RMU held off a late rally from Delaware to get win number four on the season. Some thoughts....
-Marcquise Reed led RMU with 20 points on 5-10 shooting, 2-5 from three, and 8-13 from the line. Reed is an incredible shooter who does a good job of getting to the line and creating his own shot. I don't think there's anyone on the team as good as him around the rim.
You can still see the youth in Marcquise at times though. There are times where Toole is clearly frustrated with him defensively and I do think he struggles when he's asked to be a ball handler. This may sound weird, but I don't think he's a great dribbler. Too many times he struggles with ball handling or dribbling into traffic. It can be frustrating because he's a great creator but can be inconsistent with how he gets that creation done, if that makes sense. Either way, he's still getting buckets and that's good enough.
-RMU's shooting percentages were pretty 2013, with a line of 55.6/46.2/70.0. There wasn't ever really a point where they struggled to get good looks. the ball moved well, the dribble drive was nice, and this team can be a really good 2-point jump shooting team.
-Kavon Stewart was suspended tonight for violation of team activities. He will play at Clemson dec. 30. Pretty disappointing to hear.
-In place of Stewart was Appolon, who was phenomenal. In my opinion, Appolon was the best player on the floor today. He was active on defense, scored 12 points, went 4-5 from the line, had 3 assists, 5 boards, and 2 turnovers. He was a very calming influence when he controlled the ball.
-Y.G.T.M.Y.F.T: In the first half, RMU went 7-13 from the line. It made me want to throw my laptop across the floor. Then, they closed out the game because of their free throw shooting. They made 16 straight at one point. Good job!
-Talk about a rough night for an officiating crew, and it goes both ways. There were some weird travel calls, then a terrible missed travel call in the low post, a bad moving screen foul, and an awful, awful potential four point play. With 54 seconds left, RMU was up 8 and Chivarsky Corbett hit a three and drew a foul from David Appolon. I'm not even sure there was contact.
-Two nice plays I liked: Just 4:05 into the game Elijah Minnie had the ball at the top of the key, faked a pass left, dribbled to the right, and had a dribble handoff to Marcquise Reed who hit a wide open three. Nice use of a ball fake and screen.
Somewhere around the 9:00 mark in the first half RMU ran a nice inbound play underneath their own basket. There were two screeners set around the elbow of the paint that set a screen for Lucky Jones, who ran a circle around the screen. The defenders followed him, but just a few steps behind Lucky was Rodney Pryor who got an easy layup.
-Overall, it was nice to see RMU hang on and get a win. They finish non-conference play at Clemson.
-Marcquise Reed led RMU with 20 points on 5-10 shooting, 2-5 from three, and 8-13 from the line. Reed is an incredible shooter who does a good job of getting to the line and creating his own shot. I don't think there's anyone on the team as good as him around the rim.
You can still see the youth in Marcquise at times though. There are times where Toole is clearly frustrated with him defensively and I do think he struggles when he's asked to be a ball handler. This may sound weird, but I don't think he's a great dribbler. Too many times he struggles with ball handling or dribbling into traffic. It can be frustrating because he's a great creator but can be inconsistent with how he gets that creation done, if that makes sense. Either way, he's still getting buckets and that's good enough.
-RMU's shooting percentages were pretty 2013, with a line of 55.6/46.2/70.0. There wasn't ever really a point where they struggled to get good looks. the ball moved well, the dribble drive was nice, and this team can be a really good 2-point jump shooting team.
-Kavon Stewart was suspended tonight for violation of team activities. He will play at Clemson dec. 30. Pretty disappointing to hear.
-In place of Stewart was Appolon, who was phenomenal. In my opinion, Appolon was the best player on the floor today. He was active on defense, scored 12 points, went 4-5 from the line, had 3 assists, 5 boards, and 2 turnovers. He was a very calming influence when he controlled the ball.
-Y.G.T.M.Y.F.T: In the first half, RMU went 7-13 from the line. It made me want to throw my laptop across the floor. Then, they closed out the game because of their free throw shooting. They made 16 straight at one point. Good job!
-Talk about a rough night for an officiating crew, and it goes both ways. There were some weird travel calls, then a terrible missed travel call in the low post, a bad moving screen foul, and an awful, awful potential four point play. With 54 seconds left, RMU was up 8 and Chivarsky Corbett hit a three and drew a foul from David Appolon. I'm not even sure there was contact.
-Two nice plays I liked: Just 4:05 into the game Elijah Minnie had the ball at the top of the key, faked a pass left, dribbled to the right, and had a dribble handoff to Marcquise Reed who hit a wide open three. Nice use of a ball fake and screen.
Somewhere around the 9:00 mark in the first half RMU ran a nice inbound play underneath their own basket. There were two screeners set around the elbow of the paint that set a screen for Lucky Jones, who ran a circle around the screen. The defenders followed him, but just a few steps behind Lucky was Rodney Pryor who got an easy layup.
-Overall, it was nice to see RMU hang on and get a win. They finish non-conference play at Clemson.