Dear Old U.Va.

M Basketball Wins Warm-up vs Shepherd

Sunday, November 09 2008 by Tim

It wasn’t always pretty and it was just an exhibition, but the Men’s Basketball team got a win under their belt, beating visiting Shepherd University 87-52.

Sophomore Jeff Jones scored 18 points (14 in the first half) to lead all scorers. His early performance reminded me of some of his better moments last year. Hopefully that’s something we’ll see all season. Senior Mamadi Diane added 14 and pretty much looked like his usual quiet but productive self. Sophomore Mike Scott also had a very solid game in multiple areas – he tallied 10 points on five-of-seven shooting, but also pulled down 14 rebounds including 10 on the defensive end.

I place Mustapha Farrakhan solidly in the “better than I expected” box after this game. By the end of last season I just really hadn’t seen enough to know what to expect from Farrakhan as this season got started. His stat line was good – nine points, five assists and three rebounds. But what stood out to me most was that he seemed to be playing the game at his own speed. Last year he often looked like he was forcing things, trying to play to the faster speed of the game and he often made mistakes or poor decisions because of that. During this game, at least, he seemed more in control of his own game. He mad some solid decisions, took some good shots and just generally looked more comfortable. Just like my comments above regarding Jones, I hope this is a sign of things to come for the season.

As this was the first opportunity for many of us to see the new first year players, I was definitely paying a lot of attention to them.

Let me get Brandenburg out of the way first – he didn’t play until the last 10 minutes or so of the game and only played 6 minutes. I had left JPJ by that point so I didn’t get to see him play at all. He went 0-3 from the floor, but pulled down 4 rebounds including three on the offensive side.

Assane Sene played 18 minutes and looked… well… like a first year center playing on a team that doesn’t get the ball inside very well. He’s definitely more athletic than Tunji, which will serve us well down the road, but it was hard to tell much about him from this outing. I expect he’ll get more minutes than Brandenburg this year, but I’m rather curious to see how productive he is. A lot of that may have to do with his ability to get open underneath and the guard’s ability to get the ball to him (same thing goes for Tunji and the other players under the basket).

And then there’s our burger boy – Sylven Landesberg. His first half was definitely forgettable. He had one point in the first half and generally just looked like he was pushing it. He seemed out of sync and made some poor shot and ball handling decisions in the first half. His second half, however, was much better. He finished with 13 points in 20 minutes, along with five rebounds and four assists. I missed some of his good performance in the second half, so I can’t really say if it “made up” for the first half, but from what I’ve heard it sounds like he looked more like what we expected. I heard someone on the radio (I think it was Cory Alexander) say that SL’s performance was what he expected – slow to start and then really starting to shine in the second half. I hope that SL starts to pick it up a little earlier as the season goes on, but he’s still young and has plenty of time to get his game going.

There really isn’t much to say coming out  of this game (the previous half dozen or so paragraphs notwithstanding). The team sure didn’t “wow” me, but it also didn’t frighten me with terrible play either. The defensive effort was “ok” at best and certainly helped by Shepherd’s generally poor play. On offense there were only a handful of players who played in synch for any decent chunk of the game (and you might be able to attribute that to the different lineups). Regardless, I’m still excited about the season.

I’ve posted about 85 photos in the photo gallery so go check them out if you’re interested.

Notes:

• The starting lineup for both halves was Baker, Farrakhan, Soroye, Scott and Diane (that’s the order in which they were announced).
• The men’s team has new uniforms too, just like the women’s team. The tops are different than previous years, remind me of recent Syracuse uniforms (I think). Check out the photo gallery to see for yourself.
• Baker seems to be playing ok. I didn’t notice much of a slowdown from him. Kind of makes me curious what was really going on with his injury.
• Sammy Zeglinski can definitely run the point. He’s not Sean Singletary (who is?) but he can handle it. He had a few mistakes, similar to what we saw early last year, but I’m not terribly concerned. He broke the press several times with good decisions and made some good passes. I think he’ll progress nicely this season. He also had a great move out of bounds underneath the basket as he fell out of bounds. Very athletic move.
• Landesberg has some spunk. He got fouled on the offensive end near the end of the first half and when the guy bumped into him again after the foul, Sylven shoved him right back, prompting his teammates and the refs to jump in. I like seeing some of that fire from players, though I think that level of aggression against a team like Shepherd might be a little misplaced.