This could be a challenging team for Duke.
Date 12/17 || Time 7:00 || Venue Basketball Paradise || Video ACCN
Next up for Duke is George Mason and Mason has an interesting history.
Look who has coached there: Rick Barnes, Paul Westhead, Jim Larrañaga, Paul Hewitt and most recently Kim English, who became a hot prospect and moved on to Providence.
The current coach is Tony Skinn, who debuted with a 20-10 season. That’s not overwhelming by ACC standards, but respectable when you’re a school in the A-10. That’s a solid first season.
Skinn and GMU are off to a 7-3 start this season. They really haven’t played anyone of note other than Marquette, and the Golden Eagles beat them by 19. However, it was a one point game at halftime and a two point game with 6:18 left to play. We’ll get into that more shortly.
As the DBR Pod Cats will point out this afternoon, Mason has several significant transfers including one you will remember: Darius Maddox from Virginia Tech.
He transferred to Mason last season and is doing well, averaging 14.0 ppg last season and 14.9 so far this season. He’s a 6-5 senior now and still very lean at 175.
Maddox is the lead dog for GMU. He’s supported by Brayden O’Connor, a 6-4 junior transfer from UMass Lowell. He’s 6-4 and he’s getting 10.1 ppg, 2.9 boards and 2.9 assists.
Jared Billups is a 6-4 senior and if that last name rings a bell, it should: his uncle Chauncey had a long and outstanding NBA career.
Jared transferred from Siena and while he’s not scoring much (5.0), he’s a solid rebounder with 6.0 per game.
Woody Newton, a 6-9 senior transfer from Oklahoma State who also attended Durham’s Mt. Zion, gets 8.5 ppg and 5.6 rebounds.
Senior Jalen Haynes, a 6-8/260 lb bruiser who used to be at ETSU, is putting up 11.6 ppg and getting 6.1 boards.
Zach Anderson is a 6-7 grad student who came to Mason from Florida Gulf Coast. His stat line is modest, not that that always tells the story: 7.1 ppg, 3.5 ppg.
Giovanni Emejuru, a junior, is a 6-11/265 Brit who transferred from Siena. He’s averaging 10.4 ppg and 5.1 boards.
KD Johnson is a 6-0 senior transfer from Auburn. He’s putting up 8.3 ppg, 3.1 rebounds and 2.9 assists.
The last guy in the rotation is Justin Begg, a 6-0 freshman from Houston. He’s scoring 3.0 ppg, 1.2 rebounds and 1.4 assists.
Skinn likes a pressure defense. He calls his system Patriot Pressure and he wants to keep it on opponents.
For instance, at that Marquette game, Shaka Smart’s team started off 13-0 - and then Mason ripped off 10 straight and outscored Marquette 37-23 to go into halftime down just one.
In the second half, the Patriots built a 41-36 lead.
Keep in mind that this happened at Marquette’s Al McGuire which seats less than 4,000, and this game was students only. That’s a heck of a performance on the road by Mason.
Marquette took over ultimately but with 4:31 left it was just 66-61.
So what to take away from this?
Well, just this: Mason has pretty good talent and pretty good coaching. This is always a vulnerable time for Duke with the disruption of exams and the holidays. Get in a tight game and put game pressure on the Blue Devils - will they buckle?
It’s possible. A lot of this team is still quite young and we haven’t heard anything to suggest that Maliq Brown is over his toe injury.
Basically, it looks like this is likely to be a game that’s won on the defensive end. And given what we’ve seen of Duke’s defense, particularly from Cooper Flagg but also Tyrese Proctor, Khaman Maluach and Sion James, that’s not a bad site for a battle.
We’ll add links as we find them.
