"The Little Things are the Big Things and the Big Things are the Little Things"

This little coaching bromide (or, was it a lesson for life) was dropped by Coach Orr in the post-game presser after last night's win over Towson 77-58 at Anderson Arena. What Coach Orr means is things like "hot stopping" (not running over the defenders) and taking care of the ball, etc. He notes that those little things add up, and its a point worth making. Even a basketball game that is decided by 10 points comes down to 3-5 possessions in a 40 minute game that, if reversed, could change the result.

I thought last night's effort was our most complete game this season. Coach said after the game that there should be no doubt that if we defend for 40 minutes, we have a chance to be successful. And that is certainly beginning to emerge as how this team will play. It is not always cinematic basketball, but my favorite style is winning.

Towson is a respectable team. They were certainly capable of coming in and beating us, and the Falcons simply handled them virtually the entire way. Some of the highlights include:

• Holding Towson to 33.9% from the field. (I would be interested to know how many teams lose when they hold a team to that kind of shooting. If there are any).
• Shooting 55% ourselves from the field, and 47.1% from the arc. (This accounts for the big margin of victory, but I think we win this game at 45% shooting.)
• We shot 66% in the second half, though there were a bunch of dunks and layups against the pressing Towson.
  
• We held our fouls down (17) and made almost as many free throws (9) as they did (10).
• We had only eight turnovers...as did they.
• And we had 25 assists.

I'm not much on assists ordinarily. They are pretty subjective, in my opinion. I did think we had a pretty good effort on passing the ball. Towson plays a 1-3-1 zone, and we had only one day to prepare for it, and it seemed to me that we attacked it with as much confidence as any zone we have faced. We seemed to find the baseline a lot, which, it seems to me, is the soft spot of that defense. But I'm not an x's and o's guy.

• Individually, Darryl Clements had a monster game, 18p/6r/8a. In the post game, Coach seemed to say that he's looking for more consistency from Clements, as a senior.
• Chris Knight had his first meaningful game of the season, scoring 13 points in 18 minutes. Coach had some nice things to say about him, though he did mention that he didn't block out on a free throw (this is what started the "big thing little thing" deal.)
• Otis Polk went 7/7 with 3 assists in 28 minutes. I thought it was his best game as a Falcon, and I was surprised to get home and see he only had seven points. He was a presence in there, and made some nice touch passes to get the ball to the soft part of the 1-3-1.
• Brian Moten also had 12 points, including some shots in the second half to help ensure we didn't lose this lead.

As I said, it was our most complete performance. There is still room for improvement--we didn't rebound as well as we usually do and we occasionally struggled against traps and pressure, but it was a pretty dominating win that we should be pleased with.