Patriots shoot down Fightin' Blue Hens, 69-49

Luke Hancock and the Patriots extended their winning streak to five games Monday night with their 20-point victory at Delaware. Hancock added 12 points to the effort, including a halftime buzzer-beater. (John Powell)

Coming off a four-game winning streak, the Patriots (15-5, 7-2) continued their winning ways by defeating the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens (10-9, 5-4) on the road by a final score of 69-49.

The Delaware team was predicted to finish in the ninth slot in the CAA, but had already knocked off conference favorite Old Dominion. Mason won the previous matchup, 66-75, in the Patriot Center.

Seven minutes into the half, the score was 7-6 with Mason leading, but both teams were getting stops.

“I was very pleased with our energy level,” Head Coach Jim Larranaga said, “because I was very concerned after how hard we played on Saturday, what kind of shape we would be in physically, mentally and emotionally. But I noticed yesterday at our practice session, there was lots of energy.”

Junior forward Ryan Pearson led Mason in the first half with ten points and four rebounds, mostly working from the wing. His inside work saw shots drop, while junior forward Mike Morrison’s inside work did not pay off. Morrison was held to only two points in the first half, going 0-3 from the field and 2-of-6 from the line. Those two points were his only of the game.

“Most of basketball comes down to skill,” Larranaga said. “And Cam and Ryan are very skilled offensive players. Luke Hancock is a skilled offensive player, Isaiah Tate, Andre Cornelius. Mike is more of a workhorse; he’s a power player who needs the ball in and around the basket area. He’s not a jump shooter and tonight, those guys are such good shot blockers, they made it very tough on him to score.”

Delaware blocked five shots on the night, mostly under the basket. Morrison’s slow start gave sophomore forward Johnny Williams an opportunity to step up, going 3-4 for seven points in 16 minutes of work.

Cam Long worked the mid-range shot, throwing in a couple of drives along the way, getting eight points in the half. Delaware’s sophomore forward Josh Brinkley pulled in the shots that did not fall, pulling in eight rebounds in addition to five points in the first half.

And when the shots did not fall, the Patriots’ consistently good 3-point shooting defense continued in the first half, holding Brinkley, the leading Delaware starter, to five points and the team to a 25.8 percent mark. Mason held the Blue Hens to a 1-11 mark from beyond the arc.

“Neither team shot the ball particularly well in the first half,” Larranaga said. “But we were able in the last 3, 4 minutes of the first half to go from a five-point lead to a 12-point lead.”

Delaware’s star, Jawan Carter, averaging 13.0 points per game and 6.0 rebounds per game in the Fightin’ Blue Hens’ last two contests, was held to zero points and zero rebounds, despite playing 18 minutes. Shutting him down was a key to Mason’s play.

“I think with a scorer like Jawan Carter, you have to go at him,” said Hancock, who scored 12 points himself. “You know you have to make sure he doesn’t go off for 30, which he is very capable of doing. I think we just kind of have it in our minds, when you play Delaware, they have that good scorer, so you have to play good team defense. You have to know where he is the whole time.”

With a 10 point lead and less than a second left on the first half clock, Cam Long inbounded the ball to Luke Hancock, for the mid-air jump shot for the game to go to a 12-point margin.

“I kind of silently said what we were going to do,” Long said. “Because we’ve been working on it the past week. I saw there was 0.7 seconds on the clock and I knew there was no other shot we could really get off.”

Even Hancock liked the play.

“I thought I played alright,” said Hancock. “It was definitely a very physical game. I’m just trying to hold everybody together.”

Extending leads before halftime certainly helps to hold everybody together.

Mason kept the play up to start the second half, quickly extending their 12-point lead to a 22-point margin, but then hit a roadblock.

While the Delaware game plan focused on outside pressure in zone-type coverage, new inside pressure began to slow the Mason offense. Neither team was able to change the margin much.

With 9:25 left, Delaware’s Kelvin McNeil fouled out of the game. While he couldn’t get any shots to go in, he complemented a 1-7 shooting mark with six rebounds in only 13 minutes. The loss of his defensive play was another shot to a weak Fightin’ Blue Hens team.

Pearson and Long were in a shoot-out. With 7:43 left, both were sitting at 13 points. Long had three rebounds and three assists, while Pearson was continuing to work the boards, chalking up seven rebounds with nearly eight minutes to go.

Long eventually finished the game with 20, his sixth 20-point game of the season, and Pearson finished with 13 as the lead grew in the second half.

“It just shows that there are a lot of people that are capable of scoring,” Long said. “With us having different [scorers], it makes us very hard to guard. When Ryan scored once then Luke scores then I score, it just shows that with the variety of scoring levels that we have, we’re pretty much unstoppable.”

Even the walk-on freshman forward, Thomas Armistead found some playing time in his third conference game of the season, he picked up a foul on a charge, but the final score stayed at 69-49.

Entering the game, the Patriots were leading the conference in RPI, sitting at No. 31 in the country with their 14-5 mark. They still hold the third spot in the CAA, below VCU and Hofstra. They play Hofstra on Feb. 2 in Fairfax and VCU on Feb. 15 in Richmond, Va.

The big win against Delaware, away from home in conference play, should keep them around the same mark. Another big win Wednesday may even give it a boost.

The Patriots play the Towson Tigers Wednesday, Jan 26 at 7 p.m. at the Patriot Center.