Falcon Men's Hoopsters Win Exhibition

Made it down to the Stroh yesterday for the exhibition game with the Central State Marauders.  There isn't too much to say....BG won 73-60.  Central State is DII and they won 19 last year, but you'd expect us to win and we did.  It was tight for much of the first 25 minutes, and BG led by only one with 14:51 to go in the game.  Four minutes later BG was up 10 and the game never got closer than 7 from there on it.

The lead story has to be the game that Jordon Crawford had.  He scored a crazy 30 points on 12-19 shooting and 3-6 from 3 to go with 4 assists over 3 turnovers.  He was just unconscious, firing up shots all over the place and hitting some brutal shots.  He was the only truly efficiency offensive player BG had.

A'uston Calhoun did have a 19/14 double-double.  But, as the season unfolds, we're going to look at two things with Calhoun...one is whether he scores and the other is how many possessions did he use up getting there.  Yesterday, he had 19 points but it took him 19 shots (6 of 19).  He was 7-8 from the line--I will say this, if he can draw fouls and make free throws, he becomes a much more effective player right off the top

From a first view, I was very impressed with Richaun Holmes. He had a couple of big defensive plays on the inside, nailed a nice shot from the outside, and seemed to be someone who can be productive for us.  Sealey had 11 rebounds and seemed to be around the ball all the time.  Finally, I thought Jehvon Clarke really struggled his first time spelling Crawford but that he was much better in the second half.

Beyond that, I thought the team was overall pretty average.  Central State shot 45% and 50% in the second half.  Central State is a pretty decent team, but we struggled to pull away for a lot longer than you would like to see.

In his presser after the game, Coach had a couple of things to say that were interesting...

First, in addition to the players I mentioned, he noted that Luke Kraus provided good minutes on defense and had 5 steals.

It was noted that we played a ton of man...Coach said that right now man is our best defense.  To play zone, we rely on Cam Black in the middle, and he's out (Day to day according to Coach but it doesn't sound like the kind of day to day where he might play Friday).  Calhoun was in the middle and he's not as big as Cam.

It was noted that Holmes had some blocks in there and he can block shots in the middle of the zone, but in the meantime we might actually talk about playing man and then actually do it.