George Mason lost their chance to get a double bye in the conference tournament after last night’s loss to Richmond in the regular season finale. Looking at the box score you’d think Mason played awful defense but not really. The Spiders were given a few too many looks but Mason didn’t do a terrible job being in position, Paulsen even said their defense was better in this one then against UMass. Just seemed as though everything went in for the Spiders and they got all the rolls on their way to shooting 63 percent from the floor and 56 percent from 3-point range. Mason didn’t nearly as good on the night from behind the three-point line and squandered a bunch of opportunities to get back into the game. They were also missing a ton of close baskets and lay-ups. Richmond came out strong and didn’t let up, they also had an answer for everything Mason did whenever trying to mount a comeback.

Some positives to take away from this game was Otis Livingston II continues to play well (21 points, five assists) and Mason got a lot more from their bench then we’ve been seeing. Greg Calixte, AJ Wilson, and Javon Greene all had 10 points and Calixte was 5-for-5 from the field. Greene was very assertive on offense in the second half and had some nice looking cuts to the basket. The freshmen have developed well this year and you can notice the individual growth from each of them.

The shooting struggles from both Kier and Boyd made it difficult for Mason to get back into this one. They both missed a lot of close baskets and open shots, can’t let that happen in the Atlantic 10 tournament. The bench play helped last night but we can’t have those two guys struggling like that. Grayer is also in the same boat but he only played 18 minutes last night which makes me think he’s still not 100% at this point. Goanar Mar was also way too quiet after dropping 26 points int he previous game, he didn’t get many clean looks from the Spiders though.

So Mason is fifth seed in the A-10 tournament and will face the winner of La Salle/UMass Thursday at 2:30. The winner of that will face Saint Joe’s on Friday. Boy would those guys love to end Mason’s season early. Here’s the full bracket which you will notice shows that advancing past SJU on Friday would most likely mean a date of Rhode Island on Saturday. Definitely not the easiest path to the Sunday championship game.