates with beautiful passes. The pass to Otis was particularly great – he had almost no angle to thread this past Buckingham. Mason got to the line on both of these:

Let’s wrap this up with a couple more Marquise plays worth highlighting: first, his pass off the backboard to Jalen. Marquise recognizes he doesn’t have much of an angle for a shot himself, but he sees Jalen in prime offensive rebound position, so he chucks it off the backboard. This was awesome:

Here Marquise hits an absurd shot at the end of the half off a nifty drive. Three Richmond defenders try to stop him but they’re all powerless. This play is a good illustration of what really sets Marquise apart – his tremendous ability to create separation out of nothing and finish in traffic defines his game.

Now you’ve probably noticed there are no gifs from the Rhode Island game. That’s because these take time and when I have to choose, I’d rather gif the wins than the losses. I will say that at halftime, I thought Rhode Island was the physically superior team, and that with Hassan Martin coming back (he sat most of the first half with two fouls) we were going to get blown out on our home court. I’m rarely so happy to be wrong. I can’t remember the last time that I felt better about a team after a loss, but that’s how I came away from the Rhode Island game. Rhode Island had a tremendous size advantage all over the court. They start 6’7” Hassan Martin and 6’9” Kuran Iverson, whom Jaire had to guard, and a 6’7” and 6’8” player both got big minutes off the bench. Otis was guarded by the lanky 6’3” Jeff Dowtin, and Dowtin’s length on defense was a big part of Otis’s off night. I didn’t see any reason to think we’d be able to close the gap, but the team showed tremendous poise to come all the way back from down 18 in the second half. They didn’t finish the job, but they showed us that they’re tough as nails and they can scrap with anyone.

That’s it for this week. The breakdown will be taking a week off next week for a snowboarding trip. Until then – go Mason!

Happy Friday! Click here for last week’s watch and a quick introduction to the rankings. Since the race is tightening up and there aren’t many surprises, we’ll get right to it today.

Last week, it went 1) Jaylen Adams, 2) TJ Cline, and 3) Marquise Moore. This week I’ll make it easier and say they’re all in a tie for first. You can make arguments for each of them, but ultimately the separation is miniscule and each of these guys is a strong finish away from claiming the award. Player of the Year ultimately comes down to one of these guys and everyone else is vying for a spot on the first team.

TIED FOR FIRST: Jaylen Adams, St. Bonaventure

18.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 6.7 assists, 2.4 steals, 0.1 blocks

23.4 PER, 27.7% USG, 1.47 PPFGA

Last week I said Jaylen’s place at the top was shaky. Well, he went 7 of 22 shooting against GW and La Salle but posted twenty three assists combined in those two games. It also helped that he went 18 of 19 at the line, so his scoring efficiency actually increased. Jaylen has been in a brutal shooting slump since the Duquesne game, shooting 21 of 70 over that five game stretch, but he’s making up for it by getting to the line and dishing dimes. If his shot starts falling, watch out.

ALSO TIED FOR FIRST: TJ Cline, Richmond

19.9 points, 8.8 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal, 0.2 blocks

27.7 PER, 29.9% USG, 1.47 PPFGA

I’ve given TJ plenty of grief in this column because he can’t play defense, so now I’ll argue the other side. TJ’s offensive game is so good that it dramatically outweighs his defensive shortcomings. This isn’t the NBA where teams can isolate a scorer on him over and over until the defense breaks. It’s easy enough to hide TJ on defense and feature him on offense, which is exactly what Richmond does. Cline’s defense sticks out like a sore thumb because Richmond plays so much four guard and he can’t protect the paint, but that still doesn’t come close to offsetting what he can do with the ball in his hands. As a Mason fan who was at the most recent Mason-Richmond game, I can tell you I was hoping we’d get chances to expose him on defense, but was terrified every time he had the ball. Still, despite his tremendous box score, it’ll be tough to put him ahead of the other two knowing how well they defend.

ALSO ALSO TIED FOR FIRST: Marquise Moore, George Mason

17.5 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.8 blocks

24.7 PER, 27.4% USG, 1.37 PPFGA

Marquise Moore moves into the tie for first this week as he continues to lead our upstart Patriots through a season that has exceeded all expectations. After collecting 23 rebounds last week Moore is now one of two players averaging a double-double in conference, and he does it while carrying a tremendous workload for a Mason roster that’s ultimately limited. He’s the primary initiator and scorer, and he has the responsibility of guarding the other team’s best perimeter player every night. He also recently started shooting threes and making teams pay for the tendency to leave him open by eight feet when he’s outside the arc. His shot still isn’t pretty but he’s 8 of 15 from three in the past five games because he’s only shooting when teams don’t bother to contest.

