MBB Game 08 @Iona, Dec 6 (Wed), 7 PM

[Jojogunne]

Next up are the Iona Gaels, who we beat 83-78 on our court last year.

The Gaels are just 2-5, but most of their losses have been close. Iona's two wins came agains Sacred Heart and Buffalo. The Gaels' leading scorer is 6-4 GR Idan Tretout, a Brooklyn native who transferred from Harvard.

Iona has a new coach, Tobin Anderson, who led FDU to a first-round upset of No. 1 Purdue in last year's NCAAT.

The Gaels take on Fairfield tomorrow night.

ESPN+ will carry both the Fairfield game and our game.

[HofstraMathew]

With the way we are playin gnow this hopefully will be another double digit win for us. Help keep the momentum into the St Louis and then Duke game.

[Jojogunne]

Iona looked pretty good defeating Fairfield, 78-67. We can't take the Gaels lightly.

[Wags]

Iona looked pretty good defeating Fairfield, 78-67. We can't take the Gaels lightly.

Especially on the road, even though HU has played well on the road the past couple of years.

Every win they can get builds on the prior ones. Don’t want to undo all the good that was created over these prior four games by not TCB (as they should) in this one. Sunday showed a nice stretch in the first half against South Florida before traveling and being pulled quickly. Would like to see him get some early minutes again and be fired up to do some damage against his former team and help set an early tone.

[Polito]

I mean, yes, HU should take every game seriously. I don't think because Iona beat Fairfield that means some special attention is warranted lol. Kinda like saying hey Iona beat another D1 team, HU should be really careful!

I know that's not really what was meant Jojo, just found it funny lol


That said, I do agree that NOW is the time to get Iona - finally, they are in a program transition after going through a long tremendous period of prosperity under two fantastic regimes - let's get our licks in while HU is on the come up and before they hit on another program run. Road W's are always a premium, let's get another.

As they say in football, ignore any noise, focus on each game, and go 1-0.

[Wags]

The ESPN matchup predictor has this as basically even at a 50.2% chance of an HU win. I see this as more 55/45 HU, but we'll see.

[triplec2195]

It would seem to me that after Pitino bolted for St John's they lost most of their good players. They're going with freshman, JUCO transfers and grad transfers. They score 75 a game and give up 74.8. We should be favored by a few points playing on the road.

[Wags]

https://twitter.com/HofstraMBB/status/1 ... 8425062483

[Jojogunne]

Hofstra preview:

https://gohofstra.com/news/2023/12/4/me ... esday.aspx

Hofstra and Iona have met 43 times before, with the Gaels leading the series, 22-21. However, our last win at Iona was 15 years ago.

[EvanJ]

https://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=485175 will have statistics.

The Game Notes have a new statistic for the South Florida game, which is how many times each player had his shot blocked by an opponent, but it does not have that in the season statistics.

[HUSID80]

ESPN has us as 2.5 point favs on the road but strangely only gives us a 50.1 percent chance of winning.

[Polito]

Time to even up this series - HU staying internally focused and on a mission. A nice local rivalry road W on the menu tonight.

[Wags]

I look at tonight as a must win with what's coming up away from Hempstead the rest of this month. I expect Thomas and/or Dubar to go off again.

[EvanJ]

Thomas leads Division I in points per game, and Thomas and Dubar have the most combined points per game by teammates.

https://static.ionagaels.com/custompage ... ofstra.pdf is Iona's Game Notes. It gives the records of 13 area teams from 2010-Preseent and 1995-Present, and it excludes Stony Brook. Iona shoots free throws only .650, averages 5 fewer assists than us, and has a much worse assist/turnover ratio at 1.59 to 1.05. Iona leads the MAAC and is 32nd in Division I with 9.4 steals.

http://defiantlydutch.blogspot.com/2023 ... -iona.html is Jerry Beach's "I'll Be Quirky: Hofstra at Iona." Four of our five wins including 82-63 hosting South Florida are unicorn scores, meaning the first time we won by that score. This is the 11th season of the AAC, and we broke the record for largest margin of victory by a CAA team over an AAC team, which was previously 18 done twice.

KenPom expects us to win 76-75.

Edit: We are starting our usual starters. Since the ESPN Plus broadcasters do not work for us, we may not know quickly if any injured players are available. Including today, we have three away games before our next home game, which is in ten days. Iona is starting Greg Gordon (guard, 12.3 ppg, 6.3 rpg that is a lot for a guard), Jean Aranguren (guard, 7.3 ppg), Joel Brown (guard, 7.7 ppg, 3.6 apg), Idan Tretout (guard, 16.0 ppg), and Sultan Adewale (forward, 4.5 ppg). Their only player who was on their team last season is injured.

[triplec2195]

Sloppy a lot of missed shots in the early going. 3-2 us after almost 5 minutes of play.

[dutchPride86]

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Def looks like they haven't played in a week. Surprising cause layoff obviously didn't affect them at all vs South Florida

[triplec2195]

Throwing up a lot of threes and missing a lot.

[Jojogunne]

Our #1 looks very tentative tonight, while Iona's #1 has hit several open threes. Need to put a body on him.

[dutchPride86]

For all our guards I'm always amazed by how much we struggle to break the press. Playing right into Iona's hands, this game should not be this close

[EvanJ]

We led by 10, but lead 28-26 at halftime. Iona had more of their twos blocked by us (4) than made (3), but they made 6 of 12 threes. We shot 11-35 including 6-26 from our four leading scorers for the season, and that includes Carlos who made a three and did not have any other attempts. Ions shot free throws 2-2. They committed 6 fouls, and we did not attempt a free throw. Carlos had 4 assists and 4 turnovers. Thomas, Fritz, and Dubar had 6 rebounds, and Iona's leader had 5. Thomas led us with 8 points, and Wheza Panzo led all players with 11 points and made 3 of 4 threes.