Late in regulation I envisioned writing a piece on Eleby's failure to come up in the clutch after missing the front end of a 1-and-1 which could have put us up by three and likely ended the game right there. I suppose you can't make them all, right? But Julian completely turned the tables after that. He scored 10 of our 13 points in the first overtime, including two threes, and did an incredible job selling a foul on Devin Peterson during a three point attempt. Julian goes to the line, calmly sinking all three FTs, and somehow we erase a five-point deficit in the final fifteen seconds. But he's not done: Julian hits a three in the second overtime and converts on 4-4 FTs to seal the hard-fought W.
Duggar once again chooses not to go platooning, and as such Eleby and Brown play 46+ minutes. Brown, by the way, shot only seven threes (made three), and had a modest 9 points. Marshall shot 6 of 17 from behind the arc, his cold shooting and foul trouble limiting him to 32 minutes. He did finish with 18 points. Weethee had a great game with 15 on 5 of 10 shooting plus 9 boards. Anglade fouled out and was limited pretty much the entire game after getting two early fouls in the first half (I thought the officiating was crappy) but not before netting 10 points and 4 blocks.
Coming off the bench I thought Jarid did tremendously well on the boards, with 7 offensive boards and 11 in all, plus 10 points. Those seven offensive boards also resulted in 7 points, which proved quite crucial. Jarid is showing himself to be a better rebounder than Phil (by having three inches on him), but we needed Phil for his scoring tonight and got lucky that Eleby couldn't miss. Chattanooga probably won't let that happen Thursday.
Trey had 5 and Craig had 3 off the bench to round out the scoring. Iruafemi got a few minutes and Chris Burton barely played, perhaps because Baucom has decided that Eleby is the man for the job (and clearly he is). With he, Phil, Tim, and Brian starting to find their stride, there's really no need for a platoon. It works when you don't have an established starting five but at this point our starters are gelling together and finding their roles. Look for a regular substitution system from here on out.
As a team we shoot 46% from the field, and an excellent 44% from behind the arc (we made 20, boosting our 11.9 average in that category). Eleby accounted for much of that, making 8 of 15, three of which came in the overtimes. Weethee hit 2 of 5 on threes, and even Hinton got in on the action. Notice that all of this super shooting is coming after Eleby starts to find his stride. Why were we shooting so pitifully in January and early February? Simple: we had no legitimate PG there to stabilize the offense and set up 3P shooters. Free throw shooting was good for the most part (25 of 32, 78%). Jarid hit four of his seven attempts, and Anglade once again impresses from the line by hitting 2 of 2. Perhaps he has started to work on that in practice? Either way, Eleby, discounting that hiccup late in regulation, hit every FT shot he needed to. A consistent FT shooter is critical in the postseason, and I think Eleby is the guy.
Western Carolina actually shot quite well at 50.6%. They made six more shots too, but the difference, of course, was VMI hitting 13 more three-pointers (the 'Cats had only seven). We held Rhett Harrelson to 2 of 11 shooting from three (several of which were awful shots), and Mike Brown, who was 9 of 19 in the last game against us, shot 4 of 10 today. WCU even turned the ball over less in this game than that one, and shot slightly worse. The difference was that we simply made more shots.
Some Notes & Observances
- This win puts us a game behind WCU for the fifth spot, and, if Samford (lost to Mercer in the waning seconds) and The Citadel (who got beat up by Wofford) lose, both those teams are essentially out of it for getting the final bye. Samford could still technically tie us at 7-9, but I won't get into all the tiebreaking mumbo jumbo just yet. The good news is that we control our own destiny, and one more win clinches the sixth seed.
- Thanks in large part to 27 points in overtime, we are now averaging 81.6 points per game as a team and have wiggled our way up to 4th in the nation. BYU, at first, currently averages 84.4 per game. Since we will play at least three more games in the season (hopefully more, but just for the sake of argument), we will need to average 110 PPG to surpass the Cougars at their current pace and lead the nation in scoring. Virtually impossible, yes, but if we manage to win that quarterfinal game, that number "drops" to 103.8. If we play five? 100. Essentially we would need BYU to start not-scoring a lot. We'll see where we can go with it, but today is a great start.
- This was the program's 200th all-time road victory, a momentous accomplishment (although at 200-774, there's a lot of catching up to be done).
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