MBB Game 22 Stony Brook, Feb. 1 (Thu), 7 PM

[Wags]

Thomas started 4/5 and was scoring in different ways (a 3, a nice cut to the hoop to receive a pass for a layup, a mid-range J from each wing) and then back to his old ways forcing some shots (though not all were bad decisions)... finished the half 1/8.

Hofstra 6/19 from 3 on 34 first-half shots. Live and dying by the 3 again. Missed 11 of 12 (seven from 3) and their last seven (including five from 3) to close the half. Fritz 2/2 fg and no PF. Get him the ball a little more. He can score an efficient 12-14 pts or more if given the opportunities. Stony Brook has been very active on D, to their credit.

[dutchPride86]

Hofstra double teaming a kid averaging 8 pts a game in the post to leave a hot 3pt shooting team wide open on the perimeter is peak Hofstra this season. Just really lousy and uncharacteristic from what we've become accustomed to from this program

Getting the ball with 50 seconds left in the half, perfect 2 for 1 spot... zero urgency and throw it away right at 30 seconds wasting the 2 for 1 chance. Getting comical how poorly they're playing and the level of the mistakes they're making

Now missing the front end of a 1 and 1 with chance to cut it to 1 possession. Just a clinic of losing basketball plays tonight

[dutchPride86]

What a robbery! Had NO business winning that game. Great moment for Tyler, law of averages team had to come up on right side of one of these close games eventually.

Still such a flawed team playing sooo poorly, but some needed momentum into Towson

[EvanJ]

Thomas made a tough two-pointer with 0.4 seconds left to win 72-71. One of the announcers brought up Dion Nesmith's shot to win 66-65 hosting Stony Brook on November 21, 2014. I was away from home, and I think that was our only shot of that game that I saw.

Thomas scored 26 and contributed in multiple ways. He shot 10-21 (twos 7-13 and threes 3-8), and free throws 3-4, which are all near average. He had 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and did not commit a foul. He played the whole game. We committed only 11 fouls, but Stony Brook attempted 18 free throws (with 13 made) because so many of them were shooting fouls. If you make a statistics of opponent's free throw attempts per your foul, Stony Brook's 18/11 = 1.64 would be very high. Plotnikov shot a great 6-9 including threes 4-5 and free throws 1-1 to score 17, and had 4 rebounds in 30 minutes. Carlos did not shoot well, but almost had a triple-double. He had 11 points, 9 rebounds, 10 assists, and 0 turnovers. He became the 23rd player and first CAA player from 2010-2011 to now to have that many points, rebounds, and assists without a turnover. Seven of the players did it this season, including Bryant's Earl Timberlake in a 104-86 win hosting Drexel on December 22. Three players did that against non-Division teams this season, including two against Bethesda in California. He shot 3-10 including threes 2-6 and free throws 3-4. Dubar scored 10. He made a two 5 seconds in, and his next and final two was with 13:56 left, meaning 25:59 later. He shot 4-10 including threes 2-7, and his only free throw attempt was missing the first of a one-and-one with 7:01 left. Fritz scored 8 by shooting 4-6, and his only free throw attempt was missing with 16 seconds left to not have a three-point play. He had half of his points in the last 8 seconds. Dubar (7), Thomas (6), and Fritz (5) joined Carlos with at least 5 rebounds. Thomas had 2 steals to be our only player with more than 1, and we did not block a shot. The bench had 0 points on 0-7 shooting, 2 rebounds (by Washington, who shot 0-4), and 1 assist (by Robinson) in 25 minutes. Sunday played 5:39, but in order for the minutes to add up to 200, he was rounded down to 5. The sum of the bench minutes to the nearest whole number was 26. I wonder how many times any team is going to have all four of those bench numbers be that low.

We led for 5:16.

Each team had four double-digit scorers. Aaron Clarke scored 18, Tyler Stephenson-Moore scored 17, Dean Noll scored 14, Keenan Fitzmorris scored 13 in 25 minutes off the bench, Jared Frey scored 5, Sabry Philip scored 2, Chris Maidoh scored 1, and Andre Snoddy scored 1. All of their players scored. Snoddy became the second player from 2010-2011 to now to have 0 or 1 point, at least 13 rebounds, at least 3 assists, and 5 fouls. The previous player to do that was Marist's Eric Truog in a 102-100 double overtime loss at Rider on January 14, 2016. Truog fouled out with 2:24 left in regulation, so he did not get any of those statistics in overtime. Clarke and Philip tied for their second most rebounds with 4. Snoddy, Frey, and Fitzmorris led them with 3 assists. Noll and Stephenson-Moore led them with 2 steals, and Snoddy had their only block, which was 5:38 into the game.