DARK HORSE: Kendall Pollard, Dayton

15 points, 5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.9 blocks

25 PER, 27.1% USG, 1.72 PPFGA

Check out my post from last week arguing why Kendall Pollard is Dayton’s best Player of the Year candidate. Long story short – Charles Cooke has been quietly inefficient all year, and Pollard has Dayton’s highest usage rating. He’s scoring more points in conference than his teammates, and he’s doing it more efficiently on a larger workload.

STILL IN CONTENTION

Justin Tillman, VCU

14.8 points, 10.3 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.5 blocks

26.9 PER, 22.9% USG, 1.41 PPFGA

Tillman is the other player averaging a double-double in conference. The problem is he averages one steal, one assist, and one block every other game. That means in a game where he gets one from one category, the next game he’ll get one from the other two categories. In all seriousness, his lack of a box score contribution outside of points and rebounds is ultimately going to cap his POY potential in what’s been a great season.

Tyler Cavanaugh, George Washington

17.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.2 blocks

23.3 PER, 30.7% USG, 1.34 PPFGA

Last week I said Cavanaugh was basically 80% of Peyton Aldridge. That’s less true this week after Cavanaugh closed the gap in a huge way with a 33 point, 10 rebound game against St. Bonaventure. His rebounding is also trending up (11.5 rebounds per game in the past four games, after grabbing only 6.3 per game in the previous eight games) so he could continue gaining ground on the guys ahead of him. Cavanaugh’s usage rating is the highest of anyone in contention, and that works in his favor.

Peyton Aldridge, Davidson

20.6 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.7 blocks

25.5 PER, 26.1% USG, 1.34 PPFGA

For the second week in a row Aldridge’s numbers declined across the board. He’s playing a ton of minutes for a team that has no other scoring options aside from Gibbs, but these rankings are serious business and I don’t plan on making room for excuses. Aldridge is also no longer the Wildcat with the highest usage rating (that would be Gibbs) so he’s this week’s biggest freefaller.

SECOND OR THIRD TEAM CANDIDATES

Charles Cooke, Dayton

14 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.7 blocks

20.6 PER, 25.8% USG, 1.32 PPFGA

Cooke has been a quietly inefficient scorer, but his arrow is pointing up. He defends like hell, rebounds well for a guard, and many would argue he’s the best player on Dayton.

JeQuan Lewis, VCU

15.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, 4.9 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.2 blocks

21.2 PER, 24.4% USG, 1.39 FFPGA

After scoring 61 points on 17 of 29 shooting last week, JeQuan Lewis makes his first appearance on the watch. He’s not crushing the box score like some of the guys on this list, but he’s putting together a very solid line, and he’s a tough defender who plays a big role in VCU’s top 2 in-conference defense. He’ll keep moving up if he doesn’t cool down soon.

Matt Mobley, St. Bonaventure

18.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.9 steals, 0.3 blocks

20.6 PER, 23.2% USG, 1.40 PPFGA

Jack Gibbs, Davidson

19.7 points, 4.6 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.3 steals, 0 blocks

21.4 PER, 29.3% USG, 1.25 PPFGA

Hassan Martin, Rhode Island

12.9 points, 5.3 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.5 steals, 2.3 blocks

24.2 PER, 24.7% USG, 1.43 PPFGA

A lot of people have Hassan Martin on the first team, but I can’t and here’s why: the dude can’t rebound. According to College Basketball Reference, Martin is grabbing only 11.4% of available rebounds when he’s on the floor. That’s more along the lines of a guard who rebounds well (like De’Monte Buckingham from Richmond, or Jaire Grayer from George Mason) than it is an all-conference first team big man.

EC Matthews, Rhode Island

14.5 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.5 steals, 0.4 blocks

16.8 PER, 27% USG, 1.29 PPFGA

Matthews is also a guy that’s going to get a lot of first and second team votes, but his poor efficiency and low assist rate scares me away.

KEEP AN EYE ON:

Scoochie Smith, Dayton

Jordan Price, La Salle

ShawnDre’ Jones, Richmond