Friday, February 15, 2013

Prescott's Night

24 hours ago I was leaving Knott Arena. Had just witnessed Sam Prescott put on the greatest performance of any Mountaineer in the Arena's history. He had knocked down 10 three pointers matching a record set by Scott Murphy twice during his days as a Mountaineer, on his way to a 44-point performance that set a Division I Mountaineer scoring record passing All-Century team member Chris McGuthrie for that record and leading the Mount to a team record 18 3's in a game. All of this coming in an 84-70 beatdown of the current NEC pacemaker Bryant. If it wasn't a Woodshed beatdown, it was as close as you could get.

And as I left the building I started thinking of how far we'd come in a year. Because you may remember a year ago around this time was when Robert Burke coached his final game at the Mount. Back then there really was nothing to be excited about. However, this team that won our hearts with its all-out all-the-time effort in November has blossomed into a very good offensive team in February, that seems to be playing its best hoops at exactly the right time.

The Mount has won four of its last five games, knocking off teams in front of them in the NEC standings in three of those games. Oh how times have changed in Emmitsburg. That's right there is also that Emmit fellow running around. The Mount is now 2-0 in front of the mascot.

Jamion Christian has been pushing all the right buttons. He and his staff are always searching for and finding the right matchup offensively.

Defensively, they keep throwing different looks at teams that even though they continue to rank near the bottom of the NCAA charts in Field Goal Percentage Against they are winning ballgames by keeping offenses off balance.

Because how this team was going to play in February (and maybe March) wasn't even about what was happening back in November. Instead, this all started back on March 27th when Christian was hired. He's been building the blocks since then. Putting the pieces in place by preaching team first.

So even on a night when it was an individual effort that blazed, the core was still the team. Julian Norfleet, the leading scorer from a season ago, adapting to an on the ball point guard role, handing out 11 assists, the most since Jeremy Goode had that many.

Prescott's night was one those of us who braved the backlash that going to a Valentine's Night game might bring , will never forget.

But it's just one night, one moment in a season that is becoming full of them and seems to be only just beginning once again.

Send an email to thefanblog@gmail.com

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:11 PM

    Beautifully written, thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The obvious thing at this time is we can compete with all the NEC teams. Two of our poorest results were LIU and SFNY, but our starting 5 and rotations have been altered since then.

    I guess we'll see how things play out tomorrow and Saturday!

    GO MOUNT!!!

    ReplyDelete