Field goal shooting was 27/63 (.429) for us, and 23-54 (.426) for them. Twos were 16-31 (.516) for us, and 11-27 (.407) for them. Threes were 11-32 (.344) for us, and 12-27 (.444) for them. Free throws were 7-11 (.636) for us, and 13-18 (.722) for them. Each team had about half of their field goal attempts be threes. We had 32 of 63 attempts (50.8 percent) be threes, and they attempted 27 of both, while shooting threes better than twos. Rebounds were tied at 36, we had more assists 17 to 15, fewer fouls 11 to 16, and fewer turnovers 7 to 8. Stony Brook had only 5 offensive rebounds and 2 second chance points. We were able to make 11 threes and have more points in the paint 20 to 6.

Here are Analytics. In efficiency, Thomas and Carlos tied with 23, Plotnikov had 18, and Fitzmorris led Stony Brook with 16. In game score, Thomas led with 18.8, Carlos had 15.1, Plotnikov had 12.8, and Fitzmorris led Stony Brook with 12.6. In net points (which is negative for all players combined), Carlos's 4.6, Fitzmorris's 0.9, and Thomas's 0.4 were the only positive numbers on either team. It must be rare for only three players to have positive net points. I am also surprised that in a game decided by 1, the winning team had the top three in efficiency and the top three in game score.

Thomas tied Towson's Dylan Williamson for the most points by a CAA player today. Williamson scored 23 in the second half. Seeing "D. Williamson" makes me think of Drew Williamson, who had 555 assists for Old Dominion. He played from 2003 to 2007, which were the same seasons as Loren Stokes and Carlos Rivera. We have three players with over 555 assists, and our most assists by a player after Claxton is 548 by Buie.

I wonder if we will be the only team this season to have a game scoring in the first 5 seconds and making the winning shot 0.4 seconds or fewer left.

https://gohofstra.com/sports/mens-baske ... core/12794 is the box score. The attendance was 2,062.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKa4ke0J7g8 is highlights.

We did not write a recap yet. https://stonybrookathletics.com/news/20 ... fstra.aspx is titled "Men's Basketball Falls After Last-Second Shot at Hofstra." Dean Noll's 4 threes were a career-high. Coach Geno Ford said "Stomach-punch loss. We outplayed them the whole game and then made some tough plays down the stretch. Give Thomas credit, it was a heck of a shot he hit."

If you like comebacks and exciting ends, we would be among the leaders in the last few weeks. Our last eight games were decided by single-digits, and the combined margin was 37, which is 4.625 per game. I wonder what our record is for consecutive games decided by single-digits.

[EvanJ]

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... /401600701 is titled "Thomas scores 26, hits winning shot as Hofstra rallies past Stony Brook 72-71." The AI article was not intelligent as it credited the almost triple-double to Plotnikov. The game was close to the over/under of 140.5.

Delaware won 81-53 at William & Mary, and their win by 28 was more than the rest of the CAA combined. We won by 1. Towson came back from down 15 to win 83-76 hosting Northeastern. UNCW won 80-74 at Charleston. Hampton fell to 0-10 in the CAA by missing a three to decide the game in their 59-58 loss at North Carolina A&T. North Carolina A&T's offense was hurt by not having Landon Glasper, who is tenth in Division I in points per game. Hampton is one of ten teams that is winless in its conference, including losing by 1 to North Carolina A&T twice. Monmouth led 10 and led by 13 in the second half. Drexel took a 51-50 lead with 7:34 left, but host Monmouth ended on an 8-3 run to win 67-62. Campbell at Elon was tied at 67 until Campbell's Anthony Dell'Orso made the winner with 4 seconds left to win 69-67. Elon shot free throws 15-17 (.882), but they missed their last one, which led to Dell'Orso getting the rebound and making the winning shot. The CAA had two game-winning shots made and three attempted in the last 4 seconds. 1+7+6+1+5+2 = 22 points for the six margins other than Delaware's win. CBS Sports Network got to show a blowout.

The CAA standings are:

Drexel 8-2
Towson 7-2
UNCW and Charleston 6-3
Us, Delaware, North Carolina A&T, Monmouth, and Campbell 5-4
Stony Brook 4-5
William & Mary and Northeastern 3-6
Elon 2-7
Hampton 0-10

On Saturday, Hampton plays fellow HBCU Howard at 4:00 P.M. on TNT at Prudential Center in New Jersey. Drexel has off after their disappointing loss, and after Saturday, every other Saturday or the following Monday, and after any Thursday will have all teams with the same amount of CAA games. Towson won hosting Drexel and does not go to Drexel, so Towson has the head-to-head tiebreaker.

[dutchPride86]

Have it on pretty good authority, would expect to see Tyler's shot on top plays on Sportscenter tonight

[Wags]

What a robbery! Had NO business winning that game. Great moment for Tyler, law of averages team had to come up on right side of one of these close games eventually.

