Our next opponent is Norfolk State (7-3), who ranks ahead of us in CollegeInsider.com's Men's Mid-Major Top 25 poll. The Spartans, with 208 points, sit at #19 while we are among "Others Receiving Votes" with just 25 points:
Norfolk State has defeated William & Mary and VCU, but lost to Fordham and Wichita State. Don't know how the Spartans received so many points in the Mid-Major Top 25 poll.
Jamarii Lewis (#6) leads Norfolk State with 19 ppg.
Norfolk State plays at Stony Brook Wednesday night before coming to Hempstead. Both games will be on FloHoops. Be sure to wear your ugly sweater on Saturday.
Norfolk State has won 7 games but when you look at their wins the first two wins of the seasons were against non D1 opponents and their third win was against Hampton. They did beat VCU who's 5-5 right now and appears to be in a rebuild year. So IDK why the high mid-major ranking but do appear to be a formidable opponent.
Average to below average opponent. Will be interesting to see how the team responds to this bad tv loss, on the heels of another rough L to SLU... team is not really playing well right now, this is a game it needs to win against a low-ish opponent. Lose this and some real cause for concern.
Unfortunately win it and they are simply supposed to, and still won't be considered a win over a 'good' team. But gotta grab a W and right this ship a bit - have to win the games you should, and this is one they should.
So last night S.B. beats Norfolk State by 6 after being down 4 at the half. Jamarii Thomas led all scorers with 28 points for Norfolk State with 5-6 from three. He's the guy to stop apparently.
triplec2195 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2023 8:29 am
So last night S.B. beats Norfolk State by 6 after being down 4 at the half. Jamarii Thomas led all scorers with 28 points for Norfolk State with 5-6 from three. He's the guy to stop apparently.
Well if Stony Brook beat them I'd have to consider this a must win game for Hofstra on Saturday. And Jamarii Thomas is an old friend of ours, spent the last 2 yrs at UNCW, but only averaged 7 ppg last season so he's significantly improved his game (or at least his usage).
triplec2195 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2023 8:29 am
So last night S.B. beats Norfolk State by 6 after being down 4 at the half. Jamarii Thomas led all scorers with 28 points for Norfolk State with 5-6 from three. He's the guy to stop apparently.
Well if Stony Brook beat them I'd have to consider this a must win game for Hofstra on Saturday. And Jamarii Thomas is an old friend of ours, spent the last 2 yrs at UNCW, but only averaged 7 ppg last season so he's significantly improved his game (or at least his usage).
I wouldn't have remembered that but I guess would have discovered it at some point. Nice info. If we play our A game this should be a decisive win.
Some good analysis here very informative but our game plan will be to bottle up Thomas the rest should fall into place. We certainly don't want a close game with him on the court.
Should be a decent game, and not that big of a deal, but while that's going on, two conference members (Delaware and Towson) plus another local team (Iona) will be playing in the Holiday Hoopsfest tripleheader at UBS. It's even better that Hofstra is playing St. John's there at the end of the month but how is Towson playing there (once) and now Iona and Delaware twice each (they played each other at UBS two years ago) before Hofstra plays there? At least Iona's local, but Towson and Delaware (twice at UBS in three years?) and both of those non-area CAA members in a holiday festival at UBS instead of Hofstra?
In terms of the same name, in 2007-2008 we had Dane Johnson score 191, Greg Johnson score 111, and Ryan Johnson score 4. Tomorrow if an announcer says Thomas and you know which team has the ball, there will not be confusion between Jamarii and Tyler.
https://gohofstra.com/news/2023/12/14/m ... pride.aspx is our preview titled "Lone December Home Game Awaits Pride." I wonder when the last time we played only one home game in a month was. In our first season in the CAA in 2001-2002, we played 2 of 11 nonconference games at home, with one in November and one in December. We went 5-6 nonconference, 5-13 in the CAA, and 2-1 in the CAA Tournament.
https://nsuspartans.com/news/2023/12/13 ... -york.aspx is Norfolk State's previes titled "Stony Brook, Hofstra Await Ascending Spartans in New York." Some teams write one preview per week regardless of how many games they play.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/sc ... /2024.html has Norfolk State's statistics. Their top two scorers came from the CAA. In addition to Jamarii Thomas, their second leading scorer is Allen Betrand with 11.5 points. He is in his fourth school, fifth season, and sixth year in school after playing for Towson in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, Rhode Island in 2020-2021, and Rider in 2022-2023. In 2019-2020 he averaged 13.6 points, including scoring 17 in a loss hosting us, and scoring 14 on 6-9 shooting in a win at us.
The Shadow wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2023 7:19 pm
Vegas lists HU as a 9.5 point favorite over NSU. ESPN lists HU as an 84.1% matchup predictor.
That speaks volumes but don't want a replay of the NC A&T game last year where we were favored by a lot and played down and lost with a tip in at the buzzer.
Ings (13 pts) already well above his season average of 8.5 ppg. Much better balance for Hofstra: Dubar 6, and Fritz, Robinson, Thomas, Washington all with five each.
Difference in approach: Spartans 3/5 from 3, 14/26 overall. Pride: 6/17 from 3, 12/25 overall (Thomas 1/1 from 2, 2/5 from 3; Dubar 0/1 from 2, 2/5 from 3... FTA from either). They can shoot the 3, but need balance, especially when they're not falling that much, like today so far. That's maybe where they miss Mr. Mid-Range's departure to Alabama.
