Richmond’s Offense A Joy to Watch

AMHERST, Mass. – If you want to see how an offense should be run, the Richmond Spiders would be a very good choice of a team to watch from the college ranks. In the second half of their 84-68 win at UMass on Saturday, the Spiders showed just how good that offense can be.

“Just watching us playing as a team, it felt so good out there, I was just running the team as a point guard telling guys where to be and just encouraging guys,” said senior Kevin Anderson. “They were hitting shots, so I was just coming off screens and find them for the open shots.”

Likewise, head coach Chris Mooney didn’t hesitate to mention it at the start of the post-game press conference.

“We played a terrific game on offense,” said the seventh-year head coach. “We moved the ball very well, we were comfortable, we found ourselves open and not hesitant, and we really played a great game offensively.”

The Spiders shot 63 percent from the field in the second half, going 7-14 from long range. They shot 52 percent for the game, and on the season are over 48 percent from the field and 41 percent from long range. So it’s fair to say the offense is certainly working for them.

It never hurts to have talent and/or experience, and the Spiders certainly have both. They have the reigning Atlantic 10 Player of the Year in Anderson, for starters. There is Dan Geriot, the team’s leading scorer three seasons ago. Darien Brothers is shooting over 43 percent from long range, and Kevin Smith is a solid glue guy who quietly scored 11 points on 5-6 shooting on Saturday and had five assists with no turnovers, a fairly typical game since he has 56 assists and 22 turnovers on the season.

The team’s top scorer is also a player who has emerged since last season in Justin Harper. The top scorer in Atlantic 10 games, the 6’10” senior is averaging 25.6 points since conference play began and now averages over 18 points per game on the season. He’s also the team’s top rebounder and is putting up staggering shooting numbers: 57.6 percent from the field and 50 percent from long range.

“I knew this was going to be my last go-round, and I just wanted to work as hard as I could to prepare for it and really prove myself as a player,” said Harper. “I know I haven’t been able to do as much as I know I can in the past, so I really want to go out every game and play like it’s my last.”

Harper has emerged in part from putting in a lot of off-season work, with the extra urgency of the senior year coming, and also from buying into the offense more. Mooney also sees him having more confidence. With that, he is certainly a matchup nightmare for just about any team as he can score inside and out. He had those abilities before, but the intangibles have made all the difference.

“You can see that his mindset has changed so much,” Anderson said. “When he came back this summer to work out with the team, his mindset was the biggest thing. I think he wasn’t aggressive last year and in the years he has been here. We saw it in practice, and it didn’t correlate into the games, and now it’s correlating into the games and everybody is seeing what he’s able to do, and it’s unbelievable out there. As long as his mindset is to be aggressive and shoot every shot, he’s fine.”

Harper is now getting attention from NBA scouts, and his growth in the past year will have them more intrigued. He is from Richmond, an area where players tend to be under-recruited, and he was no different. He only had three other offers coming out of high school, as East Carolina, Temple and Providence offered him along with Richmond.

Geriot was the team’s top scorer in 2007-08, and looked primed to have two more big years. But a knee injury shelved him the next season, and he wasn’t himself last season as his numbers took a big dip from two seasons earlier. While the numbers aren’t back where they were at that point, he looks to be much closer to the player he was then, and that was evident on Saturday as he led the Spiders with 24 points on 8-12 shooting, including 4-7 from long range. He added four assists and one turnover, and had a big hand along with Harper in breaking the game open in the second half.

“I thought that was Dan’s best game in a while,” said Mooney. “He really helps us to run our offense smoothly just by his knowledge, his understanding and skillfulness, and he really anchors us on defense when he’s in with his understanding of how we’re trying to play defense. He was terrific, he has been now for the last couple of weeks, and obviously that’s a tremendous sign for us.”

Added Harper: “Dan’s confidence is phenomenal right now. He just means so much for our offense, having that experience out there and enabling us to run our stuff.”

Even with that talent and experience, intangibles matter a great deal, and one couldn’t help but notice them in the second half. This team is unselfish, they’re patient, they trust one another and they understand what a good shot is. It’s no accident that they had the second half percentage they did when you see the ball movement and the quality of shots they took.

“That is something that is important to us,” Mooney said. “I thought we were patient. Once we started to score, we were able to make it build on top of each other by getting a backdoor, the next time maybe an open three, getting a post move, maybe kicking it out for an open jump shot.”

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about the Spiders’ offense, considering Mooney’s background. He is a Princeton alum and succeeded Joe Scott at Air Force before coming to Richmond, and given the notions out there about the Princeton offense and the Spiders’ tendency for low-scoring games in his first few seasons, there are assumptions about the kind of offense they run. Watching this team play, it’s evident that there are elements of it there, but it’s not a “limiting” offense as some perceive it to be by any stretch of the imagination.

“We can play fast, we can play slow, we can just control the game. That’s what makes it so tough to guard us,” said Anderson. “In some games, we can push the pace, like GW, and be fine within our offense. It’s lovely to have the two different types of offense that we run.”

The Spiders are now 4-1 in the Atlantic 10, part of a logjam near the top. They look to be one of the top three contenders along with Temple and Xavier, who also played Saturday in Cincinnati (Xavier won), and surprising Duquesne is 5-0 along with the Musketeers. They have Dayton (road) and Xavier (home) on tap this week, so there could be a little shakeup ahead.

The offense looks to be in a good place, as does the defense, which kept them in the lead in the first half on Saturday as they struggled to make shots. Opponents are shooting below 40 percent on the season against them, so even if the offense has some struggles, they will have a chance to win. But with the way they are executing the offense and trusting one another, it’s hard to imagine that will happen often.