Weekend Tournament Quick Hitters

We have some quick hitters from Friday and Saturday at the NIT Season Tip-Off and Philly Hoop Group Classic, respectively.

NIT Season Tip-Off

• Tyrese Rice didn’t score in the first half of Friday’s win over UAB for Boston College. But he came alive after intermission, scoring all of his 24 points after intermission. While being on the floor was the first part of that, he also got help from his teammates, and not the kind that shows up in the stat sheet. Simply put, the Eagles moved the ball better in the second frame, and that changed everything at the offensive end. “It really started on the defensive end because of the stops, and then the others because our wings consistently ran hard and got up the floor,” said head coach Al Skinner. “And then created some openings, some opportunities for him, and of course, you know, he made some shots.”
• The Eagles also got a nice effort from improving freshman Reggie Jackson. An exceptional athlete, Jackson looks like the classic athlete who doesn’t know the game yet, but his improvement is noticeable. At times in the first half, he kept the Eagles in the game, setting up their second half run.
• A questionable call late in the championship game didn’t end with the call itself. Oklahoma was given a timeout after a 50-50 ball was up in the air, at a point where it seemed no one had possession as it came down. From what Purdue head coach Matt Painter shared after the game, the explanation he heard from the official was even more questionable. “You know,” Painter began, “to me sometimes things don’t go your way, but the explanation to me is still baffling. He said to me it was an inadvertent whistle, and so the ball now went to the possession arrow, and then Oklahoma had the possession arrow, so that’s why they had it.”
• While an obvious bright spot for Purdue was the play of Nemanja Calason off the bench, a more noteworthy one was that of freshman point guard Lewis Jackson, who scored 10 points and handed out four assists in 22 minutes. He showed that he’s capable of really making this team go, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he starts before the season is over.

Philly Hoop Group Classic

• While NJIT’s losing streak gets plenty of attention, Monmouth also entered Saturday’s game without a win. They were 0-6, albeit against a very difficult schedule, so they were happy to get a win. The least difficult opponent they had played before Saturday is probably FIU, and that was a road game against a team not lacking in talent that has been hit by injuries.
• The biggest message Hartford head coach Dan Leibovitz gave his players after being thoroughly blown out by Niagara on Saturday is simple.   “They just took our aggressiveness completely away,” Leibovitz remarked after the game.   Not helping was the foul trouble of Michael Turner, their best defender and a real competitor. Turner fouled out early, then picked up a technical foul right after his fifth foul. While his presence alone wasn’t going to reverse a 40-point defeat, Leibovitz summed up his importance very succinctly: “Without Mike, our defense is out the window, plain and simple.”
• A couple of notes are in order about Niagara’s 103-63 win over Hartford. It is the largest margin of victory in the young Philly Hoop Group Classic’s history, and it also marked the first time they reached 100 points in a game in three years. The night before, they held a team below 50 points for the first time since 2002.
• While a lack of energy didn’t help, Towson clearly looked like a team trying to integrate four new starters into the lineup on offense on Saturday. The offense seemed to lack direction and the team as a whole looked lost on the court. Symbolic of the game was a play where Tony Durant moved after setting a pick, but didn’t look for a pass as the ball hit him in the back and led to an easy Penn State transition layup.  “With six new guys in the top seven or eight, at times our offense looks like it’s just chugging along, and we are,” head coach Pat Kennedy said. “It’s more of what we’ve got to correct offensively, and keep our defensive intensity up. Once we do, we’ll be in great shape.”
• Penn State’s backcourt of Talor Battle and Stanley Pringle is better than advertised. But the real key is going to be the play up front, and on Saturday the Nittany Lions got a nice effort from Andrew Jones and Jeff Brooks. Jones had eight points and 13 rebounds, while Brooks had six and five in 15 minutes off the bench.
• While it wasn’t quite the display he put on at Duke, Rhode Island guard Jimmy Baron certainly had fans buzzing with some of the shots he hit in the loss to Villanova. Whether it was a couple of deep threes, or off-balance mid-range shots as the shot clock ran down, fans who had heard about but never saw him were impressed by his 23-point effort on 8-15 shooting.
• Teams already committed for next year’s event include Delaware, St. John’s, Temple and Virginia Tech.