Who lost more due to injury in this game? Mercer without senior leading scorer Holland, or the Bucs without freshman substitute Hodges?
Consider what they did the first time the teams met:
Holland had 38 minutes, 12 points on 5-12 (1-3 from 3), 1 rebound, 3 assists, 2 turnovers and 0 steals. And not much defense.
Hodges had 25 minutes, 12 points on 5-7 (1-1 from 3), 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 turnover and 2 steals. And lots of defense, helping to control Jelks (4 points instead of 14 points) and helping to prevent guards from scoring underneath like Cohen did tonight for 16 points.
I think the answer is clear. The Bucs did pretty well without Bo, but I’m fairly certain that they’ll welcome him back.
It would be nice to see him against Wofford, but you don’t mess with knees. I’d rather risk a loss to the Terriers than risk further injury to Bo.
Defensively the Bucs did their usual (in conference) fine job defending the 3. They did not do as well defending the basket from 2, lost the turnover battle 13-12 (Bucs made 1 more turnover), although they did get 2 more steals (6-4). Last time around they won turnovers 14-18 (making 4 fewer turnovers) and steals 10-6 (snatching 4 more steals). Fewer turnovers and steals were one reason for no flashy dunks. They couldn’t find one from this game for the promotion – probably a first in the Forbes era.
Defending the 3 was good as Mercer was held to 6-24 for 25%. That is not a fluke. The Bucs have been holding opponents to .276 from 3 in conference. Mercer had been averaging .326 in conference.
But letting Mercer score so much from 2 was worrisome. Ringer had his way around the basket for most of his 21 points (he also made his very first 3 of the year), Jelks hurt us inside for most of his 14 points (but was also 2-6 from 3) and 6’4” freshman point guard Marcus Cohen penetrated at will for 16 points (no 3’s attempted. He’s only 1-4 on the season from the perimeter.). This is not the way that ETSU has been defending.
For the season we are 56th in D1 in 2 point FG% defense, holding opponents to 46.3%. But in conference we have been dominating – first in the SoCon. And in the last 3 games we had held opponents to 36.7% from 2, 3rd in all of D1 over that 3 game period.
https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basket...-point-pct
ETSU did a lot of things right tonight, but 2 point defense was not one of them. We’ve got to get our basket protection back to what it has been in conference. As stated, 3 point defense continued to be fine.
Rebounds were ok, too, at least in the second half. The Bucs laced them up tight and outrebounded by far the best rebounding team in the SoCon (coming into this game Mercer had a +9.9 rebounding margin in conference) by 29-28. Most of those rebounds, 16-10, were in the second half, as Desonta put on his usual calm and efficient 2nd half surge with 5 rebounds to go with 9 points, and Mladen Armus added 4 rebounds.
As for offense, the Bucs
3 point shooting continues their conference surge: they posted a season best 13 three’s, making 50% on 13-26. The previous best was 11 makes against Xavier, Samford and Savannah State. The Bucs have been averaging .416 from 3 for the last 8 games, so it’s about time to stop considering this a fluke and recognize that it is mostly a new normal in level of performance. I don’t think that we’ll be seeing much ‘reversion to the mean’ from here. I think that a new mean has been set.
Overall field goal % was .511, in line with ETSU’s conference leading .522.
For individuals, Jalan McCloud had another excellent outing against Mercer – 2 of his top 3 performances have come against the Bears, with the 3rd being a 25 point outing against Fort Wayne. This time McCloud got another 25 points on 6-7 from 3, with 2 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 steals. It should also be noted that Jalan has increased his points per game, 3 point shooting and assists in conference, following a pattern from last year which saw his game pick up markedly over the last 3rd of the season as he became a big part of Texas Southern’s run to the NCAA.
Devontavius, despite his injury, had his second highest scoring night as a Buc with 18 points on 4-9 from 3.
Mladen Armus, despite struggling to defend the basket against 6-9 250 Ringer et al., had 8 rebounds and 7 points in 18 minutes. Most impressively he improved his free throw shooting to 5-6, critical to the Bucs in the second half and critical to his continued development, to make it counterproductive to just hack him underneath.
But steadiest of all was Desonta, who once again kept things calm and productive, especially in the second half. That 2nd half is always his. Total of 15 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block. Key again to keeping this game in hand was making free throws down the stretch – 9-10 for Desonta who is now .867 in conference play. This despite the braying of J****ss Bob Hoffman and his assistants, the only coaching staff in conference who stoop to trying to spook the other team’s players by hollering ‘miss it’ themselves during free throw attempts. Jermaine Long also did well in this regard with 5-6 from the line for 8 points, also knocking down a 3.
In contrast to Hoffman, Desonta exudes quiet class, doing it so efficiently and with so little fuss, that the opponents hardly notice till they look at the stat sheet and see that Desonta has beaten them again.
Coming up is a big one, against a full strength Wofford team that has one of the toughest home court records in conference at 10-1. Of course, the best road record, the only winning road record in the SoCon, belongs to the Bucs at 6-3.