Madison aims to maintain perfect record at the Convo
Posted on January 17, 2008
Only two starters remain from George Mason’s men’s basketball 2006 Final Four run, but the Patriots are still one of the most revered teams in the Colonial Athletic Association.
Tenth-year coach Jim Larranaga has kept Mason on the cusp of national prominence with a competitive roster and an even more competitive schedule.
After missing the NCAA tournament in 2007 by one game — a 65-59 loss to Virginia Commonwealth in the conference championship left the Patriots just short of an automatic bid — Mason (11-5 overall, 3-2 in the CAA) scheduled a tough non-conference stretch.
Next on Mason’s menu is a Saturday evening stop in Harrisonburg against a much-improved JMU team.
“[Mason has] the most quality wins as any team in the league,” JMU coach Dean Keener said. “Early season they beat Dayton, and if I’m not mistaken that’s Dayton’s only loss of the season. They’ve beat Kansas State. They’ve beat South Carolina.”
The Flyers have improved to 14-1, leaving Mason as the only team to beat them on way to their current RPI ranking of 5. The Patriots’ other staple victory was an 87-77 win over freshman standout Michael Beasley and Kansas State at the Old Spice Classic.
Five players scored in double figures for the Patriots against the then-No. 18 ranked Wildcats including seniors Will Thomas and Folarin Campbell, familiar faces from the 2005-06 season.
Thomas, a 6-foot, 7-inch power forward, leads the CAA preseason favorite Patriots with 15.7 points a game.
“He’s great to coach,” Larranaga said. “He’s as smart a basketball player I’ve ever been around. He understands how to play his position, but if you ask him what the other guys have to do, he knows exactly what everybody else on the floor is supposed to be doing.”
JMU junior forward Juwann James will have the task of matching up against Thomas who averaged over 12 points per game last year in three games against Madison.
James averaged over 13 points in those games and is thriving this year with new additions to the roster.
Forward Terrence Carter began taking double-teams off of James last year, but first-year Dukes Abdulai Jalloh and Dazz Thornton have begun attracting attention as well.
Thornton, a 6-foot-7, 270-pound forward, played a career-high 27 minutes in Saturday’s 93-74 win over North-Carolina Wilmington. His size and skill forces opponents to follow him around the paint, thus opening up more opportunities for James.
Jalloh, a 6-foot-2 guard, is the Dukes’ leading scorer at 15.5 points per game and has the ability to penetrate any defense and find the cutting big men down low.
Mason can expect to see different looks defensively from the Dukes, as JMU thrived in zone and man-to-man defense against Wilmington. In recent years it has been a “pick-your-poison” scenario for Keener on whether to man up and be undersized in the post or to play zone and risk being a victim of Mason’s consistent 3-point shooting.
The Dukes have defended the perimeter better this year, holding opponents to 32 percent from beyond-the-arc.
Offensively, JMU will be without one of its top shooting threats in junior forward Kyle Swanston. Swanston suffered an avulsion fracture last Wednesday at William & Mary and his return is still unknown.
“It’s certainly worrisome,” Keener said. “A team that shoots a lot of threes and makes a pretty good percentage, but also had a player like Thomas inside…when a team has shooter like that you feel you can pull out but you can’t.”
The in-state conference matchup tips off at 8 p.m. and will be aired on Comcast Sportsnet.
