City of Basketball Love

Teddy Bailey (@TheTeddyBailey)
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Delaware’s CAA opener against James Madison served as the Blue Hens’ third game in the past five days. The Blue Hens returned home after a grueling 1-5 road trip, most recently falling at Buffalo and Hofstra in highly-scoring affairs.

Head coach Monte Ross was without the services of sophomore guards Chivarsky Corbett (torn ACL suffered vs. Temple) and Eric Carter (ACL injury suffered in preseason), as well as junior guard Devonne Pinkard, who broke his right foot against Fairleigh Dickinson back in late November.

With the injuries, Delaware was down to as few as nine available players when sophomore forward Skye Johnson left Thursday’s game against Hofstra after taking an elbow to the head. All five starters played at least 31 minutes in the loss to the Pride.

On Saturday, Delaware welcomed back the return of Devonne Pinkard to the rotation. Pinkard, in his first game since November 24th, gave the Blue Hen starters much-needed rest with 21 minutes off the bench.

Nonetheless, James Madison forced Delaware to shoot a season-worst 5-of-29 from the field in the first half. The Blue Hens were unable to come within striking distance of the Dukes in the second half, as Delaware fell 73-63.

“You have to be able to score the ball,” Ross said. “When you shoot 5-29 in our own building in the first half, you just dig yourself such a hole. It’s hard to climb out of that. Our margin for error is very thin. We don’t have to play a perfect game, but we have to play a complete game.”

While Pinkard returned to Ross’s game rotation, he still had not participated in a full practice for the Blue Hens prior to Saturday’s game. The J.P. McCaskey product finished with five points and three rebounds on 1-of-9 from the floor.

“He was rusty, and we knew he would be,” Ross said. “He hasn’t practiced at all, he’ll practice on Monday for the first time since November 24th. It was good to get him back out there to get the cobwebs and nervousness out. He’ll be fine, it’ll take him a couple games to get his legs under him, but it was very good to have him back.”

Hayes, who has played at least 33 minutes per game in every contest this season, was relieved to have the junior wing back in the rotation.

“It’s nice having another body. When I was back playing 40 minutes, no, I’m too old for that now,’ Hayes said jokingly. “It’s his first game back, so we know that it’s going to be a transition.”

Delaware averaged almost 80 points per game in games against Buffalo and Hofstra within the past five days, but allowed both teams to approach the century mark. While many Division-I teams have battled fatigue this past week, the Blue Hens acknowledged that their stretch was specifically hard to overcome.

“They took a toll on our bodies,” Hayes admitted. “But we can’t use that as an excuse because it’s going to be like that for the rest of the year. We have to find a way to get over this hump, but I know that we will.”

“It probably is,” Ross said of the toll that the past week has taken on his team. “I don’t want to succumb to that, but we have guys that are playing 38, 39 minutes and every other day. They’re beat up a little bit.”

The Blue Hens trailed 35-20 at halftime after the worst offensive half of the season. A dunk from senior forward Marvin King-Davis and a triple from Cazmon Hayes cut the deficit to single-digits, as Delaware trailed by just 45-34 with 14:11 to play. JMU’s Ron Curry, who scored all 17 of his points in the second half, his a pair of 3-pointers to stem the Blue Hen comeback and give the Dukes a 59-43 lead with just 6:28 remaining.

“Some nights the shot’s going to fall, some nights it’s not,” Hayes said. “We knew in the first half that we’d have to rely on our defense because we weren’t scoring a lot. We thought they would start falling in the second half, but unfortunately we fell up short. It’s hard to play catch-up when your shots aren’t falling and the other team is making threes.””

Sophomore guard Kory Holden, Delaware’s leading scorer with over 17 points per game, scored just seven points on 3-of-11 shooting. Anthony Mosley, in his ninth start in replacement of Chivarsky Corbett, finished in double-figure scoring for the fifth time this season. The Sanford product finished with his first career double-double, tallying 16 points and 11 rebounds in the losing effort. Mosley scored 20 points in the loss to Hofstra, and after averaging just 1.5 points per game as a freshman, has been a bright spot for the Blue Hens.

“I think he’s playing with a lot of confidence,” Ross said. “We said at halftime, thank goodness for Anthony Mosley. We would have had about six points.

“I think he’s doing a great job of driving the ball, picking his spots and being really aggressive,” Ross continued. “When he’s on a fast break, he’s a load to stay in front of because he’s so low to the ground, strong and athletic. He was tremendous today.”

For now, Delaware will savor the next few days before traveling up to Boston for Thursday night’s CAA tilt with Northeastern. The Huskies will enter with a 10-5 (2-0 CAA) record and provide the Hens with yet another early conference test. The difference, however, will be a few days of rest.

“We’ll be fine,” Ross said. “We’ve had some good experiences in navigating this league. We’ll be alright, we have to keep grinding but once we get these guys together, we’ll be okay.”

In the meantime, the Hens will await the return of 6-foot-8 sophomore forward Skye Johnson. Johnson has been experiencing concussion symptoms and will be questionable against Northeastern and UNC-Wilmington on Saturday. With Corbett and Carter out of the season, it may be a while before Hayes and his squad will play at full-strength.

“When that day comes, we’ll talk about it,” Hayes said with a laugh.