Team Effort Leads to Thrashing of El Cid

College of Charleston 69, The Citadel 54

Top Performers:

Willis Hall 14 points, 5 rebounds

Adjehi Baru 7 points, 12 rebounds

Well that's an encouraging way to bounce back from a two game slide. The Cougars took care of everything that had been lacking at the tail end of their 5-game stretch and looked composed and efficient en route to a dominant performance over The Citadel that wasn't even as close as the final score appears. 

Sometimes cold hard stats can indicate how a game went down, sometimes they don't tell the whole story. After looking through the box score from this one, that is again the case. We'll start with the stats that do stand out and really impacted the game.

The first is the rebounding edge. Coach Driesell said after the game that the Bulldogs have not been manhandled on the boards like that all season. The Cougars collected 48 rebounds compared to just 29 by the Citadel; a stat that was even more padded by the ridiculous 16 offensive rebounds by Anthony Thomas and company. There was also the positive assist-turnover ratio by CofC - a stat I always find important and one the Cougs can always improve on. 14 assists to 11 turnovers is solid and keep in mind 2 of those to's came from the walk-ons in garbage time. That means that not only was the offense in rhythm, but the guys were making shots. 

Now for the stats that matter to me but may not stick out on the box score. That begins with Anthony Stitt. After getting some encouraging words from Rick Barry this week, Anthony finally got out of his shooting slump by nailing a pair of three-pointers. And not a moment too soon. For the first twenty minutes Stitt looked like all his confidence had vanished. He may have said all the platitudes in postgames about continuing to shoot no matter what but you could tell by his play that he was hesitant. In that first half he would often over-dribble and refuse to shoot in the flow of the offense in order to pass the ball again. This resulted in 4 careless and unnecessary turnovers. Finally he got one to fall in the second half and a sigh of relief was palpable throughout TD Arena. 

The second important stats worth diving into are the overall minutes and point contributions from everyone other than the usual suspects. That includes Willis (who led the team in points), Matt Sundberg (who made shots for a second straight game and was not a defensive liability) and Nori Johnson (who finally started shooting again and played aggresively). Coach talked about these guys giving solid minutes and taking some of the scoring load off of Lawrence, Stitt, Baru and Wiedeman. Consistent play from the bench and role players will take this team far. With their contribution last night, nobody on the CofC roster played more than 28 minutes and the team dominated without a single dominant performance by any one player.

Like I said, a very encouraging win. The schedule continues to be difficult however. The SoCon is tighter for the top half of the standings than I can remember it being for quite some time. The Cougars need to continue to play focused and hard and can't let another offensive vacation carry over from game to game. Let's keep it rolling.