George Mason is now riding a two game skid in which they’ve been blowout by TCU on the road and VCU at home. Despite successfully beating lower tier teams earlier in the season, Mason now looks like they will be, at best, fighting for a spot in the middle of the Atlantic 10. Most predicted a finish like that for Mason but then they rattled off an impressive performance in Mexico to win a tournament that turned some heads. Not to say that it was fool’s gold but they didn’t face many teams in the non-conference schedule that were near the top talent in the A-10 and now after Sunday’s inept loss you worry about them competing in this conference.
Sure, we knew VCU was better going into this game, but I had hoped to be closer to the six point spread in this one. The hope was they would out-work the Rams on the boards and on the defensive end, something we saw a lot of in the beginning of the season. But VCU forced them out of comfort so badly on offense nothing could really materialize for Mason in the game. Three-point shooting, which has been an issue all year long, was really exposed in this one. They could get away with it against other teams but might not be as easy each night in A-10 play.
The front court has no depth and could not do much to slow down VCU’s Santos-Silva who finished with 26 friggin’ points. AJ Wilson isn’t a 5 and Calixte/Oduro combo isn’t going to scare many teams between now and March. They’ve out-hustled some teams on the offensive glass this year but we didn’t see enough of that yesterday.
My biggest fear going into the rest of the A-10 schedule is that most of what this team did to have success in the non-conference schedule won’t translate into wins in the A-10 against even the middle of the league. I would think it would be hard for them to win shooting as poorly as they have from behind the arc. A lot of teams are going to do some version of what VCU did boxing in the paint and forcing Mason into those awkward outside shots. They’ve really got to find a way to attack the rim more with Kier, Greene, and Xavier Johnson.
Perhaps Mason is who we thought they were.
