One team that appears to have better days ahead as Christmas approaches is Bryant. Wins have been elusive for the Bulldogs, but that’s not entirely surprising considering who they have played and their inexperience. There is no denying the progress that has been made, not only since last season when they struggled mightily, but just in the last month.
“If you look a the production we’re getting out of our freshmen and sophomores, we’re a lot better,” head coach Tim O’Shea said.
In particular, the perimeter is driving this improvement. It was a given that Frankie Dobbs, who followed O’Shea over from Ohio and sat out last season as a transfer, would make an impact right away. He would give them some quickness at the point guard spot and be a difference-maker against a press. One could also figure that senior Cecil Gresham would provide an experienced scorer now that he’s healthy again. The pleasant developments have come from a couple of freshmen, and that’s not all.
Dobbs has certainly done what was expected and more, as he leads the team in scoring, assists and three-point shooting. Gresham started off slowly, but has come alive of late and looks more like the player he was two seasons ago. Of late, freshmen Matthew Lee and Corey Maynard are showing that there is plenty of hope for the future as well. Sophomore Raphael Jordan appears to be settling into a reserve role and playing more off the ball, and senior Barry Latham is playing well in a more limited role.
Lee has been improving quickly. Sunday’s 15-point outing at Boston College was his second straight game in double figures and came in his first start, and he set another new career high with 19 in the loss at Michigan a few nights later. The Bulldogs were trying to gradually get him to the point of starting, and if he continues to play as he has he will probably stay in the starting lineup for a while. Maynard has been more up and down, but has a good motor and had back-to-back double-digit scoring games late last month.
The frontcourt has had an injection of talent from Alex Francis. The freshman has won NEC Rookie of the Week honors twice already and is third in scoring and leads in rebounding, and against Boston College he exceeded his numbers in both areas with 15 points and nine rebounds. Add him to sophomore Vlad Kondratyev, who’s been a little up and down, and they’re in reasonably good shape to start. Papa Lo and Claybrin McMath, the latter of whom showed promise before getting hurt last year, haven’t been used much, but McMath can’t be written off just yet because he’s still quite inexperienced.
The 77 points Bryant scored against Boston College is the most since the program went to Division I. Offense has been a big issue all along, and nowhere was that more evident than their most notable near-miss last season. The Bulldogs led for most of the second half against eventual conference champion Robert Morris, before going eight minutes without scoring and not scoring for the final two and a half minutes en route to losing the game.
In light of that, the offensive development is big for this team.
“We put 77 points up on a very good Boston College team, it gives me encouragement,” said O’Shea, still able to take a long view. “We’re getting better. Anybody that saw us a year ago and can see us now, we’ve made a big jump. We’ve got to build this thing so we can make another jump.”
The staff can see that they’re almost there. They want to win these games when they have a chance, such as last month’s tough home loss to Harvard, but they also have some perspective. They’re still establishing a Division I identity, they’re growing, and once Northeast Conference play starts in earnest should be ready to start winning games. They will be familiar with their opponents, which is always a factor that gets underestimated. They will also get more home games, which only helps even without the nice improvement they have shown of late.
“At some point, we’ll turn this into wins,” O’Shea said.
