Game 11: A win's a win

[Chris Cappella]

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.

 

[ColonialCrazy]

Nice win.

Take away the last 7-8 minutes (rmu was up about 16 to that point) and I would have almost no complaints. The team really struggled vs the press and allowed UD back in the game. I'm not too worried about that because they were without Stewart, the teams best passers, point guard, and fastest player with the ball. He should help cure that problem.

David Appolon with another App like game. So many big plays to start runs, get UD players in foul trouble, etc. He does almost all the "little things" right, and those add up. His 12, 5, 3 line does not do his game justice. He played great, especially given the fact he was asked to play the point for most of the game with Kavon out.

The most encouraging take, for me anyway, was the play of Lucky Jones. Only 3-6 from the floor but he got to the line 10 times, making nine. 15 and 5 is more like the Lucky Jones we have seen his first three years at Bobby Mo. He probably scores around 20 if not for his foul trouble (picked up his forth with about 10 minutes left in the game).

Stephan Bennett played by far his best game. Nice to see him play with a little force. He still needs to play a bit more aggressive, but that was a nice start (8 points, 2 boards).

It's gotten to the point where I just hope we get four years out of Marcquise Reed at Robert Morris. The kid is a stud with a super bright future. Another 20 point outing, on 5-10 shooting. He needs to be better from the free throw line (as Chris touched on). He missed a few down the stretch (8-13 overall), one on the front end of the 1 and 1. Regardless, he has scored 18+ four different times, and is averaging 12.5 per-game. He can attack off the bounce and create his own shot, but still has the ability to make jump shots, and at 6-3 has nice size for an NEC guard. The past few years RMU has had some great scoring two-guards in Karvel Anderson, Coron Williams, Karon Abraham. None played a full four years at Robert Morris.

Rodney Pryor was once again excellent (19 points, 7-8 from the field, 2-2 from three). It's becoming a standard thing now. A little scare as he left the game with what appeared to be a knee injury, but he came back in thankfully. I'm starting to think Pryor could flirt with first team all NEC.

Up next, Clemson on Tuesday December 30th, the last game of 2014 and non-conference play. The Tigers, an ACC opponent, have lost to a few mid-majors this season in Winthrop and Gardner Webb. They have played a lot better lately, including a win over number 18 Arkansas. This would certainly be an upset, but I would not be shocked to see RMU play them tightly. Hopefully a good performance will help build some momentum as NEC play begins just four days later.