Posts
I think it is safe to say that the 1-4 conference start was a blip.
The boys have rolled off 4 consecutive wins, culminating in today's gritty win over #7 Villa-no-fun.The Wildcats may be down right now after losing big to Providence, but the Hoyas were on the road, held the lead for most of the game, and won despite an atrocious performance from Chris Wright in which he had 0 points(!), 4 assists, 4 turnovers, and generally looked unsure of himself while getting trapped by the Nova D several times.Good thing his teammate is Austin Freeman.
I can give you all sorts of fancy analysis, but today was all about the Big East preseason player of the year. Freeman he scored 30 of the Hoyas' 69 points, while shooting 10-19 from the field, a perfect 8-8 from the line, and took over the ball handling duties when Wright struggled. This was a slow-paced, low-scoring game, but the fact that Jason Clark's 10 points made him the only other Hoya in double figures should be all you need to know. Julian Vaughn played a great game, as did Nate Lubick, but Freeman carried the day.
This win puts the Hoyas right back in the Big East mix thanks to several other upsets in the conference. A big test comes Monday night, when the Hoyas host Louisville. One can only imagine what a win would do for this team's confidence, let alone Big East ranking and bracketology. Joe Lunardi had the Hoyas as a 7-seed coming into this week, but they should be solidly back on the 4-5 line after a perfect week, and beating Louisville and Providence next week.....I'm getting ahead of myself.
I think the greater takeaway from this game game is that if Freeman is on top of his game, this team can survive a poor performance from at least 1 member of Run DMV and beat a good team. That 'depth' will be extremely dangerous come tourney time.
(Image courtesy of abcnews.go.com)
Now, to just not have a huge letdown at home tonight against Coach 15 Seconds and his Louisville squad.
ReplyDelete