City of Basketball Love

Mitchell Northam (@primetimeMitch)
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A season-opening meeting in Dover against the Delaware State Hornets wound up being about three things for the Delaware Blue Hens.

It was about adjusting, shaking off nerves and getting over a hump.

The Blue Hens did that against their intrastate rival on Friday with 62-56 win inside the Hornets’ small, but loud environment.

The name of the venue was Memorial Hall, but with 1,584 screaming fans, one might call their gym the Hornets’ nest.

But the Blue Hens escaped with a win and with lessons that they can take with them for the rest of the season.

“Win or lose, we knew we were going to have to go back to the drawing board,” said Blue Hens’ head coach Monte Ross. “I’d much rather have us learn from a win.”

The adjustment for the Blue Hens (1-0) came in the second half of their matchup with the Hornets (0-1). They entered the half trailing by six points after a first half that included nine turnovers.

Ross and his team fell behind even more as the second half drug on, trailing by double digits at one point, but the Blue Hens finally adjusted and kicked their offense and defense into gear. Much of the issue was, going into this game, the Blue Hens didn’t really know anything about their First State rival.

The Hornets reached the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship last year after an 18-18 regular season, where they beat the Blue Hens in Newark, but returned only one regular contributor from that team.

Blue Hens’ senior forward Marvin King-Davis admitted that he and his teammates didn’t really know what to expect from the MEAC side.

“We didn’t know what a lot of them could do,” King-Davis said. “We were out here playing AAU ball, basically.

“Like, how should we play defense on them?” King-Davis added. “We had to locate the shooters and then that’s when our defense really started to come together.”

Shooters were in abundance for the Hornets in the first half as they made seven-of-18 three-pointers. But the Blue Hens were able to identify the marksmen and began closing out on them more quickly.

The Hornets made just 1-of-11 shots from behind the arc in the second half.

“We were making them take tough shots, but they were making them,” Ross said. “We told our guys to keep making sure that every shot they take is a contested one.”

Through the final 13 minutes and 16 seconds of the game, the Hornets scored just four points. Devin Morgan was the only Hornet to score in double-digits, but didn't score at all in second half. He finished with 10 points on 12 shots.

The Blue Hens’ defense had finally adjusted, but the offense still had some kinks to work out before they could re-take the lead.

The first order of business for the Blue Hens was to get the easy points, which came at the free throw line and in the low post. Delaware shot 16-of-23 from the charity stripe while their opponent rarely got there. When they did, the Hornets missed both of their two free throws.

In the paint, Ross identified that his veteran big men could overpower and outplay a smaller and younger Hornets’ front line.

“Coach recognized that the pick and rolls were opening a lot, so we made an effort to get the ball inside to me and (Maurice Jeffers),” King-Davis said.

King-Davis, the eldest starter, led the Blue Hens in scoring and rebounding with 13 points and 12 rebounds. His partner in the paint, Jeffers, finished with six points and four rebounds.

Not one Hornet secured more than six rebounds. In total, the Blue Hens out-rebounded their opponent 44-29.

Sophomore swingman Chivarsky Corbett made his presence felt down low as well, grabbing seven rebounds. He scored 12 points too, but his most important bucket of the night came with about four minutes to play.

That was when Devonne Pinkard fired up a shot from the left corner that began to roll out of the rim. Corbett flew in and put the ball in its place to give Delaware their first lead of the second half at 55-54.

“He did jump over me,” King-Davis said. “I thought he was about to dunk it for a second.”

With the lead in hand and with the defense working, the nerves were shaken off. The first-half shooting woes didn’t seem to matter as much.

“We’re a really good shooting team,” Ross said. “Our shots weren’t going in and I thought it was just a little nerves to start the game.”

The numbers say that Delaware actually shot worse in the second half than the first, but it didn’t seem that way when it mattered the most in the last few minutes of the game.

The defense was nearly pitching a shutout so the offense was shooting freely. A run was sparked when Cazmon Hayes sunk a wide-open three-pointer, it continued with Corbett’s tip-in and then sophomore point guard Kory Holden took care of the lead once his team had it.

Holden, a pre-season second team all-Colonial Athletic Association selection, finished with just nine points and five assists, but scored six points in the second half.

His best play of the night helped secure the lead when he drove left and drew two defenders before dishing a no-look pass to Pinkard at the top of the key for a three-pointer that swished the net.

“We came back strong,” Ross said. “Kory got going there in the second half and when he gets going, not only is he scoring, but he’s finding guys, and that’s what makes him so special.

“The toughness that these guys displayed is what made me proud tonight. These guys just kept grinding. We hit some big shots.”

Oh, and the hump.

Since becoming the head coach of the Delaware men’s basketball team in 2006, Ross had never won a season-opener in nine tries. If not for he and his team’s ability to adjust and shake offseason nerves, he would have been 0-10.

“I’m happy for our first game out because we got the win,” Ross said. “But we have to play a lot better.”

Since this is Ross’ first season-opening win, it means that a Nov. 20 matchup at Iona will be his first opportunity to start a season 2-0. To do that, the Blue Hens will have to play like they did in the second half against the Hornets for a full 40 minutes.

“We can’t let a team get up like that, because some teams might not let us get back in the game and we’ll lose by 20,” King-Davis said. “The second half showed how we should’ve played. The first half we came out a little slow and the defense just wasn’t there. We can’t come out sluggish again.”