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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
American at Bucknell notebook
Notes from Sojka Pavilion, Where Bucknell stayed unbeaten at home in 28 straight league games with a 66-60 win.

  • It's a decent crowd in Sojka Pavilion, but nowhere near a full house. Empty seats in the students sections at either end are understandable with the students on break. But the seats on either side of the court are supposed to be sold out, yet across the way, behind the player benches, it's no better than 70 percent full, and that may be a generous estimate.

  • The game is being played with an old-fashioned two-man officiating crew. The third official's day job is in law enforcement in the Washington D.C. area and he was detained by a court appearance.

  • Andre Ingram has never shot well against Bucknell, so he must have been seeing the ghost of Charles Lee when he missed his first three shots from the field. He came back to hit his next two and is 2 for 5 at the half.

  • Chris McNaughton was hot early, going 4 for 7 (9 points) before sitting down after he drew his second personal with 5:28 to go in the half. Jeff Jones elected to try having Brayden Billbe guard McNaughton on his own and McNaughton responded by scoring 7 of Bucknell's first 9 points.

  • The two teams traded buckets and the lead early before Au used a 10-2 run to take an 18-11 lead. Bucknell responded with 7 unanswered points to tie it at 18 and eventually pulled ahead, taking a 28-24 edge when Jason Vegotsky hit a three late. Arvydas Eitutavicius made it a one-point game at the half when he buried a three after shoving off his defender, John Griffin, with a forearm shiver that would make an NFL star proud. To Griffin's visible astonishment, there was no call.

    HALFTIME STATS:

    Bucknell -- 11 of 22 from the field (50 percent), 1 of 4 from three-point range, 5 of 7 at the foul line
    American -- 11 of 26 from the field (42.3 percent), 3 of 8 (37.5 percent) from the arc, 2 for 2 at the charity stripe

    Turnovers: Bucknell 4, American 6
    Rebounds: American 15 (4 offensive), Bucknell 10 (0 offensive)
    High scorers: Bucknell -- McNaughton 9, Brown 8; American -- Eitutavicius 6, Garrison Carr 5

    SECOND HALF

  • You know that coaches' cliche about the first five minutes of the second half? American did not score during that span. Through the first 8:22 of the half, AU was 2 for 10. Guys not named Garrison Carr were 0 for 8. Carr's two threes, one a long buzzer-beater, kept AU from being blown out in that span.

  • Ingram started the second half the way he started the first, going 0 for 2 before sitting down for a long stretch while Jones went with a tiny backcourt of Carr and Mercer, who might measure 6-feet combined if you put one on the other's shoulders. Ingram heated up when he returned, though, hitting two straight threes.

  • McNaughton's third foul, at the 17:03 mark, laughable compared to the stuff AU is getting away with defending him. McNaughton whistled for an elbow on the back of Paulius Joneliunnas -- pretty much standard post defense -- on an inbounds play. That bad call became bigger when McNaughton picked up his fourth with 8:31 left on a questionable illegal screen call away from the ball. At that point, team fouls were 7 for AU, 4 for Bucknell, but the two called on McNaughton were far more significcant than the seven spread among a host of Eagles.

    It would have hurt Bucknell more if not for the play of Darren Mastropaolo, who used a variety of post moves to make Joneliunas look like ... umm . .. err, well, like Joneliunas. Mastropaolo hit three of his first four shots and had a dandy hook shot wiped out by a traveling call that had Pat Flannery reacting like ... umm ... err .. like Pat Flannery.

  • Of AU's first nine field goals in the second half, six came from the arc -- two by Mercer, two by Eitutavicius and the two by Ingram.

  • Defensive play of the game: With 1:57 to go, Mastropaolo went to the line for two shots, but missed both. AU got the rebound, but Vegotzky snuck in to knock the ball off Carr out of bounds, giving Bucknell another possession. McNaughton, who returned on the inbounds play as Flannery went offense-defense with him and Mastropaolo, made it count by beating Billbe for an easy bucket and a 56-51 lead.

    McNaughton made it 58-51 on a hook shot over Billbe Bucknell's next trip up the floor, turning the final minute into a free throw shooting contest.

  • Griffin reached double figures without making a field goal. Griffin was 0 for 4 from the field, 0 for 3 on three-point tries, but 10 for 10 from the foul line, including 6 for 6 in the final 30 seconds.

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