Colonial Notebook
Ten ‘Wild and Crazy’ Teams
It’s the stuff of Steve Martin-Dan Akroyd Saturday Night Live skits – which is what the CAA has become this year. At this point, the league champ is anybody’s guess, especially when teams like Towson (1-5) beat conference contenders Delaware and Drexel, then lose to Old Dominion. Or take VCU, who knocked off Delaware, ODU and George Mason but couldn’t put it together against struggling Hofstra and William and Mary. UNC-Wilmington sits atop the CAA at 6-1 (11-6 overall), but George Mason (5-2), which got thumped by VCU on Jan. 23, is nipping at the Seahawks – er, talons.
And Speaking of VCU
Rams sophomore guard Domonic Jones is the CAA player of the week. The 6’1 Jones scored a career best 24 points in a win over Delaware then slightly eclipsed that mark in a victory against ODU. Jones punished the Monarchs with a 25-point, 8-rebound, 7-assist night in the overtime win. He added 59.3 percent shooting from the field just to make it look pretty. All of Richmond hopes Jones can keep up this pace. The Rams face top-squad UNC-Wilmington this Saturday, January 26th.
Best of the Newbies
Thus far, Drexel appears to be making the smoothest transition out of the four teams that came over from the America East this summer. The Dragons are 5-3 in the conference and in third place, a game behind George Mason. A lot of Drexel’s success can be attributed to the play of center Robert Battle, who is coming off a big week. Battle averaged 20 points in two games last week and recorded two double-doubles. On January 23rd, Battle scored another 20 in a ten-point win over Hofstra, to go along with his 12 rebounds. He is 7th in the NCAA in blocks at 3.7 per game.
As mentioned in the opening blurb, logic seems to skip over this league. Drexel has one of the smaller lineups in the CAA, yet they lead the league in offensive rebounding. Says head coach Bruiser Flint, “. . . we shoot a lot of long shots and we run down a lot of long rebounds.” Now if that only worked at UMass.
Shameless Plug: Next week, I’ll be serving up a status report of the four new CAA teams (or old America East teams as many like to call them). We’ll break down Drexel, Hofstra, Delaware and Towson to find out what’s been going on . . .or off.
Fans of Fanning, This Goes Out To You
James Madison’s David Fanning continues to lead the conference in scoring at 23.3 points per game. He ranks 33rd in the NCAA, Division I scorers.
