City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
--

The phrase “strength in numbers” hasn’t exactly been applicable to this year’s Delaware Blue Hens, who have now seen four different scholarship players miss extended periods of playing time due to injury.

The latest casualty, Barnett Harris, left the Hens’ game against UNC-Wilmington on Saturday with a knee injury.

Having recently regained the services of Devonne Pinkard, who missed nine games due to a foot injury, Delaware ended up just playing six different players for almost the entirety of Thursday night’s contest.

Those six Blue Hens, being outmanned by ten Towson Tigers, fought valiantly before dropping their eighth straight by a final score of 79-77, giving Delaware its worst start to league play since 2006-07, the first season of head coach Monte Ross’ tenure.

“Even with six guys, we expect to win, so it’s hard for us to be satisfied with anything else but a ‘W’,” said Ross. “But, trying to look at the big picture, we played better here tonight than we have the last couple of games. We obviously scored the ball, which is something that’s really been difficult for us, especially since we got into league play. We’re past moral victories, but i look at some of the things that happened in this game and I’m encouraged because we played better today than we did the last time out.”

In the second half, it seemed as though the Hens’ fatigue was finally catching up to them when a Byron Hawkins wide-open slam capped off a very quick 7-0 run, but Delaware answered and quickly regained the lead.

As was to be expected, Towson did end up finding a way to pull away from the shorthanded Blue Hens, but that didn’t happen until the very last minute of the game, when a few key free throws allowed the Tigers to finally put away UD.

And even as the Tigers built an eight-point lead in the final minute, the Hens still kept fighting, but just didn’t have enough left in the tank to claw all the way back.

“That’s what we expect them to do, they know they have to play to the final buzzer, and not only play to the final buzzer but we want to execute,” said Ross. “We were in a lot of games last year where we were down six with two and a half minutes to go and all we did was get a stop, get a good offensive possession, get a stop, get a good offensive possession, and lots of the times the shots were going in and we were able to win those games. It’s the same thing now, when we’re down six with however much time is left, we want to get a good offensive possession and try to get a stop.”

“I thought at the end of the game, our execution was good tonight,” he added.

Kory Holden had himself a fantastic night--which he capped off with a meaningless halfcourt buzzer beater--scoring 29 points and dishing six assists. Marvin King-Davis also had another impressive performance, completing a double-double with 19 points and 11 rebounds.

Leading the way for Towson was John Davis, a Neumann-Goretti alum, with 22 points. Fellow Tiger William Adala Moto had a double-double of his own, notching 22 points as well as 15 boards.

Even having put up compelling numbers, both Holden and King-Davis were despondent after the loss, knowing full well how close they came to a much-needed victory.

“It’s almost impossible to play a perfect game, but we kind of have to play a perfect game,” said Holden.

“We were so close, it game down to a few possessions, but we still played badly in my opinion,” added King-Davis. “There were too many free throws, too many offensive rebounds, and turnovers at the wrong time.”

Despite the deflating loss, Delaware has to be pleased with several facets of its performance against Towson, especially after having been blown out by the likes of Northeastern and UNC-Wilmington their last two times out.

The Hens will get another shot at defending CAA champion Northeastern on Saturday--a very quick turnaround for such a shorthanded team--and will have to bring the same heart and unwillingness to quit they displayed against the Tigers.

“You can’t (get deflated),” said Ross. “What happens is, this is adversity that we’re facing right now, and we’ve got to look at it head-on and we’ve got to keep going, we’ve got to keep fighting. Northeastern would like nothing more than for us to have a “woe is me” attitude, and we can’t have that. We’ve got to come in and fight, and we’re going to give them everything we have, six guys and all.”