January 1, 2015
Happy New Year to Leopard Nation! Among our reasons to celebrate is the commitment of
Samuel Davis to play for us next season.
Samuel is the third big man to join our recruiting class--the fourth, if you count
Otis Hall, whom I'm already envisioning as a wing--but I envision him earning playing time with his defense and shot blocking.
Apparently
James Rossiter is unhappy. James, you're a walk-on guard, with guys like
Joe Lien,
Hubert Song,
Willard Davis,
Armando Brown, and
Justin Judkins ahead of you. Complaining about your playing time is not a good look.
January 3, 2015
Lafayette 82, Iona 78
The Gaels are a good basketball team. Their conference season has already begun, and they're 3-0 in the MAAC. They have
Levi Villalpando, the reigning MAAC Player of the Year, and a good center,
Darnell Derr.
Both Villalpando and Derr foul out, but Derr does a lot of damage first: 11 points, 18 rebounds. The man he's guarding,
James Sanders, scores 16. And we get our usual 40-plus from
Hubert Song (18) and
Joe Lien (23).
Alvaro Kinard is performing well as our sixth man, and gives us eight points, four rebounds, and three assists.
Interestingly, Lien is not a very good free throw shooter. He goes 6-13 from the line today, which is not that much worse than his season percentage (.585). If he were an 80% shooter from the line (which wouldn't be outrageous, considering he's almost 46% from three), he'd add another point and a half to his 21.1 scoring average.
Record: 12-2.
January 4, 2015
We come in at
#6 in this weeks
Mid Major Top 25.
January 7, 2015
Lafayette 73, Fordham 70
We complete our non-conference schedule with another road win against an Atlantic 10 opponent, albeit one of the conference's small fry.
Rams senior
Lionel Robinette nearly equals his career high with 23 points, but
Joe Lien matches him (despite shooting 2-8 from long range).
Hubert Song and
James Sanders add 15 more apiece.
The Big Colonel also blocks a shot. This used to be big news, but our big man has improved this aspect of his game significantly. James has six blocks this year; he's never rejected more than nine in a full season.
Record: 13-2.
Here's how the Patriot League looks as we enter conference play:
HTML Code:
2014 Patriot League Standings
TEAM CW CL Pct W L Pct RPI Prestige
---------------------------------------------------------
[color="DarkRed"]Lafayette 0 0 .000 13 2 .867 21 35[/color]
Holy Cross 0 0 .000 9 3 .750 131 37
Colgate 0 0 .000 8 6 .571 263 16
American 0 0 .000 7 7 .500 72 42
Lehigh 0 0 .000 5 8 .385 55 19
Bucknell 0 0 .000 5 8 .385 256 28
Army 0 0 .000 4 10 .286 117 15
Navy 0 0 .000 4 9 .308 194 15
This is, without doubt, our best pre-season yet. Last year, we were 11-3, but our RPI was 95. I'd naturally like to make our AD happy with an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, but it's also comforting to see that our out-of-conference performance might help us earn an at-large invitation.
Holy Cross also had a very good November and December, while American is missing
Victor Reed and
Patrick Robinson.