Dre’s 10 treys dominate Dukes
JMU enters NCAA record book on wrong end as George Mason guard hits all ten of his threes
Posted on January 22, 2008
One after another, after another, after another.
JMU could do little but watch at times Saturday, as George Mason senior guard Dre Smith connected on all 10 of his long-range attempts to set the new NCAA record for most three-point field goals without a miss.
Smith hit eight of those in the second half as Mason ran away with a 96-75 win over the Dukes behind the 6-foot guard’s career-high 34 points. He finished 11-of-12 from the field, with his only miss coming on an off-balance floater.
“I feed off my teammates,” Smith said attempting to deflect the attention. “We were all playing hard, the way we played defense tonight was good. That’s the way we play. You play good defense like that, you score points.”
With the hot start Mason got off to, it really didn’t need to rely much on its defense.
A mere two minutes and five seconds into the game the Patriots (13-5 overall, 5-2 in the Colonial Athletic Association) found themselves ahead 11-0 — as part of a 16-2 opening run — forcing JMU coach Dean Keener to call a timeout.
“We called a trapping zone-defense the first play of the game and we weren’t able to get to it,” Keener said. “By the time they made that second wing-pass it went to Smith, and he was shooting it in front of our bench from I don’t know, 21 to 22 feet…That obviously got him going.”
Smith may have still been “going” from the last matchup with the Dukes, when JMU lost 73-62 last March in the first round of the CAA tournament.
The Houston native hit 7-of-8 from beyond-the-arc in that game, setting his previous career high of 26.
“Hopefully he’ll miss one; that’s what I was thinkin,” said JMU junior forward Juwann James. “You gotta miss one. In the first half I told the team a guy can’t come out and keep shootin’ like that. He can’t. Obviously he did.”
After Smith’s opening triple, GMU senior Folarin Campbell hit another three-pointer and junior John Vaughn quickly joined in the party, hitting his first deep attempt as well.
Mason senior forward Will Thomas, a preseason first-team All-CAA pick, assisted on the second and third shots and then capped the run with a lay-up in the post.
“Well, with Mason, you’re kind of trying to pick your poison a little bit,” Keener said. “Thomas is a focal point of the scouting report going in, but you also know that there are others, and Smith was one that we knew based on last year’s tournament game.”
Despite the early offensive explosion that put Thomas, Vaughn and Campbell in double-figures in the first half, JMU (10-7, 3-4) remained within striking distance, down 48-34 at the half.
JMU senior forward Terrence Carter had 10 points in the first 20 minutes with eight coming at the free-throw line. Carter finished the game with a team-high 23 points and seven rebounds and was pivotal in JMU’s mini-comeback attempt that got the Dukes within seven points with 6:35.
“We never hung our heads,” Carter said. “Even in the beginning, we never hung our heads like ‘oh, here we go, you know Mason’s on.’ [We] Never hung our heads, [we] just kept playing.”
In the end, the Dukes did all that they could on a night when Mason shot 65 percent, including 14 of 23 from long-range. JMU was out-rebounded 35-20 but lacked many opportunities on the defensive end as every Mason shot seemed to go down.
Vaughn finished with 20 points and Campbell with 16, following Smith, to keep the Dukes well out of reach down the stretch.
James finished with 16 to compliment Carter, even though he was a game-time decision because of a sprained knee. The team’s leading scorer going into the game, junior guard Abdulai Jalloh, continued to struggle following a 7-point performance against Old Dominion on Wednesday, finishing with just five points in a foul-plagued 23 minutes.
“Jalloh in and out of foul trouble really hurt us,” Keener said. “…We need more minutes out of him and more productive minutes and we’re not gettin’ those right now. He knows it and we’ll get those straightened around.”
The attendance was the highest in a decade at the Convocation Center. A crowd of 6,659 watched as the Dukes drop their first home game of the year.
“That’s a veteran group,” Keener said alluding to Mason’s remaining players from the 2006 Final Four. “You talk about a great crowd here, but…that’s three or four guys who have played on the biggest stage of all, and that the Final Four. I’m not sure 6,600 in the Convo is gonna rattle Campbell or Thomas or [Jordan] Carter and even Vaughn.”