We trailed by 6, went up 1, went down 7, and up 1 after Fritz scored with 3:03 left. We trailed 32-31 at halftime. After forcing a shot clock violation with 1.4 seconds left, I am disappointed that we did not try a long pass and shoot. We started by shooting threes 3-13. Then we made 7 consecutive field goals including 3 threes, and Robinson missed a long three on our last shot to make us shoot threes 6-17. The 7 makes were in 6:35, which is a slow rate of attempts. We attempted only 8 twos and made 6. Fritz made 1 of 2 free throws in our only attempts. Our first 26 points had 6 by Dubar, and 5 by Thomas, Washington, Fritz, and Robinson. I wonder if he had ever had a point in a game when at least five players had at least 5 points without anybody having more than 6 points. Carlos was the only starter on either team who did not transfer.
Thomas had 8 points and 2 assists. Fritz had 7 points, made all 3 field goals, and tied Dubar for our lead with 3 rebounds. Dubar scored 6. Robinson shot 2-3 to score 5 in 8 minutes. Washington scored 5. Carlos shot 0-2 to not score, and his 3 assists led us and tied Jamarii Thomas for the most in the game. Plotnikov returned from injury to play 4 minutes, and 1 rebound was his only nonzero statistic. Sunday was unable to get a rebound he could have gotten, and played only 2 minutes, with Fritz playing 18 with 1 foul. We avoided mistakes with only 3 fouls and 4 turnovers, but we had only 2 steals and 0 blocks. We had no second chance points or fast break points. Christian Ings made 6 of his first 7 shots and finished 6-9 to lead all players with 13 points. Jamarii Thomas and Allen Betrand scored 7. Half of Norfolk State's ten players did not score.
Of five CAA teams playing now, we are the only one that is trailing, and that includes Hampton leading Number 20 James Madison (9-0) 42-41.
Edit: We went on a 10-1 run to go up 8, but Norfolk State scored the last 5 and has the ball. Fritz committed 2 fouls in the first 2:45 of the half to make 3. In 26 seconds, Sunday shot from at the basket, and it went in and out, and Dubar missed a dunk.
Edit: Norfolk State went on a 9-0 run to go up 42-41. Dubar made a three, Norfolk State score two to tie at, and we made three threes to go up 53-44. The announcer thought Norfolk State called timeout, but it turned out that they fouled immediately after we made a three, and we made another one without Norfolk State touching the ball. It's now 53-45. A bad thing is that we have 4 fouls in just over 8 minutes of the half.
Edit: We lead 59-49 with 7:24 left, and Carlos will shoot free throws. He has only 3 point, but has 8 assists, including 6 in the last 14:05. Norfolk State committed their ninth foul, so any more defensive fouls will give us the double bonus. Carlos made both free throws to score 5 and have us lead 61-49.
Glad the message got across at halftime, MUCH better effort defensively in the 2nd half. 23 ast on 26 FGs and 21-10 pts off turnovers edge both very solid. And nice to see Bryce bounce back and actually finish around the basket.
Still not a clean enough game overall, just feels like there's a higher level in there that this team hasn't been able to reach yet. But quality 2nd half took care of business overall.
We won 74-58. We became the first team from 2010-2011 to now to score 74 or fewer points, have 25 or fewer rebounds, have at least 23 assists, have 10 or fewer fouls, and have 6 or fewer turnovers. Christian Ings had 13 points in the first third of the game, but 2 points after that.
Today the CAA is 4-2 with 3 games left, and I typed how Towson blew a lead. With 26 seconds left, Towson’s Charles Thompson made 1 of 2 free throws to go up 3. Bryant comitted a technical for calling a timeout they did not have, and Towson made 1 of 2 free throws to go up 4 with 7 seconds left. With 4.7 seconds left, Bryant made a three to go down 1. Bryant fouled, and with 4.3 seconds left, Towson made 2 free throws to go up 3. Towson called their last timeout, and apparently they decided to foul to not let Bryant attempt a three. With 3.1 seconds left, Towson fouled, Bryant’s Doug Edert managed to shoot from beyond midcourt to make it a shooting foul, and he made all 3 free throws to tie it. Towson was out of timeouts, and after they inbounded, Bryant stole the ball, but did not score, and it went to overtime 73-73. With 11 seconds left in the first overtime down 85-84, Thompson got an offensive rebound and got fouled. He made the first to tie the game, but missed the second. He blocked Bryant’s shot, and it went to double overtime 85-85. Bryant took the lead for good with 4:10 left and won 101-93. Towson became the first team from 2010-2011 to now to lose with at least 26 more rebounds and at least six double-digit scorers. Towson had two players with double-doubles. Seven players fouled out, with three on Towson and four on Bryant.
Edit: I just checked the Analytics. The net points is ridiculous, as it is -3.0 for us, and -3.9 for Norfolk State. The three statistics I cite disagree about the best player. In net points, Jamarii Thomas led with 10.7. In efficiency, Carlos led with 21. In game score, Tyler Thomas led with 17.2. He played the whole game, and the bench played 29 minutes. Our four starting guards played more than the four bench players combined.
The attendance was 1,969, which is not good for a weekend that is the only home game this month.
