Men’s Basketball Gifcap: Scenes From a Dry Night

Posted by Harrison-Milo Rahajason in Pressbox Hat Trick on February 19, 2017

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A look at what went well, and what went poorly for the Stingers in their 72-45 blowout loss to the McGill Redmen on Thursday night at the John Dore Gym.

Everyone on hand for Concordia’s Thursday night meeting with the McGill Redmen would tell you that the Stingers did just about everything well enough, except for the most important thing: make shots.

Their defense was good, and they were able to run their offensive sets to a relative degree of effectiveness to get open shots. The problem was that McGill shot the ball extremely well, and the Stingers simply did not.

Here’s a look at some important points from Thursday night’s game:

The Good

It wasn’t all bad for the Stingers. These are the three best things Concordia did.

Schneiders Suffrard and Ricardo Monge set up a little two-man game, with Suffrard setting a screen for Monge to get around. As soon as he moved around the screen, Monge had an open shot, which he buried.

This pick-and-pop play in a two-man game with Suffrard and Monge is something we can expect to see a lot of for the next few seasons as they will both be crucial to Concordia’s success in the post-Beaulieu era.

Monge had decent offensive game for the Stingers, scoring 11 points on the night. He also grabbed two rebounds and had two assists, but committed a team-high seven turnovers in the game.

The play that led to the Ken Beaulieu layup was good, and was the type of efficient play the Stingers have been scoring points on all season. Once again, though, the shot was missed.

This possession ended well, unlike most other ones from this game, thanks to a good rebound from Beaulieu and a smart play by Suffrard.

Schneiders’ shot was off on Thursday night, so he decided to put it on the deck and attack the McGill defence off the dribble instead of attempting a contested three-pointer. That decision paid off, as Schneiders identified the size mismatch with Redmen guard Jenning Leung and outmuscled him to the basket.

Schneiders Suffrard is learning how to score in different ways, and it is going to be very fun watching him for the next few seasons.

There’s a lot to like with this play. Monge was aggressive with his take to the basket and Fosu did very well to stay with the play and connect on the easy layup from seven feet away.

Unfortunately, there was an issue with the alley-oop play. It would have been really nice to see them connect on that play, but it would appear that Monge’s lob was a little high, or Suffrard’s jump was a bit late. Either way, Fosu did very well to stay with that play and make the athletic turnaround jump-hook.

The Bad

There were lots of wonky, sloppy and just flat out bad stuff from the Stingers on Thursday night. Here are some examples of Concordia’s forgettable loss to the Redmen.

There are a few issues with this play, the first being that there was too much dribbling. Secondly, there weren’t many attempts at getting open for a pass.

Now, that may be a product of an insanely good defensive possession by the Redmen, sure. But, there was an obvious lack of movement from the Stingers, which made it difficult for them to find a shot worth taking.

Monge did manage to successfully salvage the possession by finding a decent shot, but he missed it. It was just one of those nights.

Possessions like these are known in the basketball world as “back breakers.” The Stingers did everything to prevent McGill from scoring, but they just couldn’t collect a rebound.

Before long, the Redmen managed to find a wide open Kendrick Jolin, who knocked down one of his two three-pointers on the night. The Redmen shelled the Stingers from three-point range to the tune of 52 per cent, so it wasn’t surprising to see them connect on that shot. Still, in a closer game, that type of possession could have been disastrous.

This was a sloppy play for both teams. The fact that it still ended in an open shot for Redmen guard Kendrick Jolin is surprising, as early on, it didn’t look like much would come from it.

Jolin was able to get so wide open because of a defensive miscue by Ricardo Monge. He had his eyes on McGill guard Dele Ogundokun, and got lost in the middle of the court.

This allowed Dele to find Jolin open in the left corner, who made his second of two three-pointers in the game. This play wouldn’t have been as back breaking as the previous one, but it’s still the type of result that you absolutely want to avoid.

The Stingers will head to the Eastern Townships to play Bishop’s on Wednesday. They’ll be looking to win that game, and seal the second seed in the RSEQ playoffs.

The gifs were taken by Harrison-Milo Rahajason using the Concordia Stingers webcast.