George Mason suffers first CAA loss to Hofstra

The Patriots lost on their first CAA road trip of the season to Hofstra 87-74 and you can tell from the final score there was plenty of breakdowns on defense.  They let Charles Jenkins go off in the 2nd half and ended up finishing with 32 points on the night.  Hofstra is a one-man show with Jenkins and the fact that Patriots couldn't even slow him down gave them no shot in the 2nd half. If you bet on sports at Betus like I used to you'd know Mason was still favored in this one. This game was very much like the one against NC State as play-by-play man Bill Rohland mentioned where the Patriots gave up  a ton of transition points and allowed too many open looks and easy lay-ups. In the first half Mason switched to a zone defense and Hofstra started to drain three-pointers. Add on to that Mike Morrison again being in early foul trouble and the Patriots usual first half flow was thwarted and they never really recovered. The Pride didn't need much effort to pour on the points and shot 59% from the field in the second, something I'm sure Larranaga was thrilled about. You can watch and hear his postgame comments below:

Offensively the numbers don't look bad by any account for that Patriots but when the Pride went on a 14-0 run in the 2nd half you saw a ton of ill-advised shot attempts.  Mason's poor shot selection led to a ton of easy baskets for the Pride and in turn made it much tougher for them to clamp down on defense.  Ryan Pearson had a great night leading Mason scorers with 22 but at times the team looked very flat on offense after starting out shooting 53% in the 1st half.  Luke Hancock and Mike Morrison were non-existent on offense. Morrison's inability to stay in games is starting to really become an issue, the team can't have him off the floor for that long with their lack of depth at forward.

It's a little alarming to see the team perform this bad in their first CAA road game as the conference seems to be even more competitive this year.  Yes Charles Jenkins had a hell of a game but were the Patriots really that surprised to see him scoring like that? I'd be ok with him scoring 20 but 32 is just inexcusable for a team that puts defense first.  This is the second consecutive game where they let the other team's star go off in the 2nd half. It let Delaware nearly crawl back into the game on Monday and it was their complete undoing last night. With ODU on the docket for Saturday something has to change or it's not going to be pretty.

NCAA Basketball