Scouting Virginia State

It's almost game time again, well sort of. The Patriots host Virginia State tomorrow night for their first and only exhibition game. It is difficult to take much away from these games as you can remember the Patriots lost at home last year in an exhibition game against Division III Randolph-Macon, who by the way defeated American last night, and then went on to win 22 games and reach the CAA finals. But anyway the Trojans return their top two scorers from last season, Trey Mines and J.C. Chaney, who has some size at 6'8" 240. Mason does however have a size advantage in most areas, something we should get used this season as it will be luxury we haven't seen in awhile. What I hope to see tomorrow night is lot of playing time for the freshmen but I don't know if we will see that as in last season's exhibition we saw the all the starters play 25+ minutes. However in the closing minutes of that match freshman Andre Cornelius and Ryan Pearson were on the court with the game close. I think they thought they could just run over Randolph-Macon and we saw little defense, especially on the perimeter. I doubt Larranaga will stand for that kind of collapse on defense this time around considering he's most likely in the process of instilling 'defense first' into the minds of some of these young guys.