Hofstra's last two games:

Led for 31:27 and trailed for 7:09 in a loss.
Led for 5:16 and trailed for 33:16 in a win.

[Wags]

Evan - don't go crazy to look this up but if you happen to know, I was wondering if this had happened before...

I can't recall Hofstra ever winning a game before in which it got outscored by so much off the bench while not scoring at all (20-0).

[dutchPride86]

Have it on pretty good authority, would expect to see Tyler's shot on top plays on Sportscenter tonight

#2 on top plays for Tyler!

[Jojogunne]

The view from Nicolls Road:

https://sbufan.createaforum.com/stony-b ... ra-21-7pm/

[Jojogunne]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but only our five starters scored. We had no points off the bench. How rare is that?

[Wags]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but only our five starters scored. We had no points off the bench. How rare is that?

Yeah, I asked this above:
I can't recall Hofstra ever winning a game before in which it got outscored by so much off the bench while not scoring at all (20-0).

I think I recall games when they got nothing off the bench (though rare), but when that's happened, they don't usually get outscored by a lot (like -20) and they don't usually win (I think). The Knicks also overcame 8/38 from 3 to win on the same night Hofstra overcame 20-0 off the bench.

[triplec2195]

Sometimes you lose when u should win and win when u should lose. This is one of those times and just thinking about what I watched in the 1st half SBU passing and playing team basketball as opposed to us doing our one on one TT show all too often. If Tyler wasn't on in that half we would have been in a hole we wouldn't have been able to get out of. Great win especially against SB NEVER WANT TO LOSE TO THEM.

Playing Plotnikov has really paid dividends kudos to him and the coaching staff. If Bryce started this game we probably would have lost! Just one final comment we need to shoot better from the foul line would have been one of the many reasons we lost this game if we had lost.

[HUSID80]

We'll take the win when it looked like it was lost, especially against the boys from Suffolk...hopefully this will be a momentum changer for us moving forward but we are still a flawed team...NO POINTS FROM THE BENCH? Crazy and Sunday is now USELESS...what was Farmer doing out there he looked lost and did KJ play at all? Usually he's good for a couple of threes.
Now we step up in class against Towson...let's see what we're made of.

[Wags]

Sort of quietly, Carlos was only one rebound short of his first career triple-double.

Also, not only 10 assists with no turnovers, but at his size, he led the team with nine boards.

[EvanJ]

Evan - don't go crazy to look this up but if you happen to know, I was wondering if this had happened before...

I can't recall Hofstra ever winning a game before in which it got outscored by so much off the bench while not scoring at all (20-0).

There is not a way of searching for bench points, so it would require looking at box scores of every win. I will say that if you had to pick a team out of 362 in Division I to win with no bench points and at least 20 bench points allowed, it might be us.

Just one final comment we need to shoot better from the foul line would have been one of the many reasons we lost this game if we had lost.

An announcer said we were okay after Fritz's miss to get have a three-point play to tie the game, and he was right. If Fritz made the free throw, Stony Brook could have held for the last shot of a tied game, and we could have only won in regulation if they made a mistake.

With 30.X left down 3, Ineza said we should go for three to tie it. I thought we had enough time left to go for two, which we did three times to win. Normally it is the opposite when an announcer thinks a team should go for two and I think that the margin and score means they need to go for three. It is also good that we did not commit one more non-shooting foul earlier in the second half, because if we had our last foul would have given Stony Brook the double bonus.

did KJ play at all?

He had 1 assist in 5 minutes, and the rest of his statistics were zeroes.

[Wags]

We'll see what this means later on, but for right now, that Thomas shot is big difference maker. Since he made it, Hofstra kept pace with four other teams that likewise won to get to 5-4 last night (one game behind UNCW and Charleston - UNCW won at Charleston to sweep that series and make both of those teams 6-3) while dropping Stony Brook down to sole possession of 10th place at 4-5. Had he missed, it obviously would have been Stony Brook keeping pace and Hofstra down at 10th place.

p.s. poor Hampton They lost last night to NC A&T by one point for a second time this season and are still winless at 0-10. They way they played in those two and at Hofstra, they deserve to have a conference win at some point but that still eludes them so far.

[Wags]

They may not want to spend money on this but just a thought, especially since they're conference rivals now:

I normally don't like when teams stray from their traditional team colors and designs with uniforms except when there may be a reason to, so what about special uniforms (maybe not every year, but some years) with county colors for each and with the jerseys saying Nassau and Suffolk instead of the team names? Could be fun and could have some replica t-shirts of those jerseys as giveaways?

[Wags]

Have it on pretty good authority, would expect to see Tyler's shot on top plays on Sportscenter tonight

#2 on top plays for Tyler!

https://twitter.com/HofstraMBB/status/1 ... 4236696927

[stuball888]

Actually is was #3