Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
Tonight, we basically had the chance to see two different Hoyas teams on the court. You might wonder what we are getting at, but this was not the same team that played bucket for bucket in the first half against UMBC.
The second half was the Kaiden Rice show. He single handle took over the game in the second half, netting 10 of the Hoyas 13 three pointers in the game in route to 34 points, which was a career high.
Georgetown finally found a way to get Ryan Mutombo into the scoring and rebounding mix with 15 points and 11 rebounds in just 18 minutes of game time action.
For anyone who has watched Mutombo in the first few games this season, he has looked extremely slow and often out of place in the offense when Dante Harris is on the court. Tonight, he threw off UMBC in the final ten minutes of the game and forced them to shoot from the perimeter which worked well for UMBC.
Tonight was the 5th match-up for the two teams with last season the Hoyas knocking off the Retrievers by 10 points.
UMBC got quite a bit of production from LJ Owens in the first half, but the Hoyas found a way to trap him more often in the second half, where he could not find open shots from long range. He finished the game with 17 points. The shortest player in NCAA hoops, Darnell Rodgers, was held scoreless in the first half and finished the game with 11 points after a few interior buckets where the Hoyas defense was unable to control his speed on the collapse.
Next up for the Hoyas, another real test of this roster against Syracuse this Saturday at Noon. The old Big East foe will certainly look a bit different then the team from Catonsville tonight and hopefully Patrick Ewing will have found a way to keep Rice hot. Otherwise, we will be looking at another South Carolina repeat.
