City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- Even at full strength, most teams in the Colonial Athletic Association are going to have a tough time stopping a high-powered Hofstra offense.

For a Delaware squad already short three players to injury, that task was already going to be more difficult. Losing a fourth player early in the game didn’t help matters whatsoever.

The Blue Hens did all they could against a Pride squad picked to win the CAA, but energy and effort weren’t enough with a shortage of bodies in a 90-80 loss in the league opener for both teams.

“I thought we gave everything we had, we played to exhaustion,” Delaware head coach Monté Ross said. “Shoot, a couple of times I wanted to put on a uniform and help those guys out.”

Delaware began the game with just seven scholarship players available thanks to two season-ending injuries and a Devonne Pinkard broken foot that isn’t quite healed. Then, midway through the first half, sophomore forward Skye Johnson went down after it looked like he took an inadvertent elbow to the head; he was diagnosed with a concussion and, according to Ross, is unlikely to return by the team’s next game against James Madison on Saturday.

So there wasn’t much Ross could do as Hofstra’s talented backcourt of seniors Juan’ya Green and Ameen Tanksley plus redshirt junior Brian Bernardi went a combined 11-of-25 from 3-point range, part of a Pride offensive attack that shot exactly half of its 66 field goals from beyond the arc.

“We know we had to chase them off the 3-point line, we tried our best with the hedging and stuff but there’s always an open man,” senior forward Marvin King-Davis said. “We played very hard and tried to get out there, we probably could have shaded to (their shooters) a little more.”

As if that trio wasn’t enough trouble, the Pride’s frontcourt also did plenty of damage. Princeton transfer Denton Koon finished with 17 points and six rebounds, while sophomore Rokas Gustys added 13 and nine rebounds; all five Hofstra starters scored in double figures.

“You concentrate on the shooters, that’s when their bigs just get easy layups,” King-Davis said. “Instead of contested layups they probably wouldn’t make, they just get open layups the whole time."

It was only a three-point game at halftime, and the Blue Hens quickly tied it up out of the break on a 3-pointer by junior guard Cazmon Hayes. But Hofstra responded with 10 straight to create a cushion that would last the remainder of the game, as Delaware couldn’t string any stops together.

Hofstra finished the game shooting 48.5 percent (32-of-66) overall and 42.4 percent (14-of-33) from 3-point range, compared to Delaware's 44.9 percent (31-of-69) overall and 38.9 percent (7-of-18) from beyond the arc.

One bright spot for Delaware was a career-high 20-point outing from sophomore Anthony “Champ” Mosley, who was 6-of-13 from the floor, including makes on both of his 3-point attempts.

A jet-quick 6-1 guard, Mosley--a Wilmington native and Sanford School grad--has shown his scoring ability this year, going for double-digits four times during a sophomore campaign in which he’s now averaging 7.3 ppg, up from 1.5 ppg as a freshman

“I thought he was really aggressive, he was able to get to the rim, and when teams allow him to get to the rim, he can be very effective,” Ross said. “I thought he did that today, he was very good at picking his spots.”

Ross is still optimistic about the year to come, with some good reasons. The Blue Hens are 48-22 in league play the last four years, the best such mark in the CAA. And they’ll be getting pieces back--maybe not in their next game, but likely not much longer after that.

They should benefit greatly from the return of Pinkard, a 6-6 junior wing whose 3-point shooting ability will help stretch out opposing defenses for the likes of Mosley fellow sophomore Kory Holden and Hayes, all who do their best work driving to the rim. While Ross is still waiting on a final doctor’s approval before he gets Pinkard back on the court, he also doesn’t want to put the J.P. McCaskey product into a game situation without some practice time first.

“To throw him out here like that, probably wouldn’t have been fair to him, and we don’t practice before Saturday’s game, because we have to do a mental practice more than a physical practice (tomorrow),” Ross said. “Maybe he can go on Saturday, but with him having some practice days next week, that may be a little more likely. But we’ll see.”