Well that wasn’t great. George Mason escaped an embarrassing loss to a Division II school by the skin of their teeth last night in their first game at the Paradise Jam event in DC. Mason was outrebounded by a pretty wide margin and turned over the ball 18 times. If not for a late drive to the basket where Javon Greene drew a foul and connected on free-throws Mason would have lost his one. You can say they ‘found a way to win’ but it wasn’t comforting to watch them get out played nearly the whole night by a school in a division below them. Queens is a DII power school, so much so that DI coaches don’t schedule them, but still.

Javon Greene finished with 19 points and certainly gave them a lift when they were in need a spark. Josh Oduro looked good also as he continues to develop his offensive moves. AJ Wilson had two points and was invisible on offense for the whole night and didn’t get a single offensive rebound. That’s particularly alarming considering the expectations heading into this season and the fact that the team they were playing didn’t have a huge front court. I was kind of waiting for Jordan Miller to erupt in the second half but that never really materialized either.

Aside from the bad, we got to see Tyler Kolek in action, and he looked legit for a freshman playing in his first collegiate game. Kid can definitely shoot and I like that he doesn’t hesitate to take the open shot. It was nice to see someone other than Javon Greene taking those outside shots and hitting them. He looked more polished and looks like he will eventually help this team improve on their turnover ratio.

Hopefully we can chalk this up to the long, weird offseason this kids had due to the pandemic and luckily they have a quick turnover against Belmont today at 2 pm. The offense being slow is more understandable then the turnover party though. I think they should shake this off and look much different today against a much tougher opponent.